Hiring a live receptionist service means that your customer’s calls will be answered by a live person, instead of one of those automatic answering machines that cause more harm than good.
But a live receptionist with Phone.com can do so much more for your business, such as handling event registration, processing and tracking orders, as well as scheduling appointments.
Live receptionist services often get dismissed by managers and business owners because of the perception that the cost is too high and is simply too much to justify.
Yet a live receptionist service is a fantastic investment that pays for itself in a short amount of time.
Here are some ways live receptionist services are worth their cost.
Eliminate Training Costs
If you aren’t going to be answering your business’s phone yourself then you will most likely have to hire someone to do that job for you.
To ensure that your new employee is able to handle the bulk of incoming calls efficiently while adhering to your company’s policies, then that means you will have to provide them with training. For small businesses, the cost of training an employee is estimated to be between $1,200 and $1,800.
And this figure doesn’t take into account the significant amount of time that will also have to be invested in getting a receptionist ready for the job.
By hiring a live receptionist service you can forget about all of these costs and have somebody ready to take your customer’s calls from the very start.
Improved Customer Satisfaction
In today’s always-on world, customers have come to expect that every business should be accessible whenever they need it. This, in effect, means being there for your customers 24/7/365.
This is where a live receptionist service shines, because they can meet this non-stop service expectation and aren’t bound by concepts of the past such as business hours.
This will, in turn, translate into greater customer satisfaction, since you are showing them that you care about what they want, instead of trying to get them to conform to how you do business.
Additionally, you can be sure that your business will never miss a single call, which means that you are more likely to get more business from new clients and also improve the retention rate of the clients you already have.
Cut back on customer service costs
Because a live receptionist service can handle all of your customer service needs, this means that you can essentially eliminate the need of having your own customer service department.
Since you no longer need a whole team to handle basic customer needs such as appointment booking, providing help desk support, customer emergencies, basic troubleshooting, etc, this frees up your budget to invest in other revenue-generating departments more heavily.
An added benefit is that as your company grows, and your customer service support grows along with it, your team stays the exact same size thanks to your live receptionist service.
No covering for breaks, vacations or sick days
As stated before, a live receptionist service can handle your customer’s calls every single business day. This means that they will be working for you and answering calls every hour of the day, and you won’t have to worry about your receptionist taking a vacation or a sick day.
With an on-site receptionist you are guaranteed to miss out on many calls due to them taking a much needed break. Or you will need to improvise and have someone else do their job while they are out on vacation or whenever they are sick and need a day off.
You can instead use that money to pay only for overtime that creates much more value for your company.
Reduce technology and equipment costs
Having an on-site receptionist implies a big up-front investment in technology and equipment, such as new phone systems, as well as systems to store, log, and distribute important messages to your team.
If you do a quick internet search you will find that just installing a very basic, low end phone system will set you back around $200 per handset and up to $1,000 per handset on the higher end. And this figure doesn’t include maintenance or training costs.
As you can see, hiring a live receptionist service helps you reduce technology and equipment costs dramatically.
Improve Employee Productivity
Most customers call you to ask questions that they could easily find with a quick internet search. Things such as opening times, return policies, or basic questions about your products. And although these can be annoying, they aren’t even the worst offenders when it comes to completely wasting your employee’s time. Consider spam calls or robo calls. Those automated calls are way more distracting than any legitimate question a customer might have and they are much more annoying.
Above and beyond being annoying, though, these interruptions are killing your employees’ productivity.
Studies have found that whenever a person’s workflow is interrupted it can take 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back on track. And this is true for every single interruption so you can imagine how much of your employee’s valuable time is being stolen by these seemingly insignificant phone calls.
A good live receptionist service solves this by acting as a buffer between your customers and your employees, and only interrupting them only when it is absolutely necessary. This will greatly improve your employee’s focus and productivity.
As you can see, the fee for hiring a live receptionist service is insignificant compared to the costs related to hiring an on-site receptionist. And this doesn’t take into account all the other ways that a live receptionist service is more valuable to your business.