Answering Service Company
Business life is getting harder. With all the different channels of communication available these days you end up spending a huge chunk of your time answering your emails, monitoring social media and taking calls on your cell phone than ever before. Just booking a meeting with clients or colleagues can make use of a lots of different types of software and usually needs them all to communicate with each other. With this all going on, the average business executive working for a corporate company is left with almost no time to actually do the work that is generating the revenue. The good news is that by outsourcing your telephone answering to an answering service company like Virtual Headquarters you will not only significantly reduce the time spent on administration but you will also be able to save your firm money when compared to trying to do it all in house.
Years ago the usual thing for a corporate would be to load up an in house receptionist with most of the tasks that you can now outsource to our service. The staff receptionist would need to be answering all of those incoming telephone calls, organize couriers, arrange meeting rooms for internal and external meetings, transfer calls between internal staff, take delivery of parcels and letters, manage the mail plus a range of other tasks. Unfortunately, one of the main problems that used to exist back in the old days was that with many of these jobs it was virtually impossible to accurately predict how often the staff receptionist would be needed to carry them out and how much time the task was going to take. What ended up happening for most corporates was inevitably that there would be unaccountable amounts of time when the receptionist ended up sitting idly around just chatting with other staff and then there would be other times when they would end up missing some calls because they are just overloaded.
If your business is still suffering from these types of issues then it may be time for you to consider using an outsourced answering service company.
How An Answering Service Works
The way an answering service company (or virtual receptionist) works can be explained quite easily. Firstly, on signing up with a service like VirtualHeadquarters.com we will allocate a phone number to your account. This phone number will be the number that we answer when taking your calls. In selecting a number you will have the choice of either a local phone number (for a specific area that you decide to target) or a toll free number (which incurs a small additional fee per month). If you want you can actually use this telephone number as a primary business number and display it on your website and business cards or you can just divert your existing number to this number (at any point that you decide to divert it). It is totally flexible and all up to you.
Now that you have an allocated phone number for your corporate account you will need to let us know what greeting you will want us to use when we answer those incoming calls. The greeting should reflect your corporate culture and can be whatever you decide, for instance you might simply say “ABC Limited, how may I help you” or you could possibly go for something more casual like “Hi, ABC Limited, Alice speaking, how may I help you”. The greeting is entirely up to you and can be varied at ay time. For example, if it is thanksgiving you could add a seasonal message or when you have a new product launch going on you could include data about this in the greeting. Changing your greeting is exceptionally easy, it can be changed either by logging to our administration portal via your PC or laptop, or alternatively our Android and IOS APP’s can be used to make changes using your smart phone.
Once your greeting is organized you will need to let us know how you will want your messages to be delivered. For message delivery we have two options; Firstly, you can have your messages delivered by email. Given that more than 90% of corporate executives now use smart phones, email is a pretty convenient way to get these messages. The second way is to receive your messages by Text message. We find that Text message works for a certain percentage of customers who want an audible alert when they receive a message. If you opt for the Text approach then there is a small fee per Text sent.
Staff Location
Here at Virtual Headquarters we believe that it is important for USA based corporate businesses to have their telephones answered by USA based receptionists. While it could be cheaper to have offshore call centres in Asia or Mexico answering those calls we do not believe that we could provide the same level of service to our customers if we were to use those services.
Our receptionists who are employed by our corporate answering service work out of a state of the art call center located in Phoenix Arizona. When we employ receptionists we aim to get experienced mature individuals who will provide a first class level of service to your callers. We treat your callers in the same way that we would want our own callers treated.
If you need your calls answered 7 days per week 24 hours per day then this is no problem for Virtual Headquarters. We also have operations in the UK and Australia and during evenings and nights we can divert calls to those call centers. All of our call centers utilize the same bespoke answering service software that we have developed internally so your after hours calls will get the same level of service and attention as your 9-5 calls would be getting.
Answering Service Company
Our answering service company can be really beneficial to larger businesses. Firstly, unlike having physical receptionists, a virtual service is totally scalable. Regardless of whether you receive 200 calls in an hour or just 5 we will be there to answer that call and you will only be charged for what you use. Secondly, as you only pay for what you use you don’t need to pay us during holiday periods or slow times. If our receptionists are sick or on vacation then it is our problem and we will always have someone there to take your call.
Our staff are also capable of doing much more than just answering your calls and sending you a message. Our sophisticated answering system lets you to do some really clever things like create a set of telephone numbers that can be used when you are not available. You can also to swap easily from having messages taken to having calls forwarded to a specific number or having calls diverted to alternate numbers in seconds.
Business Answering Service
Why not let our skilled receptionists be your corporate gatekeeper for your company. We can screen answer those annoying telemarketing calls and filter out the important calls. Also, what about all of those times you get a call from someone who just wants to get the address for your business, find out whether there is parking available or find out what your fax number is. We can sort out a whole range of calls for you and relieve your corporate staff of that burden.
What It Costs
In the business answering service industry there are two main ways that companies charge out their services. The first approach and the approach that we take at Virtual Headquarters is to charge the customer for each call answered. This charge is the same regardless of the time taken on each of those calls. Over the years we have found that this approach is a fairer way for our customers and it is easier for them to estimate how much their billing and budget for that cost. It is also easier for them to work out how cost effective our service is. The other approach in the answering service industry (which we do not use) is to charge customers on the basis of how many minutes are use answering their calls. The cost per minute approach makes it difficult to estimate the overall costs and also provides no real incentive for the answering service to limit those time consuming calls.
Here at Virtual Headquarters we also offer our corporate customers packages of calls. For example, with the Virtual Receptionist 50 pack you will get 50 calls included and additional calls will $2.70. The cost of this package to your company is $119 per month. We have found over the years that packages work effectively for corporate customers and allows them to easily budget ongoing answering service costs.
Who Uses You
There are a broad range of companies and individuals that use our call answering services. Businesses like attorneys, CPA’s, IT consultants, corporate advisers, finance professionals, management consultants and many more. Customers range in size from just one person bands to large multi divisional businesses with rooms full of staff. Here at Virtual Headquarters we take pride in delivering that same first class service level to each and every customer whether they are a small one person operation or whether they are a large multi location corporate customer.
About Virtual Headquarters
Virtual Headquarters has been in operation for more than 7 years and has built a customers base of thousands of corporates located throughout the USA the UK and Australia. Our telephone answering system was built to give our customers a service that provides complete flexibility in terms of the way their incoming calls will be handled. We are continually developing and enhancing our systems to further improve our service offering to you our customer.
Think that a business answering service could be the solution that your business needs to free up time and allow your staff to get more focused on growth and strategy? Then why not give our friendly sales team a call on 1300 893 820 and we will be very happy to help.