One of the main issues facing business owners today is the same issue facing people in many industries: the dual issues of speed and professionalism. Everything nowadays is faster and more intense — and customers want it to be that way. They want to be wowed with customer service and they want it quickly- or else you may find yourself on the bad end of a two-star review online.
This of course presents business owners with a problem: how to provide quick service while also doing so in a professional way? Standard tools for this usually sacrifice speed or professionalism. If you are a solopreneur or run a small company, just answering calls as they come in can make you seem professional, but if you don’t have someone dedicated for calls, many will be missed, which actually damages perceived professionality. And if you have one single person on staff who deals with calls, that’s professional, but it means there can be backlogs, which in turn hampers speed.
Fortunately, there is a way to get maximum speed and maximum professionalism: employing the use of a live receptionist service. With a live receptionist service, you have a team of professional receptionists (aka phone secretaries) who are your metaphorical “first line of defense”: they take all of your initial calls, answer questions about your company, and forward calls to whomever necessary or create conference calls for you.
There are a lot of benefits to using a live receptionist service. Below we’ll be going into a few of the most obvious of them. Read on to find out more!
Live Receptionists Simplify Your Organization
For starters, obviously being organized is incredibly important for running a business. You don’t need a blog post to tell you that. But at the same time, many folks either pick a method of organizing and stick with it unquestioned for years, or they tell themselves that they’re organized but in reality are toeing the line between knowing where a couple of papers are and complete chaos.
When it comes to smaller small businesses, a lot of folks are stuck performing a lot of roles: that of running the company, talking to clients and actually making sales, making sure the books are balanced, and advertising for the company and the produces and/or services you offer, among other things. Running a company which you are just getting off the ground means you are going to have to wear many hats; while you do not have to wear them all perfectly, you’re going to have to wear them professionally.
Sometimes this just isn’t possible. You’ll drive yourself mad, you’ll get stressed out- and all of that, in turn, will dramatically lower your ability to perform at the level which you’ll need to be performing at.
With a live receptionist service, the most time consuming of those roles—incoming client contact—are taken off your hands (or, if we’re continuing the “hat” metaphor, your head). A team of live receptionists will be able to answer all calls which come in. And they aren’t randomly picked- they’ll have learned the ins and outs of the most frequently asked questions callers have for your company, which means that they can also partake in another important task: call screening.
Let’s face it: a lot of callers have some pretty basic questions which are easily answered but can take up loads of time. All of those callers will never even get close to your phone, meaning none of your time will ever be spent answering them. This will be especially useful for those of you who are just starting your business or are solopreneurs — you folks have plenty to worry about with setting up an entire business potentially on your own. Let your live receptionists deal with the bulk of callers and put your attention where it needs to go.
A live receptionist can take your calls, provide callers with important information, schedule appointments on your calendar, forward calls to people on your team, and more. They’re practically your remote secretary.
Save Some Money or Spend It Where You Want to — Not Where You Have to
Let’s say you are in a state which has a fifteen dollar minimum wage. Your business operates on standard business hours, which means eight hours a day, five days a week. The average month is four weeks long. Add that all up, and you get two thousand, four hundred dollars. That’s $2,400 a month, and just shy of $30,000 a year.
Now, what are these numbers for? Well, they’re the cost of hiring a receptionist for your office or small business. Now, with apologies to Pam, that’s a lot of dough, especially for newer small business owners who may not have the cash to pay for themselves, much less a receptionist. But when you’re in that awkward sweet spot when you are getting a lot of calls but you do not have an extra thirty thousand dollars lying around- what are you going to do?
Gabbyville live receptionists
Well, that’s where live receptionist services come in. Take Gabbyville, one of the premier live receptionist services. They have a variety of price packages, running from the highest priced with all the bells and whistles being $1,200 a month, to the simplest package running at just $240 per month. Let’s say you decide to go with one of their mid-tier packages: Basic, which is for newer startups which are beginning to pop (basically the ones in the “sweet spot” which was mentioned above). That package costs $500 a month, which tallies out to about $6,000 a year.
Now, math is hard, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that $500 is way smaller than $2,400, and that $6,000 is a heck of a lot smaller than $30,000. You’re basically paying, for a team of live receptionists, a *fifth* of what you would be paying for a single receptionist!
For a burgeoning small business, we’re betting that twenty four thousand extra dollars could come in handy. Need to rent out a coworking space? Need to hire someone on the team who you actually will need as a matter of growing your business in a way you want, and not as a matter of simple necessity (like a receptionist would be)? Or do you want to expand further, maybe run a new advertising campaign? With that money, it’s all actually possible.
Real People Bring Real Professionalism
We’ve touched a lot on professionalism above, and there is a reason for that: it’s crucial for small businesses looking to expand. Word of mouth really matters, especially in this age of online reviews and the increased ability of news to get around to different people really, really fast. That has made it harder for small businesses- they need to be on their game even more than they usually are. And, frankly, when you are wearing as many hats as mentioned before, that is oftentimes tough to do.
So oftentimes people turn to slower robotic messaging services, maybe a voicemail which lists the most frequently asked questions (in the hopes that the caller will hear their answer and hang up instead of leaving a long and droning voice message). But this in turn can have the negative effect of turning folks off- plenty of people do not want to hear a long voice message before they can leave theirs, and many don’t want to talk to robots.
A live receptionist service like Gabbyville flips that entire issue on its head. Every single time someone calls your company, they are going to be speaking to actual, real human beings. We already mentioned Gabbyville’s tiered pricing plans; if you go into the upper tiers, you can get teams of dedicated receptionists who will get to know repeat callers and will truly learn all of the little ins and outs of your business- which means those repeat callers will actually feel a personal connection to your business, instead of just having them talk to a robot, who no one feels a personal connection to (sorry, R2).
Don’t underestimate how helpful this can be. How many poor online reviews start with “Had to wait on the phone for X minutes just to finally speak to someone!” or “Had to argue with a robot for X minutes before I could get someone on the phone”? Lots do. Avoid those entirely and get good reviews which speak of your professionalism and the kindness of your receptionists, with a live receptionist service today.
Live Receptionists Don’t Hold Your Small Business Back
Running a business is exciting. There are ample opportunities for financial growth, to challenge yourself, and to build bigger. So why hold yourself back? With a service like Gabbyville professional live receptionists, you’ll have simpler organization — which will lead you to a simpler peace of mind.
You’ll genuinely save big bucks which you can in turn put into hiring new hands, expanding your business- or into your next vacation! And you’ll never need to worry about new or old callers getting some unprofessional droning robotic voice; instead, you can work through the day knowing that all of your clients are speaking to knowledgeable, professional human beings- all while your phone doesn’t have to buzz once.
Learn more about Gabbyville’s live receptionists for small business.
