Small and emerging businesses have quite a lot to deal with. From handling admin and payrolls to keep the staff happy, tending to marketing and sales to bring in profits, and doing your best to ensure new and existing customers stay loyal, all this can be very overwhelming without some help.
We already listed the top benefits of signing up for our Real Receptionist call answering service to handle your incoming business calls, the main one being that you never miss a call while gaining more time to handle other tasks, all without the cost of a new full-time employee. Now, let us look at what tasks you can delegate to your Real Receptionist to help streamline your daily workflow.
Call answering, transferring, and screening
The most important duty of a Real Receptionist is to answer all your incoming business calls. Once they know who the caller wishing to speak to, they can simply transfer the call to the relevant extension or even to a mobile number should the employee be out-of-office. You can also inform your assigned Real Receptionist about meetings and times when staff will be unavailable, they will then screen calls and only escalate emergencies to minimise disruptions.
Taking messages or recording conversations
Aside from screening unimportant calls, our team of professional off-site receptionists have the skills and tools to record important messages from callers. You can review these messages and tend to them when you have the time to do so, knowing that any callers you marked as ‘important’ will still be put through to you. We also offer call recording, as some businesses deal with telephonic ordering or verbal contracts, and in such cases having a recording archived can help with resolving customer disputes.
Making bookings or taking orders
Sales and profits are what a business is all about. Your Real Receptionist can be trained and set up to alleviate work from your sales team by being able to process bookings and / or orders. While more intricate or custom quotes will need to be escalated to your team, the work required around common orders can be handled by one of our savvy receptionists.
Assisting with quotes
Most businesses find that they are too busy and overwhelmed to listen to a caller’s request and then be able to assist with a quote then and there. Many companies ask callers to submit their quote request via email, which is then forwarded to the sales team who evaluates the request and responds to the caller with the relevant quote. This lengthy quote process can easily cost you a sale. Potential customers that call in usually want answers on the spot, even if it is only a ballpark estimate to give them an idea. Having static quotes at the ready for your Real Receptionist will allow them to quickly tend to your caller’s quote request without wasting the lengthy turnaround or your sales team’s time. They will only escalate the request when the caller is happy to proceed with a formal quote or even to place their order.
Logging and escalating complaints
The only thing worse than an unhappy customer, is an unhappy customer that cannot get a hold of you. With social media and the ease of spreading information via the internet, it is important to realise that an unhappy customer or client can do a lot of damage to your brand image via negative posts, articles and even videos. Being available to both receive and resolve customer complaints is a must! You can pre-empt customer complaints and put solutions in place that your assigned Real Receptionist can utilise to instantly appease any angry callers, only escalating those that require a more senior employee’s touch.
Answering FAQs
Often, a caller contacts a business because they have a question, and often, these questions are common and the answers the same. You should have a list of all the common or “Favourite Asked Questions” (FAQ) that you receive either via calls, emails, your website, or social media messages. You can share this list of FAQs with your Real Receptionist, allowing them to immediately answer the callers question and mitigating the need to transfer calls.
Assisting during Holidays and Downtime
When your office closes for the holidays or for either scheduled or unscheduled downtime, our team of receptionist will ensure that you do not miss calls. They will be available to continue answering your business calls and you can set them up to inform callers of the downtime and when the office will be open again, record or transfer messages to your new/holiday location, and even place orders to be tended to once you open again. These services can also be utilised for after-hour calls, ensuring that you never miss an opportunity to make a great first impressions or a sale.
At Real Receptionist, we have one main goal, to ensure your time is not wasted.
Too much time is spent on answering phone calls, most that do not lead to immediate sales and many that require a level of care that can be hard to muster when you are also running other aspects of your business. By signing up for a Real Receptionist you can delegate the above tasks to ensure you have more time to focus on making profits and growing your brand, without the cost of hiring an in-house receptionist.
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