One of the things that takes a large amount of time out of the day can be customer sales and support. In order to get out from under that, many small business owners will hire an employee to answer phones, make appointments, and handle light office tasks. But with employees comes payroll, health insurance, workers comp insurance, vacation days, sick days, etc. etc. Now instead of having a strain on their time, they have a strain on their budget. A virtual phone service can take the place of that employee at a fraction of the cost and works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
A virtual phone service will answers phones with a professional greeting customized for the business. It can then direct callers to departments that the business owner sets up. For example 1 for Sales, 2 for Support, 3 for Billing. They can tell the system where they would like to receive those calls as well as have it announce what department the call is coming from. They can also have some departments go directly to voicemail. A virtual phone service can also provide information to callers. For example if people frequently call for location or hours of operation, a recording can be made to answer those questions. If people often call to get pricing, they can load a document into an extension that callers can request to be faxed to them. Now instead of having an employee handle all of these things, the virtual phone service is doing it.
Even without the additional help of an employee the business owner can still maintain and even increase their efficiency using a virtual phone service. Here are a number of ways:
- Because the virtual phone service is directing callers by the extension they pressed, it can let the business owner know ahead of time where that call is coming from. If the call is from a specific department and / or customer they can choose not to accept the call at that time and send it to voicemail. This way they are not interrupted by a phone call that can be dealt with at a later time.
- Because the virtual phone service will answer commonly asked questions, the business owner saves time by not having to address those questions themselves.
- With a virtual phone service, the business owner can block off time that they will not receive any calls so that they can have some uninterrupted time to work. If they still want to keep an eye on who is calling, they can have all voicemails sent to their email address where they can quickly glance at them and decide whether or not to call the person back.
- A virtual phone service will forward calls to other phones. A business owner can be out of the office taking care of other things, have their calls forwarded to their cell phone and not have to worry about missing a call.
