10 Reasons Why Small and Medium
Sized Offices Need a Virtual Receptionist

When a business owner calls and wants to talk about a Virtual Receptionist for his business we help him decide what is best for his business, an Auto Attendant, a Backup Attendant or just voice mail. They work in different ways and solve different problems for each business.

"Please hang up and call your pharmacy. They will contact us on your behalf if necessary..." This single phrase was the response to 70 percent of the calls to a local medical office I setup this past week. The physician in the office told me her lines (and her staff) were to busy answering the phone and repeating that phrase to take care of patients in the office.

I had a referral from an associate to a doctor who needed a "phone tree". He needed to have a caller make a selection to reach different people in his offices. The phone tree he described started with the basics:

We have a new client whose phone service provider is Suddenlink. She needed calls to be answered if her line was busy or she did not answer after 4 rings. In order for our Virtual Receptionist to go live the client had to add change the Basic Call Forwarding to No Answer Call Forward with Suddenlink.

Small and medium sized businesses need to have the most efficient operation possible with regard to their phones. Here are 10 reasons why the small office needs to have a Virtual Receptionist.

Small business phone systems quite often fall short when handling calls after a business is closed. They do not give the caller options to efficiently resolve the issue they are calling for. For some offices a simple voicemail will suffice for most of the calls. The caller can hear the office hours and leave a general voice message that someone will check in the morning.

When you setup your business phone services you may consider the receptionist at the front desk as a key component to the system. She (or he) will screen your calls giving you the option to take the call or not. In an automated phone system a Virtual Receptionist will screen your calls and give you the option of being connected or not in much the same way.

How many times have you called a business to ask if they are open? Or what their fax number is? Or when their UPS pickup will be? Then you hear "Please leave a message after the tone..." If this had been a customer calling your business they may just move on to the next number in the list. You may have lost a sale opportunity.

The generic voice mail outgoing greeting is just that, generic. Is your business generic? No? Your business is unique and special. Why would someone want to become your customer when they get your voice mail and it's not identifying your business? It's all about your business image!

I spent the evening at a networking event and chatted with a plumber who is loosing business. He knows that potential customers call in the evening but they hang up and don't call him. His office voice mail gives the caller his cell phone number but seldom do people hang up and redial...