Running a bustling doctor’s office isn’t always easy. Being a doctor means a busy life full of highs and lows. The evenings after a long day are great for sitting back and enjoying life. Unfortunately, I find that such a respite is often cut short. My business is busy and I have a full-time staff. However, they don’t work after hours, but I am often called to do so. Without the staff to answer the phones, I employ a phone answering service company to handle my after hour business.
Every week I become the ‘John Madden’ of business and write out notes, questions, and even diagrams with arrows and lines on a single, blank, unlined piece of paper detailing my goals for the week. I call it my weekly business plan. For example, obtain 5 new clients, write 2 articles, clean out file sorter on desk, research Call answering services, what vendor lists are out there related to my industry?—Google these terms:……, etc…
Some providers offer other value-added services, such as dispatch or booking keeping. You may want to know how they charge for those services. Does the provider charge an additional introduction fee or do they mark-up from the vendor or both? Are they transparent about their charges?
If you’re on the road a lot, chances are your cell-phone is often out of signal range and there is no one in your office to take a message should that all-important client call. With the answerpoint.co.uk provided by many VAs, you can divert your calls and rest assured that your client will receive the personal touch rather than dealing with an annoying automated answering device. Your messages will be passed on to you in order of importance and you won’t need to sort through lengthy messages on voicemail.
Do you dream about having your own virtual receptionist how can provide an answering service for you when you are out and about and on the run? Someone who is around 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. You might even have looked into some sort of telephone answering service a few years back and not got around to taking things further, or been put off the costs. The market has become increasingly competitive and the choice of virtual assistants is now huge. And you, the customer benefits of course. So if you’ve written a telephone answering service off in the past as being too expensive. Think again.
Thanks to the shelved projects, the BPO services units are running hopelessly dry of work. They are trying out desperate and sometimes reckless means of cutting down the costs. Taking this a step further, you can equate this unhealthy trend to the concept of vicious cycle that you find in the economics books. Let’s take a closer look at this analogy.
You can increase your flexibility. You can have calls transferred to wherever you may be. This can also be the case with your staff, freeing them up to do other things instead of waiting for important calls. Remember also that you are only billed for the time the virtual receptionist works on your behalf, and not for the time in between.