A virtual receptionist can do wonders for an organization’s productivity. They can also enrich customer relationships in unexpected ways. It’s not enough to simply deliver on expectations. To turn first-time customers into brand loyalists, it’s important to partner with a virtual receptionist. These professionals can transform your customer experience by enhancing existing service offerings and connecting with callers in meaningful ways.
A happy customer is a loyal one. Satisfaction is just the beginning – if you can go a step further and truly delight and inspire your customers to return, they’re more likely to recommend you to a friend or family member. This is what the heart of customer relationships is all about. By partnering with a virtual receptionist, you can go beyond the next sale, product, or advertising campaign. Instead, you’ll invest in customer relationships that are here to stay.
What is a Virtual Receptionist?
A virtual receptionist is precisely what the job title sounds like: a remote receptionist who fulfills the role of a traditional receptionist but isn’t located within your offices. The average virtual receptionist is highly trained, extremely knowledgeable, and specializes in offering stellar customer service to callers. By partnering with a virtual receptionist service provider, you can even offer 24/7 call support. For small teams, a virtual receptionist can lighten the administrative load for everyone on staff.
Answering phone calls and providing information to callers is incredibly important, but such calls have a way of disrupting the flow of the average office. While your organization may not see the need to hire a full-time administrative professional to answer phones, a virtual receptionist can provide the precise degree of assistance and coverage you need. No matter your industry, these professionals can assist with transferring calls, taking messages, and scheduling appointments even after you and your colleagues have gone home for the day. Perhaps most importantly, a virtual receptionist can help in building customer relationships that are as meaningful as they are fruitful.
If you’re curious about the benefits of a virtual receptionist, here are just a few of the ways these professionals can add value to each of your customer relationships:
A Great First Impression, Every Time
It’s true what they say: you never get a second chance at a first impression. Organizations invest significant dollars in carefully curated branding to set themselves apart from their competitors. All the slick billboards and email campaigns mean nothing if there’s not a savvy, resourceful virtual receptionist available to answer client calls.
Too often, companies rely on outdated tools like voicemail to connect with their customers. The reality is that voicemail has become quite passe over the years. When a customer is sent to voicemail to leave a message, many will opt to hang up and dial another business instead. Even when callers do opt to leave a voicemail, issues remain. Humans are terrible at leaving messages, especially when they feel pressured to include important bits of information. On top of all of this, there’s yet another inbox to manage, and another chore to slog through.
A virtual receptionist service puts an end to the reliance on voicemail, once and for all. Callers are greeted promptly and professionally by experts who are familiar with the organization’s products, services, policies and procedures. Personalized call scripting, appointment setting, and on-call rosters go even further to help create a great first impression every time the phone rings.
Connecting Callers with Solutions
When your organization receives a phone call, there are likely several common questions people may ask. Your hours, your availability, and your specific policies may all be frequent topics of conversation. While you might be able to answer such questions in your sleep, a virtual receptionist can save you time by taking these conversations off your plate. What’s more, a live virtual receptionist will be trained in the importance of a good relationship with customers. They bring empathy and patience to every conversation – something not every office worker can necessarily bring to the table.
The very best virtual receptionist services offer technology support for callers. It’s a great, cost-effective way to provide your customers with solutions to some of the most common challenges. This kind of service is also a handy feature to promote as part of your service offerings, and your customers will appreciate that they can reach out to your company directly to get the technical assistance they require, 24/7.
Collecting Information (So You Don’t Have to!)
Whether you run a doctor’s office, an insurance agency, or a law office, the odds are good that you spend much of your time on the phone collecting information from callers. While this task is undoubtedly important, it can be very time-consuming – not to mention incredibly tedious. A virtual receptionist can save both you and your callers valuable time by submitting collected information to your CRM to save for future use. Call notes, customer names, addresses, and other customer-centric data can all be harnessed for lead building and relationship nurturing.
Data privacy is more important than ever, which is why our live virtual receptionist service is staffed by HIPAA-compliant call center professionals. Use our tools to organize and track calls, making sure that each one is accounted for and managed in a timely fashion. Our professional treatment of your callers and their data is certain to increase customer satisfaction. This will keep your patients calm about their appointments and procedures, while also ensuring that their problems are indeed being heard.
Your Stalwart Representative
You and your team might already offer stellar customer experiences in your daily operations. But what happens when you head home for the night? The days of traditional nine-to-five business hours are gone. To stay competitive, businesses must account for customers in different time zones, shift workers, and anyone too busy to make calls during the day. An after hours virtual receptionist can bridge the gap between your current service offerings and the kind of 24/7 coverage you’d like to provide.
Regardless of how good your marketing plan or business model might be, you’ll struggle to gain new clients if you’re not able to pick up when they call. A virtual receptionist can represent you whether you’ve gone to lunch, gone home for the night, or gone on vacation. Reliability is key here – by acting as a stalwart representative of your brand, a virtual receptionist helps to build and sustain positive client relationships while giving you the space you need to grow your organization.
An End to Communication Barriers
Our country has an increasingly large Spanish-speaking population. We’re set to hit 138 million Spanish-speakers by the year 2050. If your team does not already have a plan in place to communicate with non-English speakers, you may be overlooking important customer relationships. No matter their backgrounds, your customers deserve clear communication and professional support. Not every business employs polyglots, though, which is where a live virtual receptionist service can come into play.
A bilingual virtual receptionist can help eliminate communication barriers. By offering support in both English and Spanish, such a professional can help your business expand to previously untapped markets. Even in communities where folks are bilingual, allowing callers to speak in their native Spanish when calling will surely boost their loyalty to your organization.
Though the Spanish language is indeed growing in popularity in the United States, very few organizations implement bilingual support for their customers. When a Spanish speaker dials into your business, they’ll be pleasantly surprised to find options to speak in their native language. The impact of this kind of offering can’t be undersold. Conversations in one’s native tongue can bring people closer, forging the kinds of meaningful connections that last a lifetime. A Spanish speaking virtual receptionist can help create brand loyalists with a single conversation.
The Heart of Customer Relationships
Quality customer experiences boil down to one thing: communication. It’s at the heart of every relationship, business or otherwise. If you’re serious about improving customer relations, you’ll have to start by taking a long, hard look at the way you’re communicating over the phone with customers. A virtual receptionist can do wonders to transform your existing service offerings, helping to craft a customized call script that truly meets callers where they are.
If you’re ready to improve your customer relationships and partner with a virtual receptionist, consider signing up for our free trial. For one week, you’ll be privy to all the benefits of a partnership with MAP Communications – with zero obligation to continue using our services after the week is over. Look to our testimonials section for insight into what such a partnership could mean for your organization. You might be surprised at how much of an impact a virtual receptionist could have on your customer relationships!
Here are some related articles you might be interested in:
What is a Virtual Receptionist?
Deciding Between an In-House and a Virtual Receptionist for Your Business
Answering Service Vs. Virtual Receptionist: What’s the Difference?
