If you are coming to this post and are deciding on whether your business needs a traditional receptionist or a virtual receptionist, then you have already made the most important step of recognizing that your business would benefit from a service like one of these. Especially for small businesses, missing a call can be detrimental, and businesses with lots of work will find the time saving benefits of either of these services is a huge benefit to your company. Regardless of your reasoning for coming to this question, though, money is probably a consideration. In both circumstances, you are talking about an added cost for your business that will come to be a required expense. There are a number of reasons why an answering service is the better option though.
Hiring a traditional receptionist is a huge cost. Unlike virtual receptionists, a traditional receptionist requires a full-time salary. That is a huge cost difference by itself. That is not all though. A traditional receptionist, being a full-time employee, will expect certain benefits – another huge cost on your business. This does not even account for the potential cost of a physical location if you were previously working from home or operated primarily digitally. Despite all of these costs, you are still not even guaranteed a receptionist at all times. A traditional receptionist will take vacations, they will require leave, they might call in sick, and they will have breaks during which they will not be able to answer the phone. Even still, this does not even account for the time that you will have to take to train the receptionist, and it ignores the possibility of the traditional receptionist quitting. In that instance, you would be high and dry, and you would have to start the whole process over again. After all of that, the cost of a traditional receptionist seems pretty lofty, but surely a virtual receptionist would be equally as expensive, right?
Actually, no. Virtual receptionists work differently. You would not be paying a full-time salary, and would instead only have to pay a low subscription cost. You will not have to worry about paying benefits because the virtual receptionists are not your employees. If you work from home or have a business that is primarily digital, then you do not have to worry about securing a costly physical space. You never have to worry about a virtual receptionist being sick or off. You will likely be working with a team of professionals that are dedicated to you and your business that will always have more than one person there ready to answer your calls and help your company. Finally, you do not have to worry about training them or find out that they are quitting. With a virtual receptionist, you are guaranteed a team of professionals that know what they are doing and do it well.
Okay, but a virtual receptionist is not going to be able to help out in most of the ways that a traditional receptionist could, right? They’re just there to answer phone calls and direct them, right? Wrong again. Virtual receptionists are not like the stereotypical idea that you probably have. In fact, there are a number of newer, better services, like Gabbyville. These virtual receptionists do a lot more than answer your calls. They will organize your schedule, help you set up meetings, and generally make your company more efficient and productive. They answer calls too, but not in a robotic and unemotional way that you are probably associating with answer services. Instead, they are committed to you and your business. That means you can work with them to personalize their work to make sure that your clients have an experience catered to your company every time they call. Furthermore, at least at Gabbyville, the virtual receptionists are dedicated to making every call welcoming and pleasant. At Gabbyville their goal is to make sure that every caller can hear their smile through the phone. And all of this just barely hits on the numerous benefits of a virtual receptionist service. So the short answer between a traditional receptionist or a virtual receptionist is a resounding yes, and you get so much more for your money too.
