A full-time receptionist is a key addition to any growing business. A good receptionist makes customers and clients feel heard, and also keeps track of important information for day-to day business operations. Unfortunately, until you have a high enough volume of calls coming in each day, it probably is overkill to hire a full-time receptionist. At the same time, a part-time receptionist doesn’t work well when you want your customers to be able to call any time of the day.
Using an Out of Office Receptionist
What’s the solution to this issue? Often, the best idea for small businesses is to use an out of office receptionist working at an answering service. This is a service where someone is trained to answer the phone on your company’s behalf. They can answer pertinent questions, make appointments, and convey information. It’s much more cost-effective for new businesses to hire out the work of a receptionist because you only pay when the out of office receptionist receives a phone call.
Other Uses of an Out of Office Receptionist
The uses of an out of office receptionist at a call center extend beyond just small businesses without enough customers or clients to require a full time receptionist. Imagine a business that does have a full time receptionist, but also has busy parts of the day where a single receptionist couldn’t possibly answer every incoming call. In this case, having an out of office receptionist in addition to the internal one means overflow calls can get handled in a cost-effective manner. Most importantly, your customers and clients always feel like they’re getting taken care of and will be sure to come back again and again.
