One of the easiest things an independent business owner can do in order to improve their time management skills is employee a receptionist who can screen calls and only send the very important ones through, while either handling customer inquiries or support questions on their own and sending non-urgent calls through to voicemail. However, hiring a full-time receptionist often costs money, a resource that a lot of independent business owners have on scarce supply.
This leaves the independent business owner with a few options. The first is to manage all of their calls on their own, meaning all of their clients, prospects and cold calls all get one number… usually the independent business owner’s “office” phone number and/or their mobile number. The problem with this approach is obvious; the business owner’s voicemail gets loaded up fairly quickly; as well, the business owner does not need to deal with all of those calls. If their focus is on growing their book of business, why answer all customer inquiries when such calls are a lower priority? It makes little sense to spend so much time during their “growth” period on relationship aspects of the business.
The second option is to enlist the services of a PBX host. A PBX host will provide a local or toll-free number, sure. But more importantly is that the best providers will provide a host of other great features that, most importantly, allow you to screen calls and use the electronic receptionist to redirect callers wherever you want them to go. This means that all sales inquiries can go straight to you while support calls can be sent to your support people (more on this later) and relationship-based calls like customer inquiries can go somewhere else, like your voicemail for you to respond to when you have a free minute.
This type of routing service is instrumental in allowing you to focus on the aspects of your business that matter most to you. But more importantly, a service such as this allows you to reduce expenses dramatically.
In fact, in the example above where only support-related callers are redirected to your support team, you could actually use an outsourcer to handle all technical support questions. In many cases, this could mean using an off-shore, third-party team that charges as little as $2 per hour, a rate that is only charged if used. Consider the impact of this. Instead of having to deal with workflow-like inquiries, you could actually have your virtual pbx service send those calls right away to your $2 per hour employee in the middle East. Not only would you be hands-off when it comes to these types of activities (allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business full-time), but your customers who need tech support actually get it with a single call.
As shown, the call routing features of a virtual PBX service can actually help improve productivity and help with time management.
–> Find Out What Our Choice of Virtual PBX Service Is at Virtual Office Agent.
Chris is the founder of Virtual Office Agent a website focused on small and independent business that helps people establish a virtual office. The website provides tips, advice and recommendations.
Author: Christopher Fitch
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Canada duty tariff
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