Virtual receptionist services are the best way to save on labor costs and increase business productivity. These services help you free up your time and focus on solving other essential business issues. This article will help you find the best virtual receptionist services to receive your calls even when you’re unavailable. Let’s dive into more details.
What are Virtual Receptionist Services?
Phone calls are essential for inquiries and level up the lead generation process for any business. Answering and handling customer service calls is crucial and cannot be avoided even if you’re busy running business operations. Traditionally, large-scale companies with a big budget hire a full-time receptionist to take care of the incoming calls and customer service. But an in-house receptionist becomes an overhead expense for small businesses with limited members. That’s where the virtual receptionist services come into the picture. Virtual receptionist services provide live human receptionists to greet callers and understand the reason for their calls. After analyzing the provided information, these calls get routed to the appropriate team members, thereby improving the customer’s interaction with the company. Generally, these services provide 24/7 live attendants for incoming calls and text messages. This way, you can be assured that no customer calls get missed.
Why Should You Hire a Virtual Receptionist?
Hiring a virtual receptionist is a subjective matter. It depends on whether you want an in-house team member or you can outsource the work. While large companies can have a dedicated team of receptionists, that is not the case with small business owners and startups. In order to reduce operating costs, small companies should opt for a virtual receptionist service. With that said, let us look at some of the benefits of hiring virtual receptionist services:
Adds Professionalism: Welcoming your customers’ incoming calls with a professionally recorded greeting message leaves a long-lasting impact on your business. It creates a sense of trust that they’re not dealing with a rookie.Cost Effective: Virtual receptionists are cheaper and do not have any lock-in period. You can activate and set up a call answering service that takes care of customer queries.Improved Customer Handling: Professional receptionists get trained to handle calls and customer inquiries efficiently. They’ve experience in handling different situations and help you increase business efficiency.Customization friendly: Virtual receptionist services let you change your call forwarding rules, welcome greeting message, and other business communication details.Availability: In-house receptionists can only attend incoming calls during business hours. Whereas virtual receptionists can operate all day, every day, and provide a 24/7 live call answering service to your customers.Integrations: Integrate virtual receptionist services with your business communication tools like Slack, Hubspot, G Suite, Microsoft Teams, and many more.
Now that you know the benefits of hiring virtual receptionist services, let us start with our list.
Ruby
Ruby Receptionists provides you with professional phone support for your business using the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to handle incoming calls for businesses all over the world. They can answer questions about your company in real-time, reply to customers on behalf of your business, and even schedule appointments for you. With Ruby, you get a dedicated mobile app to check call handling activities and text messages received from customers. You can easily sync your daily schedules with Ruby’s calendar integrations.
ReceptionHQ
ReceptionHQ is a global leader for small businesses that want to be more time efficient but still have a full-time employee on their team. Their virtual receptionist services include 24/7 live answering and handling of inbound calls, emails, and texts. They can also handle outbound calls and other tasks, like scheduling appointments and sending reminders. ReceptionHQ handles the majority of calls for United States businesses during peak demand hours. They offer bilingual service without any lock-in contract, so that you can start with their risk-free trial for 7-day services.
Yodel.io
Yodel.io is a virtual receptionist company that has been around for over 15 years, so they know what they’re doing. You can choose from a fully automated IVR attendant or a human receptionist working remotely to handle your calls. Some notable features of Yodel include intelligent voice IVR systems, call screening, and integration with communication tools like Hubspot, Zendesk, Intercom, and Slack. They offer a free trial without any contract. But if you want to continue using their services after the trial ends, they’ve different plans depending on your needs.
Grasshopper
If you’re looking for a virtual receptionist service that will allow you to use a separate phone number and receive calls from anywhere in the world, Grasshopper is a great option. It also provides a virtual phone number to answer incoming calls on your computer or mobile device. This way, your number remains private, and you can focus on doing your business chores without interruption. The service starts a 7-day free trial, with no contract required, so if it doesn’t work out for you, then there’s no commitment involved.
MyReceptionist
MyReceptionist offers virtual receptionist and front desk support services to give 24/7 business availability at a lesser price than hiring an on-site receptionist. You get all the benefits of in-person receptionists to help you manage incoming calls, schedule appointments or meetings, and book travel arrangements, with none of the hassles you could face while hiring an in-house employee. MyReceptionist offers many different packages depending on how much time per week or month you need assistance handling client calls at your business.
Conversational
Conversational is a virtual receptionist service for businesses that need a full-service virtual receptionist or those with multiple locations and need someone to manage their incoming calls from all over the world. With Conversational, you get three main components: front desk management, call routing, and voicemail management (for example, setting up auto-attendants), as well as an online appointment scheduler and email marketing platform. You can also use Conversational services on top of your existing phone systems like Microsoft Lync or Cisco Jabber.
AnswerForce
AnswerForce is a full-featured virtual receptionist that allows you to manage incoming calls with their 24/7 receptionist services. It provides many features, including a customizable dashboard where you can view incoming calls and manage them from one location. You can also integrate AnswerForce with an IVR system like IVRX or Intercom if you want even more control over how callers get greeted when they call in at the company office or through their mobile phones.
AnswerConnect
AnswerConnect is a telephony company that has been in business since 2001, providing virtual receptionist services. It’s a member of the Better Business Bureau, National Association of Professional Women, and more. You can choose between two types of virtual receptionists: Live Chat and Instant Messaging (IM). AnswerConnect provides an advantage to users because you can pick which type you want based on your specific needs. Whether you’re an employer or business owner, or an individual who wants help answering calls, AnswerConnect can be tailored to fit your requirements.
Helpware
Helpware is a virtual receptionist service for small and medium-sized businesses. It offers a range of services, including appointment scheduling, call forwarding, voicemail, and email support. Helpware is a web-based virtual receptionist service that allows you to manage incoming calls from anywhere at any time. You can also set up automated responses depending on the caller’s needs (such as setting up an appointment) or add features like auto-attendants who take notes during meetings with potential clients so that you don’t have to do it yourself.
Abby
Abby is a virtual receptionist service provided by Zendesk that can be used to manage incoming calls, emails, and chats. You can set up automated responses for customer inquiries about orders or delivery times. With Abby, you get notified whenever a new customer signs up for your newsletter, and you can send thank you note to customers who provide feedback on their experience.
MoneyPenny
Moneypenny is a 24/7 answering service provider with its headquarters located in UK and USA since 2000. You get the freedom to pick dedicated people from their team, and Moneypenny will train them to answer your company calls, and provide live chat assistance, call transferring, CRM, and calendar integrations. You can update your availability on their portal to answer scheduled calls and also check the history of past calls and messages at the touch of your fingertips.
Closing Note
Let’s summarize that we’re talking about relationship building with your clients. Setting the right tone at the beginning of every call is important, or customers might feel like they’ve been talked down to by an automated system that can’t even remember their names. Selecting any company from the above virtual receptionist list is enough to make your businesses look more professional and streamline the inquiry process. We hope this article has helped you learn more about how virtual receptionist services can help you focus on growing your business without worrying about how things get handled behind the scenes. Don’t forget to check our list of best IT helpdesk solutions to minimize the impact of issues on business operations.
