Using An Answering Service As Part Of Your Virtual Office

Virtual offices are increasingly becoming the norm in today’s fast-paced world.

There aren’t many things an office needs to do that can’t be done over the Internet — between shareable cloud-based software and storage and high-quality video conferencing equipment, team members can be literally anywhere in the world. A virtual office can cut overhead costs dramatically if you’ve got all the right players involved.

Answering Services and Virtual Offices

Answering services and virtual offices are natural teammates. No matter how large or small your virtual office, it’s going to eventually start getting some phone calls. If you’re busy writing software or doing someone’s accounting, that nagging telephone can seriously get in the way of production. It’s great to be wanted, but juggling the demand can be tricky.

That’s where a live answering service comes into play. When you’re busy, you can opt for the service to handle your calls so you can focus on the business at hand. That’s not all they can do for a virtual office, though.

Here are a few other great benefits of adding an answering service to the team:

You can get a local phone number. Depending on the nature of your business, it might be important to give the impression that you’re local to your main customer base. When location matters, an answering service can provide you with a local number for local customers to call. They also offer toll-free numbers, if that’s what you’d prefer.

They’ll handle calls when you’re gone. Leaving the office doesn’t have to mean leaving your customers to fend for themselves. Your answering service can take those calls for you and even provide customer service based on your instructions. Whether they’re taking messages or giving instructions, you don’t have to worry that you’re going to miss an important call.

You’re free to leave the office without missing calls. If you’re the kind of business owner who insists on taking certain calls, you can have your answering service forward all or some of your calls directly to you. With Follow Me, your answering service will locate you no matter where you are and patch through the call to you right away.

They’ll make it business as usual during a disaster. High winds, earthquakes, hurricanes and wildfires can make life extremely unpredictable in some parts of the country. Even so, your customers have to be able to reach you no matter what’s happening around your virtual office — that’s where an answering service with disaster recovery can be a huge benefit. Instead of leaving your customers waiting and wondering when you’ll be back online, you can give status updates and instructions to your answering service. While you’re putting the pieces back together, having an answering service allows you to continue to give your customers the level of care they’ve come to expect.

Virtual offices are great boons to a wide range of businesses, even those with retail locations. Having the right help, like a professional answering service, will keep your customers coming back for more and increase their satisfaction with every single transaction.

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