Who answers the calls when you’re away?

Somebody should - or who knows what you might miss?  But if yours is a small company, maybe even a one-man organisation, who will field those all-important enquiries?

A machine?

You could put an answer machine in place so at least there'll be some response for the caller.  The machine could take messages for you but that would leave the enquiry hanging in the air until your return.  By that time, you could well have lost the lead to someone else, and anyway, it’s well known that about 70% of callers won’t leave a message on a machine.  They want to talk to somebody.

A pal?

Alternatively you could ask a colleague, family member or friend to field enquiries while you’re away, but do they understand your business sufficiently well?  Will they give your calls the dedicated and professional attention they deserve?  Haven’t they got other things to do that will distract them?

A call centre?

You could get the calls fielded by an impersonal answering service where your caller will be told that you’re away and will have to return the call on your return.  That won’t give a terribly good impression of your business and, again, might lead to you losing that lead.  It sounds bleak, doesn’t it?  You might ask yourself, can you actually take the risk of going away at all?  Of course you can.  You simply need to put in place a professional remote administrative service with all day cover.

Tip: Choose a quality personalised admin support provider

A team offering a service of this type will make a point of familiarising themselves with your business and your client base, and will provide a reliable means of keeping your clients reassured and satisfied until you get back from your break.

Case study: The training company owner

One client who regularly uses a remote admin assistant is the owner of a busy London-based training company.  She prefers actually delivering the actual courses to chasing people for pre-course questionnaires and payments, and sending out handbooks and feedback forms.  So her virtual admin assistance service does all the tedious stuff for her, along with answering her telephone enquiries, updating her website and database, and booking course venues.

They also cover her holiday absences, continuing to take course bookings and answer enquiries, sending out invoices and receipts, and answering questions about costs, venue locations and course content.  Just before each course begins, the volume of enquiries increases dramatically and telephone calls tend to come in thick and fast.  Happily, the admin support office has numerous phone lines and plenty of people available to answer them, so nobody gets an engaged signal or a voicemail message when they call.

The business owner can go on holiday with a clear conscience and a light heart, knowing that her business will not suffer as a result of her being away.  When she gets back to work, instead of feeling stressed within hours, the benefits of her break stay with her and she works all the more productively as a result.

The remote service is actually located 150 miles away from her and she has only met with them once or twice but the set up works perfectly.  This is because the admin team have worked hard to gain a thorough grasp of what she does and how she herself likes to interact with her clients.  It should be noted that her clients have no idea that her support team are so far away, or that they are not direct employees of her company.  This is Standby.  This is remote admin support at its best.

So there you have it - a professional and intelligent telephone answering service is more than just a call centre, and can be an immeasurable bonus to a small company.  At Standby we know this for a fact – we’ve been helping businesses flourish since 1983. See this webpage for details.

If you’re not getting this sort of service from your admin support team, or if you’ve never used remote admin support and would like to know more about how doing so could significantly help your business, you need to call Standby for a no-obligation chat on 08456 838 678.

We’ll work with you to deliver just what you’re looking for.