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December 05, 2007, By Ilana DeBare

Q: I have a growing business in tree care and urban forest consulting and am considering outsourcing our call management. I have found that it is important for potential customers to reach a live person even if they are leaving a message. Are there dependable companies that market to small businesses? We take 25 to 40 calls a week from people inquiring about treating their diseased trees.

East Bay arborist

A: At one end of the spectrum there are call centers – those folks who answer the phone when we are ordering stuff from a catalog or complaining about how our computer is on the fritz. But most call centers are geared to large businesses that receive thousands of calls each week, not to small outfits like yours that field a few dozen calls.

At the other end of the spectrum is the old-fashioned answering service – the kind used by many doctors’ offices for night and weekend calls – where someone takes a message and then passes it on to the business owner.

Then in the middle there’s a growing category of souped-up answering services and virtual assistants who provide more than basic message-taking.

Reliable Receptionist in Walnut Creek is one example of a souped-up answering service. It has the ability to connect calls to your cell phone when you’re out in the field, and to schedule appointments for you in a Web-based program that you can view and edit from any computer.

Owner Victor Mataraso encourages clients to come in and meet his staff, and to provide background information so that his receptionists can answer basic questions.

“Our clients can say, ‘Here are the top 10 issues that come up in phone inquiries, and here are the things we’d like you to do,’ ” Mataraso said.

Virtual assistants are independent entrepreneurs who provide a range of administrative or creative services from their own office. It’s like having a Gal or Guy Friday on a contract basis. A virtual assistant might be editing a report for one client and organizing a conference for another, while answering phone calls for your tree-care business.

“They can help you filter calls, can be trained in answering some questions, and can help you market your business by making outgoing calls,” said Nina Feldman, who runs an Oakland firm called Nina Feldman Connections that provides free referrals to office and computer support businesses. “Hiring a full-time phone receptionist can cost $30,000 a year. Virtual assistants can usually give you a stable month-to-month retainer of a few hundred dollars, with no hidden fees.”

How to find a reliable answering service or virtual assistant? The best approach is the same way you’d find any other service – through personal referrals. Ask other business owners to recommend someone. Check references.

Ask how many hours a day these firms offer live receptionists; some shift over to voice mail at night. Ask what services they provide and how they forward your messages. E-mail? Text message? Pager? Fax? Find out how long they’ve been in business, and how much staff turnover they have.

And call up some of the clients of these firms – at a time when the firm is answering their calls – to see whether you like the way they’d be greeting your potential customers.

 

Original article appears here:

Lawyers – Have a Person Answer Your Phones!

By Randy Wilson

This post from G&S DUI Attorneys at Law in Chicago is a cautionary tale for attorneys. One of the biggest complaints about lawyers is that you can never get them on the phone and may wait days for a return call from other lawyers. Now the ABA is touting a technology that will allow clients to automate scheduling an appointment.

Voice mail hell

Clients get the fun experience of entering their client number and a password in order get the joy of listening to automated prompts to schedule their – possibly – urgent meeting. This is not good client service. Typically, legal clients aren’t particularly happy campers, they are dealing with a lawyer because something is not working especially about speed tickets where they need help. Hence they are stressed out and need a human voice to make them feel better. A calm, professional receptionist who can field their call appropriately is a big plus – for them and for the lawyer who one can call after they Go Here.

Don’t have the resources to hire a dedicated receptionist?

I’ve never made a service recommendation in my blog but I’m making an exception here because I so strongly believe in this company. Reliable Receptionist offers an off-site receptionist that will know your business, talk directly with your clients and prospective clients and appropriately field the incoming calls. If all the client needs is to schedule an appointment, Reliable Receptionist can do that. If a client or prospective client is in dire need of talking with you, they can make sure you as the attorney know this and can answer call immediately if that’s what’s required.

I have been to their offices and watch their receptionists work, seen how they capture vital information both about an attorney’s practice but also about their clients and prospective clients. They do not just answer the phone and take a message – they are a proactive, professional staff that make clients and prospective client feel heard and cared for.

So instead of investing in a new automated phone scheduling system, do yourself a favor and give Reliable Receptionist a call and check out a much better alternative.

Solo Support

A look at new offerings designed for the one-person show.

By RICHARD A. GREENWALD

Growing numbers of Americans are striking out on their own as solo entrepreneurs. And a whole industrial complex has sprung up to support them.  Need a cubicle to put together a presentation or a conference room for a meeting? There are companies in most big cities that will rent you as much work space as you need. If you need someone to take your calls and arrange your appointments, a host of services will connect you with receptionists who work off site. There’s also help available online. Digital marketplaces make it easier to land clients and projects, while new software lets you access files on the road and track your finances.

Here’s a look at some new offerings that might prove useful to today’s solo entrepreneur.

A Place to Work

The desk in the spare bedroom is no longer the only option for solo entrepreneurs. In most major metropolitan areas, there are dozens of companies that let you rent out spaces in shared offices with other entrepreneurs. Prices start around $125 a month for a cubicle and can get as high as $1,400 for a prime urban office suite.

You can also simply get the trappings of a larger company without the real estate. For example, Regus PLC, Intelligent Office and VH International Business Solutions Inc. rent out space, but they also let you just buy prestigious mailing addresses, as well as receptionist services, assistants to manage accounting or back-office operations and IT support. So, you might work out of your home in the suburbs—but have an address in the business district and someone at a central location answering your phone.

Regus, for one, offers an entry-level package of $99 a month, which gets you a mailing address in a major urban center. Adding a phone number and receptionist will cost $179 a month. If you decide you do need a work space, $350 a month will get you all of the above plus five hours of office use a week. A conference room runs an extra $50 for two hours. (Month-to-month clients get a 10% discount on services that aren’t included in their package.)

A Virtual Staff

You don’t have to go through one of those real-estate services to get help from a remote receptionist or assistant, however. There are scores of companies that provide just these off-site services. You usually never meet or see your helpers, but they do almost everything an on-site staffer would: make appointments, arrange travel and even order your lunch. The services can cost about $9 per hour for an assistant and around $200 a month for a receptionist.

To find an assistant, you can work through an online matchmaking service—such as TTK Services Pvt. Ltd.’s Your Man in India, which links you with workers in that country—or use classified venues like Craigslist Inc. You could also go to the International Virtual Assistants Association. The group doesn’t formally license assistants, but it removes people from its ranks if there are complaints.

There’s one big caveat, however: Consider how much information you’re willing to trust to someone you may never even see. For instance, if you want to have your assistant book travel or do anything else important, you will need to provide them with confidential information, such as credit-card numbers. So, make sure you trust the service and give detailed instructions.

Online Storage

Having access to your data and the ability to email files on the fly is important to the micropreneur, who often spends lots of time away from the desk. With an array of online-storage systems that can be remotely accessed through a smart phone, you can literally point and click a file to a client or associate.

Dropbox offers a free two-gigabyte account that can be upgraded to 100 gigabytes for $19.99 a month. Apple Inc.’s MobileMe Network—which isn’t just for Apple users—allows you to create public folders that clients can see, or just send files by email. Both services also allow you to retrieve data remotely via a smart phone. Let’s say you’re sitting at the airport waiting for your flight and get a call that a client needs a copy of a report. You can locate and send the file without getting out of your seat.

One caveat: Don’t overspend. Experts say most people sign up for much more storage than they will ever need.

Finding Clients

Online services can also help entrepreneurs track down work. There are numerous online platforms that connect consultants to clients, such as oDesk Corp. and Elance Inc., and as the market for freelance talent grows, the field will crowd even further.

What’s more, sites will likely start to specialize in certain industries, making it easier to search for the work you want. Consider Whinot, developed at the business incubator of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. The site specializes in connecting small and medium-size firms to management consultants for projects running $5,000 to $10,000. Clients post a need and are assigned a senior project manager. The client picks four to five community members and they collaborate on the project, sharing in the fee.

Useful Software

Beyond online services, there are a number of tech tools available to help solo entrepreneurs tackle common problems.

First, there are apps for the iPhone or BlackBerry that cover a range of jobs. Jott, from Nuance Communications Inc., allows you to record a voice message and have it transcribed automatically into an email. The service starts at $3.95 a month and runs up to $12.95. GoToMyPC, from Citrix Systems Inc.’s Citrix Online, allows remote access to your laptop or desktop from any computer for $179 a year.

Conferencing software, such as Citrix’s GoToMeeting, offers consultants the ability to do remote presentations by controlling a PowerPoint show on a client’s computer from their own machine. The cost: $49 per month.

Then there are products that help keep track of finances and billing, such as online service FreshBooks, from 2ndSite Inc., which has a limited trial edition and starts at $19 a month. You can download the company’s MiniBooks app for $14 to access your clients and invoices on your phone. A more robust finance-tracking product, QuickBooks from Intuit Inc., costs $179.

Finally, there’s a tech product that promises to tackle one of the biggest everyday hassles of entrepreneurship: clutter. Neat Co.’s Neatdesk allows you to scan all business-related papers and documents and store them electronically. The entry price for the scanner is around $199.

Dr. Greenwald is dean of graduate studies and a professor at Drew University in Madison, N.J. His next book is “The Great American Hustle: How We Went From 9-5 Jobs to a Nation of Freelancers.” He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.