Virtual Office

5 Most Important Features in a Virtual Receptionist Service

March 20, 2018 By Victor Mataraso

Your business is growing— that’s fantastic!

Your call volume is increasing and your voice mailbox always seems to be full. You don’t have the time to pick up the number of calls you’re getting, but you aren’t ready to hire another full-time employee. Why not take advantage of virtual technology to help you run your business?

Here are the five most important features to look for in a virtual receptionist service.

Feature #1: Not Automated

If you are looking for a virtual receptionist, don’t settle for an automated service to answer your calls. Taking your business to the next level is about perception. You want your potential clients, not to mention your current clients, to know that you’ve hired a real person to navigate their needs within your company.

Rather than making the client work harder, listening to an endless litany of numbers as they wait for the right one to punch, a virtual receptionist is trained to know how to direct calls within your business.

Feature #2: Price

Naturally, the price is a paramount concern for any service you hire for your business. Bottom line: a virtual receptionist will cost less than taking on another full-time employee. Not only will you not have the employee costs, but you will never have a day where that employee calls in sick, leaving the phones unattended.

Many virtual receptionist services offer monthly subscriptions based on minutes used for a set price. However, when hiring a virtual receptionist, make sure to inquire about other costs that may be involved or incurred:

Upfront pricing for the training of your receptionists
Overages on minutes used
Upcharges for holiday rates or after hours
Cancellation fees

There should be no hidden costs in your virtual receptionist service. Completely reading your contract before signing it will protect you from any unexpected expenses.

Feature #3: Training

If you’re working with a quality virtual receptionist service, there will be multiple receptionists assigned to your business. This will ensure that all phone calls are answered promptly. Your service will work with you to build a training package for all of the receptionists so there are no gaps in knowledge; the service will be seamless.

Your virtual assistant should be able to answer basic questions and direct your clients or prospects to the places within your business they need to go. There should never be any confusion for your clients— better yet, they shouldn’t even be able to tell you have a virtual receptionist. It should seem like an employee is in your office.

Feature #4: Hours of Operation

When your business is open your virtual receptionist service needs to be open, too. When looking for a service, make sure they are located in the same time zone or offer the times your business needs.

If you do business internationally, you may want to consider not only your time zone but the time zones your clients are in as well.

Feature #5: Services Offered

Your company may need more than just someone to answer the phone, so inquire with your virtual receptionist service what else they offer. Some common services are:

Answering the phone and informing you who is on the line
Transferring calls to correct employees
Transferring calls to correct voicemails
Connecting calls even if you are out of the office via cell phones
Taking detailed messages
Scheduling appointments

Not all virtual receptionist services offer all of these, so make sure you’re getting everything you want before you sign any contracts.

Reliable Receptionist provides businesses with dependable receptionists. Call us today at (925) 259-3771 or schedule a free demo online to further the quality of customer service your clients receive.

Why You Should Consider a Virtual Office Space in the East Bay Area

November 22, 2016 By Victor Mataraso

Today increasingly large numbers of companies around the nation are taking full advantage improved business mobility made possible by high-speed wireless internet, lightweight tablets and computers, and smartphones. In particular, this improved flexibility is prompting many Greater East Bay Area businesses to reconsider their current operating expenses before ultimately deciding to drop the large expenses associated with a single company headquarters in a traditional office space. In its place they are embracing the virtual office solution, a modern take on communal working that reduces cost while providing the same benefits and improved convenience for a modern workforce.

Here’s how it works.

When a company launches a virtual office they pay for a collection of services made available by a office provider. These services allow the company to perform all the tasks possible in a physical office, only from a shared, communal location in a virtual office co-working space and/or from wherever their scattered, mobile workforce happens to be. These services include:

Provision of a publically listed business telephone number with voice mail
A business street address with a private, locked mailbox for secure delivery
Lounge space, workspaces, and private meeting spaces available on demand
Secure, hi-speed wired and wireless Internet
Networked printers, copiers, and scanners
Networking, educational and community events in a shared space or online
Gourmet coffee, filtered water, and vending
Live virtual receptionist services for telephone answering, routing, and messages

Virtual Office Advantages

Virtual offices are a challenge to the status quo, one that can have a huge impact on a businesses’ bottom line and ultimately save a tremendous amount of overhead each year. The affordability stems from the fact that, unlike a traditional office, the virtual office does not require a business to have receptionists and janitors on payroll, nor to pay utilities, permanent rent, and all the other associated costs. Instead, the provider of the space bears these costs and spread them around the many different companies using those services. Each company pays only for the time and resources they use, avoiding the long-term commitments that come with leasing or buying East Bay business property for singular use.

But a virtual office isn’t only a good solution for any cash-strapped business to reduce operational costs. It is also a surefire way for small business and startups to establish credibility with a polished professional address, virtual receptionist service on their phone lines, and fully-furnished and equipped meeting spaces on the property. These advantages can translate into improved sales, brand recognition, and long-term results.

Reliable Receptionist

If you are an Greater East Bay business and are exploring the possibility of utilizing a virtual office for your company, you should consider virtual receptionist service from Reliable Receptionist. Our highly trained experts are ready to work for you, leaving your callers with an outstanding first impression of your business and efficiently transferring calls, taking messages, and even making appointments for your team members. To learn more, or to schedule a free demo for your business, please call (925) 627-4200 today.

7 Things Every Virtual Office Needs For Success

November 18, 2016 By Victor Mataraso

The introduction of the telephone forever changed the way companies did business, making it possible for traveling salespeople to call a corporate headquarters and place orders collected in the field, for businesses to coordinate shipping and delivery over huge distances, and for changes in production or strategy to be made instantaneously in response to events unfolding across the world.

Today a similar revolution has taken place, and it’s all thanks to the internet and mobile technology. With workers able to communicate face-to-face from their pocket and contribute to documents, projects, and daily operations on-the-fly from a continent away, more and more businesses are reconsidering the necessity of the traditional office and opting to do away with it entirely, trading permanent brick and mortar for shared workspaces and digital connectivity. We’ve come too far with the technology, especially with the inception of autopilot and various other mechanisms that have surfaced. So advanced has technology become that there even is a job scheduling software for plumbers and other service men.

But, in order to really get the most out of a virtual office space, companies should be sure that they have arranged the following:

1. A Publically Listed Phone Number with Voicemail

Phone service is the lifeblood of most businesses, and without a stable, publically listed phone number no business will long survive. Fortunately for those exploring the virtual office model, digital phone service allows companies to use the internet to remotely host an entire phone system which can be implemented to point callers to specific employee cell phones, allowing an organization to continue operating as normal even without a true land line.

2. A Business Mailing Address

Despite the name, a virtual office is actually a very physical arrangement. By arranging a private, secure mailbox with a virtual office provider businesses can continue to receive correspondence without the expense of permanently leasing or purchasing a traditional office space.

3. A BYOD Policy

Bring your own device is a modern movement that allows employees to select, purchase, and use their own technology for official business work. There are a number of advantages to this system, including reduced cost, increased customer satisfaction, and reduced IT training requirements. However, virtual office companies using BYOD should have a policy detailing what devices are acceptable and what security programs or software must be maintained on employee devices.

4. Standard Office Spaces

Virtual offices provide companies with all the standard office spaces they need—including workspaces, lounge space, and meeting rooms—all available on demand in a communal co-working / office center.

5. Secure, Hi-Speed Wired and Wireless Internet

The one technology that makes a these remote offices possible is the same that can make it vulnerable to disruption: high speed internet. In a virtual office, almost all services are hosted online in the cloud, and if the local connection goes down all business functions grind to a halt. Therefore, they should make sure they have the connectivity (and backups) they need to be successful.

6. Networked Printers, Copiers, and Scanners

Even in the digital age, paper still has a place. Virtual offices should have ready access to high quality business printing technology in order to deal with routine office tasks.

7. Virtual Phone Support

Live virtual receptionist services featuring a local, professional, and highly trained receptionist is a powerful solution for maintaining a brand’s reputation and managing light to heavy call volume across a highly mobile workforce. From answering calls quickly to transferring callers, taking messages, scheduling appointments, and collecting caller information, a good virtual receptionist team can be key to helping this type of office perform as well and better than the traditional version.

Reliable Receptionist is a high performance virtual receptionist service based in Walnut Creek, CA and is associated with the Laptop Lounge virtual office and co-working center. To learn more, or to schedule a free virtual receptionist demonstration for your business, please call us at (925) 627-4200 today.

Why Start Up Companies Should Consider a Virtual Office

November 16, 2016 By Victor Mataraso

Startups in the United States have rapidly developed a reputation for unconventional office culture, novel business practices, and a pattern of aggressively challenging the status quo. And, for many startups in the fraught process of starting up, this culture in conjunction with limited finances opens the door to embracing the convenience and affordability of the virtual office.

Here’s why.

Virtual Offices Legitimize Startups and Small Businesses

No matter how virtual an office may be, a business still relies on a physical space for credibility, workspace, meeting spaces, and the all-important commercial mailing address. Virtual offices provide these benefits in the form of a highly professional co-working space fully equipped with all standard office hardware, a respectable commercial address for each resident business, and—in many cases—virtual receptionist service to cover company digital phone lines and manage incoming callers (of particular importance for a highly mobile, decentralized company workforce). These services combine to give startups a professional gloss that can translate into real sales and corporate advancement.

Virtual Offices Are Affordable and Valuable

Even with an economic climate where lenders and investors recognize the potential of startups, the challenges these fledgling companies face are substantial, and finances are often extremely tight. After all, more than half of all startup businesses fail within five years, many of them struggling to make a return on their startup capital as their operating expenses increase.

The costs associated with a traditional office compound this challenge. When renting out a traditional office a business is responsible for paying for rent, internet service, utilities, cleaning, and more. And these costs include nights and weeks when the space isn’t even in use.

Virtual offices limit these costs and give startups the same services and convenience at a fraction of the overall expense, particularly in high-rent areas like California. Each resident company in the virtual office building pays only for the services and time that they use, allowing their expenses to be carefully controlled over long periods.

Virtual Offices Provide Superior Mobility and Convenience

Part of the appeal of the this type of office is the mobility and flexibility that the system grants small, flexible teams. If a startup’s staff need to be in another city for a particular event or meeting, they can pack up and go without leaving someone behind to receive mail, answer phones, or water the plants. At the same time, using cloud-based business software employees are free to contribute from their laptops or mobile devices while on the road, working from home, or on the other side of the world.

Of course, the trick is finding a virtual office provider in your area. Fortunately, we’re here to help. Reliable Receptionist provides high quality call handling and virtual receptionist services to small and medium businesses, and is closely associated with the Laptop Lounge, a virtual office and co-working space located here in Walnut Creek.

To learn more, tour the office, or sign up for a free demo of our services, call the team today at (925) 627-4200.

The Impact Virtual Offices are Having on Small Businesses

October 18, 2016 By Victor Mataraso

The number of Bay Area companies using virtual receptionists has been increasing steadily over the past few years, a change driven predominately by the growth of a modern and surprisingly effective business model: the virtual office. But why exactly have they been taking off so well and how exactly do they fit in to this change?

In some ways, it’s fair to say that the virtual office was born in California. As international hubs for technology and software, the major population areas of San Francisco and the surrounding communities have hosted huge numbers of highly intelligent, independent, and adventurous workers and innovators. Workers and innovators who baulked at the inconveniences common to big cities including high office costs, expensive utilities, and agonizing commutes.

Then came the coffee shops, free WIFI, broadband home internet, and company intranets—an explosion of communications technology that led more and more workers to the discovery that working remotely is not only far more affordable, but can be leveraged to provide a number of other advantages, particularly large region like the Bay Area. Advantages including:

Killing the commute. No traffic, no problem. Working locally is better for the environment, your schedule, and your wallet.
More flexibility. Workers can keep working when they’re sick, move their hours around to accommodate family time, and save their vacation days by offsetting hours to their convenience.
Better employee retention. Workers can stick around even if they need to move halfway around the world. As long as they can log in, they can continue to contribute.
Minimal Overhead. When a team works remotely their costs are much lower, particularly compared to the cost of renting, buying, and furnishing a traditional office space.

This trend led naturally to the concept of the virtual office, a set of services now offered all over the place. The company, in this system, forgoes the formal office of the past and instead purchases a set of services that provides everything they need to successfully run their business as if they had invested in brick and mortar. Typically, the packages include a formal business mailing address and space at a communal office building with desks, conference rooms, and meeting areas available for reservation as needed.

Supplemented by remote access, cloud hosted services, and modern communications and project management technology, the virtual office offers nearly everything a growing company needs to be successful.
This is where Reliable Receptionist come in. Now working with a number of small and medium sized business through the Greater East Bay Area, particularly startups or companies with a large number of remote workers, Reliable Receptionist provides comprehensive phone coverage and call-handling service to rival that of any in-house traditional receptionist. This includes scheduling, message taking, introductions, courtesy calls, and other services. For remote or dispersed companies in Walnut Creek and the surrounding areas, we provide virtual office space as well as the other tools needed to obtain a business street address and mailbox, have a meeting space, manage callers, make a great impression, and flourish even without a traditional office infrastructure.

To learn more about virtual offices services Reliable Receptionists has to offer, visit our homepage or contact our team today at (925) 627-4200.

How to Overcome Virtual Office Challenges

September 20, 2016 By Victor Mataraso

Adjusting to any kind of change always requires some adaptation from those at the center of the change. This is no less true for a company changing the landscape of their office space–not just moving the cubicle walls around, but migrating from a traditional office space to a virtual one.

How can you and your company address some of the challenges that a virtual office raises?

You lack space to hold in-person meetings with clients or employees.

Having a virtual office does not mean forgoing physical office space altogether. Most virtual office providers include in their packages access to physical office space that can be used for a variety of reasons. Employees can drop in if they need a space where they are guaranteed to have some quiet; managers can arrange face-to-face meetings with team members; meetings can be scheduled with clients in a professional atmosphere. The bonus for companies is that the physical space doesn’t need to be large, as it’s only used as needed. Another alternative to in-person meetings is to hold a conference call, Skype meeting, or video chat. These also require less physical space while still connecting all the necessary players to conduct business.

There is not a receptionist on site to take calls or greet visitors.

Virtual, live receptionist services are becoming increasingly popular as a way for companies to greet their clients and customers with cheerful service. These professional receptionists are ready to take calls for your company and answer questions, forward calls, and take messages as if they were your own employee. Your company enjoys the prestige of having the services of a receptionist. You save time by having someone who can screen calls and answer questions while also being in touch with you throughout the day to provide messages and check on your availability for taking calls. And finally, your company can save money by paying a monthly fee for receptionist services rather than paying all the overhead of employing an additional person.

It’s more difficult to know whether your employees are being productive.

Gone are the days when an employee’s dedication and productivity were measured by the hours he spent as his desk, hunched over his computer or on the phone. Well, almost gone. While time spent in the office can certainly give an employer some sense of how much their employees are working, there are many other measures of productivity available. Tracking regular metrics, compiling and sending regular reporting, or frequent check-ins over the phone or email are all ways that productivity can be measured outside of the office. If you need something more sophisticated, there are software programs available to track a team’s progress or even just a single individual’s productivity throughout the day. What you will most likely find is that employees will feel that working remotely allows them more flexibility in the balance between their personal and professional life. Ideally, the positive effects of striking that balance will spill over into the quality of their work.

Don’t allow the possible challenges of a remote office stop you from exploring the options for your company. Let Reliable Receptionist help you face the challenges by alleviating your need for remote receptionist services. Call or email Reliable Receptionist today at (925) 627-4200 or Info@ReliableReceptionist.com.