Having a virtual receptionist can be a benefit to many small businesses, but how do you know which one to choose? When you compare the offerings of a variety of services, it can help you decide which one is the best choice for your unique circumstances.
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Reliable Receptionist
Reliable Receptionist is unique in that it offers a small, dedicated team of no more than 5 professional Receptionists. This allows their team to become familiar with your business and function as an extension of your staff. Unlike a typical 24/7 answering service with dozens of part-time shift workers, they limit their live answer times to business hours in the Pacific time zone. As a result, their team of full-time Receptionists knows your business in a way that allows them to do more than just read a script on a screen. Â
Reliable Receptionist was built from the ground up as a live, virtual receptionist so there are never additional charges for connecting your calls in real-time. Calls are privately announced and seamlessly connected per your instructions. They also offer appointment scheduling, new client intakes, bilingual English/Spanish, outbound calling, and other custom business services. A web portal with call logs helps you keep up to date, and their simple pricing model ensures you are only charged for the time your Receptionist is on the line with your callers.
My Receptionist
My Receptionist is a nationwide service that answers phone calls but also provides a broader set of virtual assistant services, including online scheduling, sending text reminders of appointments, and other online tasks.
Their receptionists take notes on every call they handle and provide them for your use. My Receptionist offers 24/7 availability, which can be useful for businesses that frequently take calls in the middle of the night, such as emergency vet clinics.
Gabbyville
Gabbyville is a newer virtual receptionist service that is also available nationwide. They offer a wide variety of plans for businesses of different sizes, ranging from 100 to 1000 monthly minutes. They boast that they do not include any time spent dealing with spam calls or telemarketers in their billing and that they do not round up, billing by the minute.
Another unique feature of this service is that they offer outbound calls as part of their service if you need someone to make calls on behalf of your business and you or your onsite staff aren’t able to do so yourselves. They have an online dashboard for tracking calls and provide transcription services for voicemail.
How should you decide on a virtual receptionist service?
In the end, it comes down to a few factors.
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- You need to know your business’ needs. If you are primarily looking for someone to screen calls that are likely to be unproductive, there’s not much reason to be concerned with a service’s ability to work with your calendar. Similarly, if you have a high volume of calls and complex methods for handling each of them using a number of online tools, that needs to be a priority.
- You need to know your customers. Do they want the ability to speak to a human at 3 am? Do they struggle with English? Or do they just want someone to answer quickly and respond professionally to their call during normal business hours?
- Do you like and trust the receptionist service in question? So much of this is a matter of personal interaction, and reading online reviews and comparisons will only take you so far. So pick up the phone or reach out online to find out more about the service in question.
We think we offer some of the best receptionist services on the West Coast.
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