Thanks to his team of Virtual Receptionists, playing phone tag and struggling with paperwork is now a thing of the past for Simon. Simon chose to outsource his customer service and now he and his business are growing stronger by the day.
Simon is a Tree Lopper. His is a micro-business with less than five employees which does not include a full time receptionist. When Simon first started his business, he advertised his mobile phone number for enquiries. Most of the calls come in during the day when he is on site. This presents a challenge for him. Quite often Simon doesn’t have phone reception. Other times he can’t hear the phone over the noise of chippers and chainsaws. But most importantly, it simply isn’t safe to be thirty feet up a tree with a chainsaw in one hand and a phone in the other! As a result, the majority of Simon’s calls were going to his voicemail.
After an exhausting day, Simon was finding himself spending way too much time retrieving messages and returning calls. He was missing out on jobs. Sometimes the voicemail left by his caller was unclear or inaudible meaning Simon had no way of contacting them. Additionally, because of the delay in getting back to some of his callers, Simon was finding they’d already found someone else to do the work.
After a few months of this, Simon knew something had to give, so he convinced his wife to take on the phone answering duties. This worked well initially, however as her days became busier with their growing family, she wanted to cut back on her work in the business.
Simon then tried using an overseas Virtual Receptionist. Again, it worked well initially. As time went on, he found their lack of local knowledge to be a hindrance. Even though the service was better than using voicemail, it still wasn’t giving his clients the ‘personal connection’ that he knew he needed.
Fortunately, Simon found a locally based Australian company, who offer outsourced business solutions including a variety of personalised virtual receptionist packages. When he is unable to answer his phone, Simon’s callers are diverted to a dedicated line where they are greeted by one of his receptionists. They will take the caller’s details along with a detailed message and if the caller requires a quote, his receptionist will offer a general price guide. The message is then sent to Simon via SMS. Additionally, at the end of each day, a full log of the day’s messages is sent to Simon in an email. This system is helping him to stay on track whilst he is also able to quickly access important details in his inbox.
Thanks to the smooth implementation and operation of his Virtual Receptionist service, Simon now has fewer distractions and can focus on the job at hand. He’s also significantly reduced the hours he spends in the office after work and on weekends, which means he has more spare time to enjoy with the family.
As Simon’s business grows he is planning to outsource further work to his Virtual Receptionists, including scheduling onsite quotes and jobs and even adding a managed online chat service to his website. Simon is confident that he is now finally ‘barking up the right tree’ when it comes to managing his customer service.
If you’re now thinking that maybe a virtual receptionist would be of benefit to you and your business, the Sohovian team are happy to have a chat and discuss any of the options that are available.