A virtual receptionist is what every small business needs. Here’s why.
When the pandemic started, small businesses were improving with the help of remote working and social media marketing – you can reach out to your target audience with a few simple clicks.
According to businessnewsdaily.com, small businesses will focus on evolving technologies, and AR/VR will become on its own as the pandemic continues.
What does AR/VR stand for in business?
AR stands for Augmented Reality. It is a combination of digital and physical worlds made in real-time. For example, if a person is looking at a street and points a smartphone towards that street – it may give information found on the internet.
Some brands have already adapted AR to their products. Brands like Apple, where you can measure objects in a room using an iPhone, and of course, the popular mobile game Nintendo launched last 2016, Pokemon Go.
On the other hand, VR stands for Virtual Reality. It is a technology that creates a virtual environment using VR goggles or other mobile devices. Brands that use VR are mostly gaming companies; Nintendo, EA, PlayStation, and more. In the corporate world, companies use VR to help with surgery, weather forecasting, and flight simulators.
What is the situation of small businesses now?
The impact on small businesses was uncontrollable since COVID-19 started in mid-2019. Back then, if a company did not offer essential products and services, they were doomed for business shut down.
One of the challenges now in 2022 is finding customers without being a household name (or well-known corporations). By 2020, finding new customers is already expensive, mainly because small business owners do not have the same funding as larger companies and because of the effect of the ongoing pandemic.
What are ways small businesses can attract new customers in the ongoing pandemic?
There are many ways to attract new customers in handling a small business – both traditional and digital. To specify, you can find two of the many ways from the list below:
- Product Quality
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- It is how a corporation creates its product with sufficiency by serving its objective, achieving industry benchmarks, and satisfying customer needs. Managing the quality of your product helps improve its reliability, durability, and performance over time.
- Customer Service
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- It is a direct interaction between a consumer and a company representative before, during, and after making a purchase. These representatives are the people who make sure a business is offering support before and after product usage – they are the ones who help business’ consumers in having a user-friendly experience with its products and services. Being able to prioritize customer service is also prioritizing your consumers.
Read here to know more about Customer Service.
What is the best way small businesses can attract new customers in the ongoing pandemic?
A 2022 marketing survey states that 46% of consumers would pay for a brand they trust. The same study shows that the second thing consumers would research before buying products from a company is its customer service with 42%, next to product quality at 54%. It shows that trust in customer service is one of the crucial things to a company’s target audience.
You may be thinking right now about how to incorporate the statistics above with different strategies. The main strategy is to position your company as an expert in your industry or field. Once you have mastered the industry, outsource potential employees that will also have the same motivation as you with building brand trust with your customers.
What type of employee should you hire when building brand trust with your customers?
Any professional who has a background in customer service is the role that a business owner should hire when building brand trust with the target audience. Now, connecting it with the statistics and the rise of technology, a virtual employee is what a business owner should consider. It is because virtual employees can work at any time and from any place and still do their job and achieve company goals.
Some business owners may depend on chatbots or AI customer service representatives, but will customers prefer to talk to computers rather than an individual who will give instant solutions to their problems? There are a lot of reasons a virtual employee is beneficial to a small business. Find it out here.
To give a specific job role to this is what they often call virtual receptionists.
What is a Virtual Receptionist?
When you enter every business establishment, a representative from that establishment will greet and regularly assist you, these representatives are known as receptionists.
In addition, receptionists are also the people who manage the front desk of an establishment. The primary role of a receptionist is to be the point person of every business to its target audience.
A virtual receptionist is responsible for giving the best experience to the target audience of every business. They are also responsible for providing remote assistance within the business.
To simply define a virtual receptionist, is that it is a receptionist in a virtual setting.
What are the pros and cons of having a virtual receptionist?
While there are a lot of advantages a virtual receptionist may offer, there are also disadvantages when hiring for this role. However, these cons are manageable, which we will discuss more in this section.
The pros of having a virtual receptionist
- Productivity
As a business owner, you may agree that productivity is the company’s key to long-term success. If the employees within a company focus on productivity, then each set of tasks per employee will finish on time, making the employees focus more on other tasks. When all of this productivity is combined, you can see a more dynamic business.
Moreover, productivity can cut business costs. It helps with the budget of a business since productivity saves time and effort. In detail, a company can increase output with the same number of working hours when productivity is well-practiced within that company.
To connect it with a virtual receptionist or any virtual employee, a study conducted by shrm.org states that 77% of those who work remotely have boosted productivity, with 30% doing more work in less time and 24% doing more work in the same period.
- Flexibility
One of the many skills of a virtual receptionist is flexibility. When you think of flexibility in an employee, it can only mean that that employee has a can-do attitude and is open to new challenges that will benefit the whole company. A virtual receptionist considers both the company’s audience and the company itself by accomplishing all tasks efficiently.
Flexibility is also adapting to new changes and circumstances. A virtual receptionist mainly values the company’s customer service, and we all know that we can encounter challenges when handling customers, especially customer complaints and requests.
Virtual receptionists can address customer concerns while taking notes on the system. In the middle of a call, there is a possibility they may be doing extra tasks, like researching when a customer has an inquiry found on the internet. These make virtual receptionists flexible without interrupting their overall productivity.
The cons of having a virtual receptionist
- Language and cultural barriers
Communication may be crucial in the workplace, but make sure that, as a business owner, you focus on comprehension similarly.
The main disadvantage of hiring virtual receptionists, especially offshore, is the language and cultural barriers. We all know that each country has its language and culture, and it may take a while before a foreign individual familiarizes themself with it. And because each person coming from another country has their language, then English might not be their native language making them less fluent to the ones who grew up speaking it.
However, language and cultural barriers can be accommodated and overcome with technology on the rise. Credible platforms are now offering free or paid seminars. There even has a mobile application for learning a language of your choice. And since English is the universal language, each employee with a degree has studied basic English.
- Different time zones
If business owners opt to hire any virtual employee, they should consider the different time zones they have with their virtual employees. Another thing to take note of is not only the time zones, but some employees may be working part-time and prefer a flexible schedule that is not aligned with the working hours of the company.
Fortunately, it is manageable. A virtual receptionist can adjust to the company’s working hours, whether it is a day shift or a night shift. In addition, other tasks of virtual receptionists are output-based which they can accomplish at their own pace as long as it is done in the given timeframe.
So, why should a small business consider a virtual receptionist?
Hiring a virtual receptionist may have cons, but these disadvantages are highly manageable. And nowadays, everything is run virtually. On the internet, you can sell, you can get information, you can communicate, and you can even witness real-time events.
The point is that virtual working and selling are going nowhere; it is only evolving. So, now might be the best time to invest in an employee that can do nearly everything efficiently in a virtual setting.