Gone are the days when you picked up the phone, called a place of business and talked with the receptionist. Now, businesses are using phone answering services in order to be able to answer numerous calls at one time. This method saves businesses money, time and space. Who is operating the phone answering services? The traditional receptionist is being replaced by virtual receptionists; people who work as part of a team in an office environment, using high tech computer telephone integration software.
People who use live answering services are: home based entrepreneurs, doctors, business consultants, foreign companies, etc. By using virtual receptionist services, companies can still maintain a professional image while decreasing their amount of overhead. Although, telephone answering services are increasing in popularity, users still have a few concerns. For example: security, language barriers and translation errors during the calls. Therefore, it is important when choosing phone answering services, to choose services that are located where you know a language barrier will not be a cause for concern.
A telephone call answering service is far removed from the business or office that is utilizing its services. Companies can bring in a higher profit using this service instead of a full time receptionist because they will not have to pay someone an hourly wage to sit in a space and some days, wait all day and not receive one single call. Companies can figure out when they receive the highest number of inbound calls and pay a team of virtual receptionists to answer them from their remote location only for that specific period of time. The rest of the time that a traditional receptionist would be working, the company is continues to work and at the same time, pockets the money that they would have spent in wages.
The next time you call a doctors office or a business, take a mental note of whom you speak with. Track it a few times. The probability is great that you will not talk to the same person twice. That is because you will be talking to virtual receptionists who do not work at the place that you called, but rather at phone answering services. They are the secretaries of the future.