Regardless of the type of business you run, there is one thing that you will have whether you like it or not………………
A receptionist or someone who answers the phone for you, it might be you, it could be another member of staff but there is someone that everyone speaks to when they call your business or arrive through the door.
If you don’t have a dedicated receptionist these responsibilities will be in addition to normal workload. In this case you will be aware of the problem, you might divert calls to an answer phone for you to pick up and deal with later. At Ræcan our agents can be invaluable in answering your calls and dealing with straight forward requests for information, acting as your own virtual receptionist. When you are on holiday or away from your office your business does not have to stop, if you really want we will message you when you are out with urgent requests but don’t shoot the messenger !!
If you are lucky enough to have a dedicated receptionist you must have decided that there was enough work to employ a member of staff. Did you make sure that you included all of the tasks you were going to ask your receptionist to do??
You know, the customer survey, calling lapsed customers, making sales calls, reporting on all of the above, making the coffee, ordering the stationery, booking hotels…… don’t forget answering the phone and dealing with visitors, keeping the fire log and signing for deliveries.
It is easy to do, when you are busy generating revenue you can unreasonably add to your employees work load. Rather than focussing on the tasks at hand a diluted and confused situation develops where productivity drops. Outsourcing just a small amount of the additional work means that focus can return. At Ræcan we work with companies that need help for just a few days a year to those that need a couple of days a week. It might just be calling lapsed customers once a month or carrying out a customer survey, collating the results and delivering them in a simple report or a one off database clean.
After all you hired a receptionist not a super computer!