10 Reasons Why Small and Medium
Sized Offices Need a Virtual Receptionist

When a business owner calls and wants to talk about a Virtual Receptionist for his business we help him decide what is best for his business, an Auto Attendant, a Backup Attendant or just voice mail. They work in different ways and solve different problems for each business.

"Please hang up and call your pharmacy. They will contact us on your behalf if necessary..." This single phrase was the response to 70 percent of the calls to a local medical office I setup this past week. The physician in the office told me her lines (and her staff) were to busy answering the phone and repeating that phrase to take care of patients in the office.

I had a referral from an associate to a doctor who needed a "phone tree". He needed to have a caller make a selection to reach different people in his offices. The phone tree he described started with the basics:

Routing for IT support calls can be hard to manage. Internal phone systems can direct calls to an extension when someone makes a selection. And it may be able to ring several phones at once so all of the support staff can take turns with calls. But after hours are a different issue. Routing calls to a single phone after hours may not be a good option. Rotating calls to the support staff cell phones is the solution.

We just finished a Virtual Receptionist system for a real estate team of three women that are specialists in short sales. They needed one central phone number to advertise on their brochures, website, cards and property signs. The number had to give caller the options to reach each of them and rings their cell phone or get information about their business (office location, website, fax number etc.).

Large medical office have phone systems that can password protect a voice mailbox for physicians so patients may leave messages with confidential health information. Small offices have a dilemma

We have a new client whose phone service provider is Suddenlink. She needed calls to be answered if her line was busy or she did not answer after 4 rings. In order for our Virtual Receptionist to go live the client had to add change the Basic Call Forwarding to No Answer Call Forward with Suddenlink.

Small and medium sized businesses need to have the most efficient operation possible with regard to their phones. Here are 10 reasons why the small office needs to have a Virtual Receptionist.

I was contacted by an office manager for a doctors office and she was trying to figure out how to add an auto attendant to the office phone system. She had many quotes for new office equipment and all much too expensive and complex for their needs. After talking for a few minutes we had just the solution she needed without changing her equipment.

Phone systems have limitations that may choke a small business. During normal call situations a small business phone system should be capable of handling several calls at once. If the system can't manage more than a couple of calls then the system may be loosing customers.