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How to Hire a 24 Hour Secretary

Guest post by: Nicolas DAlleva

Article Overview: A telephone answering service is beneficial for businesses as employing one can add a 24 hour secretarial staff without the additional equipment or staffing costs.

How to Hire a 24 Hour Secretary

When making any decision for your business, from leasing office space to advertising, it is important to consider the costs and benefits as well as alternatives. When it comes to hiring a receptionist, one such alternative that might be worth considering is an answering service. An answering service can function in much the same was as a receptionist would, but is available 24 hours a day and costs a lot less. With an answering service, your company has an invaluable resource on-call at all times. Instead of having a receptionist, which requires scheduling in advance as well as a costly and time consuming setup process, an answering service is on demand help when you need it. You should use an answering service because it lets your callers know you care. An answering service also helps you create and maintain a professional image along with ensuring that every call is answered and every message is taken. It is understandable that a company can't answer each and every call, but with an answering service you have a bit of information about who called and why before calling back. This service pairs especially well with text messaging because if you miss a call and it goes to your answering service, they will message you right back with who called and for what reason. Before enabling this feature, individuals were very much in the dark when it came to calls because of the infrequency of voicemails being left.

Another great reason to use an answering service is how flexible usage can be once you set up an account with a provider. For example, many initially decide to use their service for after-hours calls only. Quite often, offices eventually decide to use their answering service during the day as well. When business gets very busy, for example, the staff may use the service as backup. Calls coming in during these inopportune times can actually be set up to roll over to their off-site call center. After experiencing firsthand how effective the service can be in this situation, many offices decide to use it all of the time. Many even go so far as to use the service as their exclusive method of setting and maintaining appointment books.

Most people have this image of on only use for answering services is a medical answering service that is being used for healthcare professionals such as doctors, dentists, urologists, and podiatrists. While these sorts of doctors do indeed use answering services, many others have had equal success with adding it to their line of work as well. Contractors have been using answering services for years with great results. Because they are out putting up drywall, framing additions, or fixing a leaky roof, many are unavailable to speak on the phone at any given point in time. As we all know, however, you need to be available to your customers in order to take on new business. Smart contractors know that having a call center operator take their messages is an effective way of making sure they keep in touch with people.

It is interesting because so many feel that having someone else provides this service is too expensive, when in reality it is extremely costly to lose business because nobody answered when a prospective lead called your phone number. You may get your next big job as a result of having a 24 hour answering service with 24/7 professional service; rain or shine, weekends, holidays, or late at night. Make the decision for an answering service in order to be more accessible than your competitors. Word will spread of your reliability and that is sure to pay off many times over.

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Article Tags: answering service, call center, phone answering



Related Forum Posts
Hat's off to you- - As an owner/operator, I wear many hats...especially when employees become ill, go on vacation or resign. Here's the hat's i've worn over the years: 1) Manager (skilled) 2) Salesman (very skilled) 3) Book keeper/ Accountant (somewhat skilled) 4) Publicist (somewhat skilled) 5) Payroll officer (skilled) 6) Receptionist (very skilled) 7) Secretary (very skilled)
Re: Hat's off to you- - [quote="BizLoanz4u":1j1xk9p5]As an owner/operator, I wear many hats...especially when employees become ill, go on vacation or resign. Here's the hat's i've worn over the years: 1) Manager 2) Salesman 3) Book keeper/ Accountant 4) Publicist 5) Payroll officer 6) Receptionist 7) Secretary[/quote:1j1xk9p5] Hi Michele, Would you be able to rate each of your job functions on a scale of "1 = generalist" to "10 = expert" and even which tasks you outsource? Thanks
Re: Books for the Entrepreneur - Another great book for internet entrepreneurs is The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris MichelleJ
Re: Moderators on vacation - Well what happens if you own a store or bar/restaurant? You're up at the crack of dawn to do prep work, and the last one there late at night closing... open 7 days a week... what can such an entrepreneur do for time off? Hire a trusted manager?
Re: I'm writing a book - what do you want me to include in it? - I could say a Title, Table of Contents, tables, page numbers, illustrations, clear thinking, an such, but I am really interested in why your favorite book is "The Four Hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss"


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