Why your Sydney business should be using a cheap telephone answering service
Small business is hard work Business in general has become a lot harder in the past few years. Not only do you have to be good at what you do but you also need to be a technology expert, a social media warrior, an internet marketing guru plus have a whole range of other skills. If you don't have these skills then the old model was that you would need to hire in these skills to be able to cover all of these area's. The new model that the internet has now made available is that you can hire in remote resources via the internet to help you out in these areas when you need them.
Don't get burnt out The temptation when you start a new business is that you put in the hard yards to get everything done and get your business humming. The problem with this is that while it may be a good cheap idea in the short term, if you continue to operate this way for a year or more then you risk not only burning yourself out but also potentially causing issues with your family and friends.
Leverage labour with no staff Employing staff in Sydney can be expensive. Not only do you have to pay Sydney wage rates but you also have to pay for holiday pay, superannuation, sick leave and a whole range of other costs. Wouldn't it be easier if you could just make use of staff when you need them and not have to pay when you don't. With an answering service from Virtual Office Sydney you will only have to pay for the calls that our receptionists answer, you will not have to pay when they are at lunch or are sick. In addition, with our team of professional receptionists you can have a live telephonist sitting there waiting for your calls 24 hours per day with no need to pay excessive penalty rates.
Who needs office space? In the old days, when you started a small business you would head to your local real estate agent and organise some office space. The problem with this is that when you first start your new company you have absolutely no idea just how much space you are going to need. Whether you overestimate or you underestimate it is probably going to be a really costly mistake. Additionally, if you opt to have physical employees answering your phones and attending to your admin you will need to have somewhere to house those employees. The more physical employees you have the more space you will likely need. Rather than having physical space and physical employees it makes good sense for a small business to opt for a virtual address and virtual employees. With a virtual address you will spend just a fraction of the cost of a physical address and with virtual employees (like our telephone answering professionals) you will only need to pay for them when you actually use them.
Focus on your core skills When you started your small business you probably did so because you had talents in a specific area. This might have been selling, consulting, engineering or whatever but it is unlikely that it was in the area of answering phones or doing basic admin. Given that you have serious skills in your chosen area then it doesn't make a lot of sense for you to spend a significant amount of time focussing on the more menial tasks like answering the phones. Unfortunately, for the majority of small businesses this is what ends up happening. Small business people end up foregoing the revenue generating tasks that could be driving their business forward to spend time doing more menial tasks. It makes a lot more sense to outsource some of those menial tasks to a professional business like Virtual Office Sydney and win back all of that time that can be applied to generating more sales.
How much does it cost? We have packages to suit a broad range of businesses. Our basic package is quite cheap and starts at $25 a month retainer plus a call cost of $2.80 per call. The basic package is suitable for businesses that only expect to take an occasional call and really want to use us as a backup service for in-house facilities. If you are looking to cover a large number of calls each month then it makes good business sense to look at using one of our call packages. Our call packages start from just $50 per month for 20 included calls. The average virtual receptionist customer of Virtual Office Sydney spends around $100 per month on their service. This is not a huge amount of money given the peace of mind that you can achieve by having your incoming calls covered.
How does it work? It is really quite straight forward. When you sign up for a free trial of our phone answering service we will allocate you a unique telephone number. This number can either be used as your main telephone number or you can simply divert your current telephone number to this number. This allocated telephone number is the number that we answer when picking up your calls. Once you have your number allocated you will need to tell us how you want your callers greeted when they call your number. This greeting is unique to your business and can be changed at any time that you want. You can even have seasonal messages or messages related to marketing campaigns or new products. Next, you need to tell us how you want us to deliver your messages to you. Messages can be delivered either by SMS or by email. We find that the majority of people these days opt for email because most people are using smart phones and can receive those messages on their phones. Now that we know how you want your messages delivered we are ready to kick off your service. We can then be answering your incoming calls within minutes.
Am I locked in to a contract? We don't believe in locking people in to contracts with any of our virtual services. When you sign up for a telephone answering service you will be able to cancel at any time with just a months notice. While we don't lock people in to contracts we do find that the majority of our customers stay with us for quite some time. Many of our customers have been with us for years and do so because they believe that they are getting great value for money with our service.
How do I get started? Getting started is really easy. All you have to do is head over to our sign up page and fill out the form with your details. Once you have completed the form we will send you a text message to authenticate your account and you are ready to go. If you don't feel comfortable filling out the online form then you are welcome to ring one of our helpful customer service representatives and we will be happy to take you through the process over the phone.