Data Supplies Blog

Do You Give Your Customers Your Full Attention?

When you get a phone call from a customer - what do you do?

Do you step away from your desk to give them your full attention?

Do you answer hands free so you can continue with the job you're working on?

Do you give the customer half your attention and keep the other half on your email inbox?

Do you answer while you're out and about and struggle to hear them against the sound of public places?

We think that it's vital to give each and every customer phone call your full attention. It can be easy to tell when you're on the phone whether the person you're speaking to is really listening - and answering while you're on the go can mean that it's difficult for you and your customer to hear each other.

We recommend aswering the phone to customers only when you are willing and able to give them your full attention. This means when you're in the office, not in a meeting, and not so deep into a piece of work that you find it difficult to take a break from it.

Of course, we're not suggesting that you leave calls unanswered when you're not able to answer them - we're suggesting that you put someone else in place who can answer them. This could be a full time member of staff or colleague - or it could be a dedicated telephone answering service/virtual assistant like us. 

Answering your phones is a big part of our job - so we're always able to give your callers our full attention. Redirecting your calls to us while you're out on a job, in a meeting, or focusing on a particular project means that we are able to offer our full attention to your customers when you can't. With our personal assistant service we're even able to process orders and make appointments  on your behalf.

How important do you think it is to give customer phone calls your full attention?

Self Employment and Taking Time Off

Tell someone that you're your own boss and their first response is often something along the lines of great, you get to take time off whenever you want. 

Those of you who understand the reality of self employment will know that this isn't always the case! Yes, self-employment can offer a certain amount of flexibility - but that's not always the same as 'time off'. 

If you're office based, of if you work from home, it is true that you can usually leave the office for an hour or two during the traditional working day. However, when there isn't anyone else to take the reigns - this isn't time off. It's time spent juggling emails and phonecalls on your smart phone with whatever it is you left the office to do. And of course, once you get back in to the office  your workload will be just as heavy as it was before you left. Because self-employment often means that there's no one else to help out.

However, there is a solution. We designed our virtual assistant and telephone answering services around self employed people just like you. When you need to get away from the office, whether it's for meetings or for time off, we can take over. By taking care of your phonecalls, managing your diary, processing orders and managing your emails - we're able to allow you to really take time off and make sure that there's less pressure on you when you return. 

Whether it's for a couple of hours or a couple of weeks, Your Reception Desk can help you really take time off. 

Is It Inefficient For You To Do Your Own Admin?

When you run your own business, we know that there are so many things to worry about. Marketing, admin, communications, finances, legalities... and that's before you've even considered doing what it is that your business actually does. 

Often, business owners spend a great amount of time doing these more administrative tasks - meaning that they have significantly less time left to do whatever it is that they do best. Whether you're an illustrator, a photographer, a recruiter or a consultant - your main skills miss out in favour of the time you have to spend on your admin.

There is a problem with this. Spending time doing things other than your specialist skill can be incredibly inefficient. Why? Because the hours you spend sifitng through emails, or making appointments, or answering the phone are hours when you can't earn money for doing what you do. 

Ask yourself how much your hourly rate is. Then, ask yourself how many hours per month you spend doing administrative tasks and work out how much money you could make from doing your specialist skill during that time. Once you've come up with this figure, you'll likely find that it is significantly larger than the cost to employ a virtual assistant like us to do the administrative work. 

Using a VA to do your administrative work frees up more time for you to do what you best, and make money from it.

Using a VA to Manage Job Vacancies

Our virtual assistant services are available to use in a variety of different ways. We can help on an occasional basis, on a daily basis, or even just when you have an emergency. We can also put a service together to assist you during particularly busy or trying times. An example of this is during recruitment periods. 

Ever advertised a job vacancy and then spent the next week on the phone constantly? Call volumes can be so high during the period that your comapny is recruiting that it can make it very difficult to actually get any work done! But don't worry - we're able to help.

What about if we were able to provide you with a dedicated phone number that you could use in any job adverts you placed, either in print or online. We would manage all the calls that came in on that line - taking all the relevant details from each candidate as they called. We would also be able to answer the questions and queries that candidates had - taking the pressure off you entirely.

On the closing date (of before if it suited you), we could provide you with a list of all the candidates and their relevant details. This would mean that you would be able to shortlist and interview candidates as you normally would - but that you wouldn't have had to sacrifice your own working productivity to get to that point.

If you would like to speak to us about this or any of the other ways our VA services could help you - please contact us. 

A 'Virtual' New Look For Your Business in 2012

Do you want to give your company a new look for 2012? Moving into a new office is the obvious answer to this - but you might find that this isn't a realistic option finance-wise. There is another option to improve the outward image of your business while still retaining the convenience and low overheads of working from home or a shared office. Why not use virtual services?

We offer three services that are particularly useful in this sense; our telephone answering services (either our no-frills Pay As You Go option or our comprehensive Personal Assistant service), our virtual mailing address service and our board room which can be rented by the hour.

Telephone answering a service like the one we provide at Your Reception Desk is like having a receptionist or personal assistant... but we're there only when you need us and we don't require desk space! We're available to answer your phones in a professional and friendly manner - and can also take messages, patch calls through to you, take orders and make appointments. Whether you need us to cover your phones on an occasional or emergency basis - or whether you want to use us every day - it's up to you.

Virtual mailing address do you worry that your clients and potential clients will look your address up on Google maps and not like what they find? We have a solution. We can provide virtual mailing addresses at a selection of professional and desirable locations. This means that you will be able to use these official mailing addresses on your business stationary such as business cards, websites and invoices. You can also receive correspondence at these addresses, which we will send on to you straight away.

Meeting room hire if you require a professional space to meet with clients and colleagues - we can help. We can provide a boardroom in Cumbernauld that can be hired by the hour. With our partners we are also able to offer space in Edinburgh city centre. This is ideal if you want the convenience and facilities of a boardroom available when you want it - but not the upkeep and expense of a permanent office.

If you'd like to speak to us about these three services, or any of the other services we offer, why not give us a ring to have a chat? Alternatively, visit yourreceptiondesk.co.uk for more information.

Planning for The New Year

Welcome to 2012. Here at Data Supplies and Your Reception Desk we hope you've had a restful holiday and saw in the new year well.

For many people, this time of year is the time for making resolutions. Whether it's to get fit or to save money, millions of people are resolving to be a little bit better personally in 2012. We think that businesses should be doing the same thing. This is the perfect time for business owners to look back at 2011 and the successes and problems that came with it. Doing this is vital when it comes to making plans for the new year. Which direction will you be pushing your business in? How will you seek to grow and increase sales? How will you overcome last year's problems?

A lot of success in business is down to good planning. The first few weeks in January can often be a quiet time; meaning that it's perfect for taking quiet time out to do this planning. We recommend taking out your business plan and reworking it so it can act as a guide for you in the coming twelve months. Be honest and realistic about what you want to achieve and why you haven't yet been able to do it. Think carefully about the services and people you could seek out that might be able to help you. 

How will you be planning for 2012?

 

How Do You Deal With Your FAQs?

In every business there are some questions you get asked far more frequently than others. Whether it's a query related to your service provision or a particular product; we guarantee that there's one thing you find yourself explaining over and over. 

There are obvious ways to deal with these frequently asked questions. Many websites and printed publicity materials come complete with an FAQ section where these common queries are addressed. This can be a great way to circumvent these questions and help save everyone time and confusion. However, sometimes it can be difficult to really get a point over without explaining to someone on the phone or face to face.

In these situations, we think it's great to be a little bit creative with your communications. If there's one question you want to address once and for all, why not try and make sure it's answered on the first page of your website/marketing materials? 

We have an example of this that you might find useful. At Your Reception Desk we found that we were often explaining to potential customers how our telephone answering service works. People sometimes think that we just provide an automated answer machine, when this is of course not the case. We thought carefully about what we could do illustrate our process in a fun and easy to understand way. And that's what we did - we got it illustrated! We worked with Scottish cartoonist Jim Barker to create the below comic strip. In just six steps we had a creative way to show potential customers just how we worked to help them. 

How do you deal with your frequentl asked questions? Is there a way you could approach the issue creatively?

Temporary Staff VS Virtual Staff

For many businesses, we're well into the busiest time of the year; the holiday season. Businesses from retail to service are taking on extra work, and many are struggling to keep up with the workload. The answer to this conundrum tends to be simple; they take on temporary staff. 

The question here is what kind of temporary staff is best for you. If your business is a shop of the 'bricks and mortar' type or another face-to-face style set up - then of course you do need in house temporary staff. These are usually sourced either via a temp agency or by direct recruiting. However, if your business is phone, internet or even office based - you might find that virtual or outsourced temporary staff are a better solution.

A virtual assistant service (like Your Reception Desk) can supply you with highly trained professional assistants to reduce the workload of your permanent staff. They can take on transcription work, they can do diary management, they can answer your phones, organise your emails and process orders. The benefit of virtual staff in this case is that you only pay for the time they are actually working for you. Once you have set up the arrangement, virtual staff will be on standby to help out whenever the workload gets too much. Rather than taking the risk of employing temporary staff on a full time basis, virtual staff are only there (and only have to be paid) for the time they are needed. There are also no employment taxes to pay - and you don't even need to provide them with a desk or a computer!

Does your business take on extra staff over the holiday season? Have you ever thought about taking on virtual staff?

Our Best Productivity Advice

For the past twenty months we've blogged here twice a week, every week. As a result of this, we've built a really valuable resource. If you're looking for advice or support on dictation, transcription, VA, phone answering or productivity - we just might have something on the subject here!

Recently we collated some of our best advice posts on the subject of dictation. In this post we've done the same with our advice on productivity. We think this is a great way for you to get the best out of the advice we've shared here - whether you're a regular reader or a first time visitor. 

Don't know where to start? How about slowly building efficient processes into your working day.

How do you manage your emails? Some productive tips here.

Also on the subject of emails, do you use the inbox zero technique?

We think that it can be important to 'switch off' communication channels to get important stuff done.

Want to know a great way to do this? Here's a 'how to' on diverting your phones.

If you need a little support in becoming more productive, we can help you. Here's how.

As always, if there is a particular subject you would ike us to share our thoughts on, please do let us know. Feel free to leave a comment below, tweet us or post on our Facebook page. 

Why We Think Outsourcing is Great - And How to Keep it That Way

It won't surprise you to hear that we think outsourcing is great. We believe that the process allows businesses to benefit from talent and skills that they would not otherwise have had access to. Especially in trying economic times, outsourcing means that specialist staff don't have to fall by the wayside.

We think that in order to create successful outsourced relationships, these relationships need to be invested in. And by invested, we don't necessarily mean financially. Like everything in business, ensuring your outsourced processes are positive takes effort. We have put some tips together on making this effort and ensuring that outsourcing works for your business.

Take care choosing outsourced staff Whatever work you are outsourcing, how it is done is likely to have a big impact on how your company is perceived by others. Outsourcing communications has an obvious effect on this; but so does the general quality of outsourced work. When you're looking for outsourced staff, remember how important this is. Make sure you have spent time researching and meeting with prospective staff and that you are satisfied with the quality of what they do.

Be clear about expectations Make sure that you are clear about what your objectives are and how you expect your outsourced staff to achieve them. Set processes in place from day one and ensure that you make deadlines clear. Taking the time to do this will mean that you and your outsourced staff are all fully aware of what you expect from each other. 

Maintain face to face We suggest that wherever possible you schedule regular face to face time with your outsourced staff. Meeting up as rarely as once every couple of months can develop your working relationship and give you the opportunity to bounce ideas of each other. This also allows a set time for you and outsourced staff to review how things are working. 

Keep them in the loop It's easy to forget that outsourced staff exist when they are working remotely. Ensure that you keep them up to date with any news and developments in the company. This is particularly important when they are working on the communications side of the company, but is also important for other areas. Informing staff about these things can help keep them enthused about your business. 

Pay them on time When you're paying outsourced staff on an invoice basis rather than on a monthly salary, those invoices can often be forgotten or pushed to the bottom of the pile. You probably wouldn't dream of delaying payments for your regular staff as office morale would fall very quickly - so we suggest you take the same approach with your outsourced staff! Besides anything else, any time outsourced staff have to spent chasing you for payments means that they have less time to work.

Do you have any tips for keeping outsourced business relationships fruitful?