Most small business owners and home-based business operators cannot afford to hire full-time receptionists, nor can them afford to waste their valuable time on answering phone calls all-day. This is where the concept of virtual receptionist becomes increasingly popular.

Why Virtual Receptionist?

To attract clients, you need to make your business appear professional. The biggest turn-off when some potential clients calls your business is being greeted by some recorded message and voicemail. In fact, majority of the people said that they would not leave a message in the voicemail and would rather take their business else where. For a small business, that represents a big loss in potential clients.

Virtual Receptionists service eliminates overhead costs and saves your business money. Best of all, it makes a good impression for your business by presenting every caller with a live processional receptionist who can screen telephone calls before transfer the call to you or your employees. A virtual receptionist can also answer basic question about your business as well as gather client contact information for your sales leads.

To your clients, a virtual receptionist solution appears integrated into your business. Most of the times, your clients will get the impression that they are speaking to someone right in the office.

With a virtual receptionist, you would not need to deal with employee overhead and you don’t need to hire IT to build and maintain your phone network. You are provided with a toll-free business phone number that is answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Virtual Receptionist Providers

When shopping for virtual receptionist service, consider the following features that are offered by most providers:

Music/message on Hold
Multiple Line Phone Systems
Live Call Screen, Transfer and Forwarding
Calendar/Appointment Scheduling
Order Processing and Customer Service
Live Outbound and Sales Calling
Toll Free Or Local Phone/Fax Number
Unlimited Voicemail and Voicemail to Email
Fax to Email and Professional Email Address
Live Answering Minutes Plans
Real-Time Online Call Reporting
After Hours Support
Call Queueing

Please note that not all advertised virtual receptionist service is run by live personnel. Some companies provide virtual receptionist through customizable virtual PBX phone system. The ones providing live service are:

Davinci Virtual
virtualreceptionists.biz
Appletree Answering Service
Concorder Communications
Ruby Receptionists

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PBX which stands for private branch exchange, is a telephone exchange system. Originally a PBX was designed to control phone systems through in-house operators within a company. Today, a PBX has expanded functionalities to connect fax machines, computer modems, and other types of technology that route through the phone lines.

As businesses of all sizes begin to look into VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), virtual PBX suddenly became an attractive option. A virtual PBX arrangement, in which a telephony system is provided through an Internet download and then managed by an outside service, offers a low-cost and easy-to-set-up means without having to maintain a staff. Now, the telephone exchange system is hosted at an outside VoIP provider.

A virtual PBX is capable of providing many services such as messaging, call-forwarding, call-waiting, automatic dialing, and other advanced calling features. But, it can also provide Outlook integration, host video, voice, and data conferencing, and tracking call data for billing and budgeting purposes.

If you are looking for a virtual PBX provider, the search can be daunting. Many providers offer a diverse range of calling features but make it difficult to combine those features without increasing the cost of the calling plan significantly. Other providers may offer basic services but are unable to scale to business’s need for enhanced calling features. For starters, there are some websites out there which helps you compare plans from different virtual PBX providers, such as pbxcompare.com and virtualpbxcompare.info. Currently there are five top providers: GotVMail, Packet8, RingCentral, Vocalocity, and VoiceNation. Start off by assessing your calling needs and then search for the one providers that offer combination of features you desire. The important thing is to put priority on the feature(s) that you definite will require rather than features which you may or may not use. Once you decided on a virtual PBX provider, check out their calling plans based on your estimated usage. It’s also important to factor in the costs of calls that exceed the limits set in the plan.

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