6 Questions You MUST Ask Before Hiring A Remote Receptionist (Do You Know The Answers?)

So, you’ve finally had enough of answering your own calls and have decided to hire a remote receptionist. Great, but what next?

Done properly, hiring a remote receptionist can not only give you back more time than you probably realise but will also help your business appear highly professional to existing and potential clients alike.

Before you decide to dive in and sign up with the first remote receptionist you find on Google, there’s a few important questions you need to ask.

1. “Do your remote receptionist services have a minimum contract period?”

At Eos, we don’t require our clients to sign up for a minimum term.

However, this can’t be said for all providers. Some remote receptionist providers tie clients down to 3, 6 or even 12-month contracts – be careful before you sign on the dotted line.

Business owners are often attracted by seemingly lower monthly fees, only to find that there are significant exit fees when they want to go elsewhere.

2. “Where are your remote receptionists based?”

The overriding objectives of hiring a remote receptionist are usually to give you more time, whilst offering a superior level of service to callers. This can be difficult to achieve if your receptionist is based in a different time-zone from your callers, or they don’t speak the same native language.

For this reason, all Eos staff are based at our offices in the UK and are native English speakers.

Sure, it would be cheaper for us to outsource to India or the Philippines but in our experience, this doesn’t provide the same level of service to our clients.

3. “What happens to my phone number if I decide to use a different remote receptionist?”

When you use a remote receptionist, you’re often provided with a telephone number that matches your chosen geographic location. This is then used in your advertising materials, provided to clients and printed on business cards.

But what happens if you decide to leave, or use a different remote receptionist service?

If you’re an Eos customer then you have the option to keep using this number for a small monthly fee (usually around £6) – simple.

However, some providers don’t give you this option – meaning that you’d need to acquire a new number, update your clients and reprint any marketing materials. As you can image, this can be costly and time-consuming.

4. “What are your ‘overage’ fees?” (Are they reasonable and transparent?)

Your remote receptionist package will usually come with a number of calls or minutes included in your monthly package.

For example, the Eos Essential package is £247/month and provides clients with up to 300 calls answered.

But what happens if you go over your number of allotted calls or minutes in a particular month? This is where the cost can really start to rise if you’re not careful.

At Eos our overage fees are completely transparent and we’ll even recommend a different package if we this it will save your money on an ongoing basis – but this can’t be said for all remote receptionists.

Make sure you know exactly what the overage fees are from the outset in order to avoid unexpected and unnecessary fees.

5. “How many different receptionists will be answering my calls?”

From a customer service perspective, it’s vital that your callers speak to a receptionist who’s not only personable but also highly knowledgeable about your business.

This is difficult to achieve if 10 or 15 different receptionists are answering your calls.  For this reason, Eos never directs your calls to more than 4 different receptionists – our clients even have the option of directing calls to a single member of staff!

It’s important to know from the outset how many different members of staff will be handling your calls, and how knowledgeable each of them is about your business.

6. “Do you offer a free trial or a money-back guarantee?”

How many times have you bought a product or service, only to find that it’s not as great as you thought it would be?

Free trials or money-back guarantees make sense not only for the buyer but also the seller: if there’s no financial risk associated with using a product or service then customers are far more likely to try it out.

Be wary of any remote receptionist service provider that doesn’t offer a free trial or money-back guarantee – ask yourself why.

At Eos, we encourage clients to use us completely free for 1 month. At the end of that month, clients are completely free to carry on using us or switch to another provider. No strings attached. Click here to get a remote receptionist free for 1 month.

If you ask these 6 questions before hiring a remote receptionist then you shouldn’t go far wrong. Of course, you could just ahead and hire an Eos remote receptionist.