I know many VA's do reception work and am wondering how they accomplish this, especially if they have several clients wanting this service. I'm guessing they have a special phone system so that they can see which company is being called as well as several lines to accommodate multiple calls. Would love to hear from those who are already doing this!

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Eli -- Auctus Virtual Assistants www.auctusva.com
"Grow your business, not your workload!"

I do not provide this type of service however I would think that the client may have their own phone service which they use. You may also want to check out some popular ones such as RingCentral, Grasshopper or even Google Voice (for solos) that you could recommend to them.

You may also want to check out DaVinci virtual office which provides this service to many clients.

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Lee Drozak

Thanks for the info, Lee. I'll be checking out all of the resources you suggested!

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Eli -- Auctus Virtual Assistants www.auctusva.com
"Grow your business, not your workload!"

I've been curious of the answer to this question as well. I'm sure there must be a post here on the forum that addresses this. In the meantime, I will check out all the resources listed as well.

Thanks

DaVinci Virtual doesn't explain much information - but it would be good to hear from VA's that actually provide this service.

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Alice - My Virtual Me
info@myvirtualme.net | www.myvirtualme.net

Hi,

Receptionist work is tricky; even if it's the only service someone offers and especially if there's only one (1) person in the company.

Unless you have someone that will pay you for say 4 hours as opposed to "per call" it's not worth it to me. Most people want you to "be available" for those 4 hours, but only want to pay you "per call"...not equitable.

And you would also need to get an agreement that some calls 'may' go to voicemail if you have more than 1 client because (for me) it's be difficult to stop and start other tasks to answer calls and since I track time, it's even more difficult to do.

That being said...Something like Google Voice would work well though since it shows the number that was called on Caller ID as opposed to the number calling (and works on land-lines and cell phones).

Also, a lot of the standard phone companies offer a service called "DistinctiveRing" (and other names as listed here:) that allow you to know what number was called based on the Ringer (again making it so you would only need 1 phone).

HTH!

Depending on your specific needs and your clients specific needs the options already mentioned may work. I personally use eVoice for my team and I for my toll free office number and Smartfax number, but we are not a calling service. I have a client who uses RingCentral for her team and I am of course part of her team. I have also worked with Grasshopper, and I have my local business line through Google.

These are not true call center options. If you want a true call center you will want something like this. It is a cloud based inbound and outbouand call center. Now this is for if you want to get really involved in it. This type of solution is pretty pricey I believe. This site does not list their rates, but I have researched this in past for myself and it was quite expensive overall in my opinion.

If you want to Google it use the term "software inbound and outbound call center" and you will get plenty of options to look into.

Hope that helps!
Rhonda

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Thanks for all of the info, everyone! It sounds like not a whole lot of VA's do reception work, which actually kind of surprises me.

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Eli -- Auctus Virtual Assistants www.auctusva.com
"Grow your business, not your workload!"

No, I don't think a lot of us do. It is a common misconception that we do this though. It really is a quite involved process to handle someone else's phone from a remote location. Especially you are going to be handling multiple phones. I did answer phones for one client on a regular basis early on. We used grasshopper, but that would not have worked for multiple clients. I did not like doing it though because 1) it meant I was tied to the phone all day and 2) I have children and pets who are noisy and it was frustrating trying to keep them quiet when I was working phone hours. So I stepped away from that kind of work, and decided it wasn't for me.

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I was going to post a question regarding something similar. I wish to offer my clients a telephone answering system so that when they are in meetings etc I would be able to answer their phone to make appointments etc. I need a service that will give me a number that I can use as my business line but will also be used when my clients divert their phone to that number but when I receive the call it shows their number and not the number of the person that is calling them. In that way I can answer the call in their company name and not my own company name. I need to be able to distinguish calls to their number and not my own. Does that make sense? Anyone know of any service able to do this. I tried to call the Vonage helpline but the guy there kept saying it would show my own vonage no. I don't think he had a clue what I was talking about.

Sandra