Financial planners are one industry that will really benefit from a live answering service. Many in the industry are starting to hire virtual receptionists as an addition to their staff. It doesn’t cost as much as hiring another employee and no workspace is required to house the addition; it’s simply a flexible service that can be paid for monthly to help with administrative tasks.
It’s great for the financial planner that is always in meetings or doesn’t have time to answer phones and sort through emails. It’s also great for helping scheduled all of these appointments that a professional needs to prepare for and be present at rather than to handle the details of even getting the meeting scheduled. If you work in the financial planning field, it may be a great time to bring in a virtual receptionist.
What can a virtual receptionist do?
Financial planners are starting to bring on a virtual receptionist or live answering service because it’s a cost-effective way to help with some of the workload. Between private client meetings or out-of-the-office tasks, there really isn’t time to be answering the phone, handling client inquiries, and other disruptions.
It’s important to have someone that can always be available to avoid missed calls, to always provide a professional voice on the other end, and to handle some of the administrative workload in order to allow a financial planner to focus on the tasks that require the skills and expertise that only they have.
Meetings won’t be interrupted
Financial planners are always in meetings with clients and potential clients to help them with their financial picture or looking at how they can be of service to a client. Answering phone calls during these meetings would be unprofessional while it’s also unprofessional to ignore the phone during business hours.
Focusing on the scheduled meeting at hand or the client that’s in your office asking for help is what’s important while phone calls can come at any time and shouldn’t be ignored. This is where a live receptionist comes in; no more missed calls or missed business opportunities due to not answering the phone.
Out of office needs and other ways your virtual receptionist can help
When you’re out of the office so regularly anyways, it’s a great idea to have an answering service that can handle your phones during office hours. Who is going to be available to scheduled appointments, confirm appointments, and answer general customer questions? Who is going to mail thank you cards to new customers to make sure they feel appreciated?
Who is going to sort through those hundreds of emails to see which are really urgent and which can wait? Perhaps you just don’t have time to research for your website’s blog or you really need someone to update your Facebook page with updates. These are all simple ways your virtual receptionist can take some of the workload off and give you time to focus once again.
Financial planners are seeing huge benefits of hiring virtual receptionists. Consider bringing one in so that you don’t miss out on new clients, come off as rude in your client meetings, or fall behind in your other administrative tasks.