Auto-Attendant: How to get the most out of your Virtual Receptionist

The ability to answer an infinite number of calls without a receptionist.

Auto-Attendant is a powerful feature, but do you want to squeeze out its greatest potential value? With a bit of creativity, this tool can become even more beneficial for your business.

Handle high call volumes with ease

Customers never enjoy being put on hold, but sometimes high call volumes leave you with no other choice. There simply aren’t enough staff available to handle every call.

Auto-Attendant answers calls automatically, so no caller is ever greeted with a busy tone. Being greeted with a proper introduction and greeting message regardless of your team’s availability will make a positive difference in your customer’s experience.

And since you can now handle a higher volume of calls, you may not need to hire as many staff as your business grows, saving you money every month.

Allow team members to work on other tasks

Answering calls is time-consuming, and most of your team members have other things to do during the day. How much more could get done if you shave time off of answering phone calls?

Since calls are answered without need for any human input, your team only needs to answer the calls that require person-to-person contact. If it’s a frequently asked question or an inquiry on business hours, Auto-Attendant can handle it with proper configuration.

Making the Most of the Custom Message

Auto-Attendant’s custom message feature has a lot of potential. Using it simply as a greeting would be a waste – you can use it for far more.

Use it as advertising

After greeting your customers as usual, you can include info about a new promotion you may be offering, or a limited-time seasonal product.

If your callers are waiting on the line for an available employee, you might as well take advantage of that time instead of leaving it as dead space. If you can get more business out of it, why not go for it?

Answer FAQs without even picking up the phone

Customers will often call with simple questions – maybe even asking for information they could easily find on your website. These calls are usually quite short, but they can clog up your phone lines quickly – leaving the customers with more urgent calls to wait and potentially hang up on you.

By putting the answers to a series of your more commonly asked questions, callers will be able to get their answer without needing to connect with a real person, and will happily finish the call without a hassle. Your phone lines will be more open than ever!

Share a seasonal greeting

People are used to hearing the typical “welcome to (business name)” greeting. Why not add some personality? Include seasonal greetings into your automatic message, and add a personal touch that your callers will appreciate.

You can change it to match the general holidays such as the winter holiday season, but you can get even more specific! Add a special mother’s day greeting, or a first day of summer greeting. This shows your callers that you’re not the type of business to “set it and forget it,” but one that pays attention to detail and sees the little things. It’s a simple but powerful reputation booster.

Harness the full power of Auto-Attendant

Auto-Attendant is a part of our cloud phone system – a system jam-packed with powerful features just like this. With the ability to manage your system from anywhere, at any time, your business will become more flexible and versatile than ever before.

For more info, contact us today!