Administrative Professionals’ Day is fast approaching. Are you ready? In addition to giving gifts and singing praises this week, it’s an excellent time to evaluate resources.
We’re not talking about office supplies.
What makes work more effective today is technology. Do your secretaries, assistants, receptionists, and other support professionals have the technological products, training, and support they need?
The technology of Hosted VoIP is a technology you should consider for your administrative professionals. The offerings are feature-rich and affordable. Many of these Hosted VoIP features can vastly improve the productivity and work lives of your receptionists, secretaries, and assistants.
Give receptionists a break with auto-attendant
Receptionists are business gatekeepers. Whether it’s virtual gatekeeping, phone, or in-person, a secretary is expected to receive and organize inquiries. While it’s a key responsibility, you don’t want gatekeeping to consume all of your receptionist’s time. There are lots of other important tasks they need to perform!
For example, at a restaurant, the most important customer is the one standing in front of you. Host and hostesses are trained to address the needs of the customers in the restaurant before addressing the needs of the customer calling on the phone. But that doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice those potential customers calling on the phone.
A host or hostess can manage customers in and outside the restaurant more effectively with a feature like an auto-attendant. All you need to do is can set up an auto attendant that leads your customers to information like hours of operation, menus, and take away.
Not only is an incessant ringing phone stressful for your receptionists, but it’s also stressful and frustrating for your customers. Give your receptionist a break so they can focus on other responsibilities, and make each customer—on the phone and in person—feel well attended.
Give secretaries more visibility and control
Secretaries are masters of administrative and project management. But in order to do their job well, they need visibility. That’s why your secretaries would appreciate a Hosted VoIP feature like a web-based admin portal.
From an admin portal, a secretary or administrative support employee can access and make changes to your office phone system. All they need is an internet connection to make universal changes to dial plans, configure new devices, add or delete users, change extensions, change company hold music, and update call filter settings. And this all happens in real time! Your secretaries and/or support will appreciate how easy it is to make changes and onboard new employees.
And secretaries can know what phone system changes to make by accessing the call analytics feature. By looking at the call analytics, administrators can easily understand trends in phone traffic.
Give personal assistants more access
A personal assistant needs access to the person they’re assisting. So any technology that improves access is a game changer.
Shared line appearance is a feature that does just that. It allows multiple people to monitor and manage someone’s phone line. Multiple people can monitor and answer the incoming calls, place callers on hold, and effortlessly contact the line owner via intercom.
With shared line appearance, it’s easy for assistants to field calls for their boss: assistants can determine the nature of a call, and then communicate that information to their boss quickly and effectively via an intercom. These features particularly benefit assistants because it can streamline scheduling, improve efficiency, and save time. And assistants no longer have to use the “park” feature! Assistants will love the ease of seamlessly moving calls from one phone to another with shared line appearance.
Invest in Hosted VoIP
Don’t just give your receptionists, secretaries, and assistants a desk plant this month. Show them you really care by investing in technology that will make their work lives easier. Whether that includes new software, new computers, or a new office phone system, take your employees aside this week and ask them how you can improve their work lives.
