As the American workforce moves home, we face a new future. This is a future without office cubicles and water-cooler gossip, without handshakes and high fives, without seeing eye-to-eye (hopefully, only physically) or speaking face-to-face.
Instead, our future is filled with virtual conferences, with team meetings held on video conferencing platforms, and with workplace happy hours celebrated via webcam.
With social distancing mandates still in effect in many places and most companies shuttered for the foreseeable future, working from home has undeniably become the new normal. Deloitte reports that 58% of the American workforce is currently working from home, and the CDC recommends allowing any worker who can operate remotely to do so. So, although we may not necessarily be ready to embrace this change, we must embrace it nonetheless.
Keep in mind: this is possibly the best time ever to take steps forward towards modernizing your business’ systems and values. In just the first quarter of 2020, we’ve seen drastic shifts in workplace communication models as well as employer-employee expectations. And luckily, in the years since virtual meetings began building their now-solidly horrible reputation, technology has undergone an enormous evolution, offering technical solutions to some of web conferencing’s biggest problems.
One of those problems? Being interrupted during a virtual team meeting.
Face it, you’ve almost definitely had this happen to you before. Or if it didn’t happen to you personally, it happened to someone else who was in a meeting with you. Whether it’s the baby or the dog, the door-to-door salesman or your sister on the phone, interruptions seem to be an inevitable part of a virtual team meeting. But they don’t have to be.
Using a high-quality answering service minimizes interruptions and maximizes work time. It is a tried-and-true technological tool that you can — and should — be utilizing at your company. Harvard agrees, “Technology is what makes virtual teams possible. Don’t shy away from the tools and software that can make your job easier.” A high-quality answering service is simply part of technology’s trend towards modernization, towards seamless communication– without interruption.
Here’s five reasons why you and your team deserve to be using a high-quality answering service for inbound call reception, redirection, and message-relaying.
Why a High-Quality Answering Service is the Answer
Team Time is Sacred
When you take some time out to establish and fine-tune some ground-rules for virtual meetings, they tend to run much more smoothly and take far less time. Increased efficiency is possible because of how many variables are eliminated from the equation. Eliminate all those distractions that come from being at home and all those interruptions that come from not-in-person communication. Setting up some clear and transparent guidelines is the first step towards conducting a successful virtual meeting.
Protect your team’s time by providing clarity surrounding inter-office communications. Harvard advises, “Remove the ambiguity that so often surrounds workplace communication by providing written guidelines that outline what kind of messages should be sent through which mediums, and how team members are expected to interact with each other.”
Having a quality answering service at your back means that you can maintain certain expectations even when managing a team from afar.
You won’t have to police who’s on their phone during a virtual meeting because there’ll be no need for anyone to take a call. Your answering service is there to make your life, as well as your employees’ lives, easier.
Trust is Built
When you and your team members know that team time is sacred to everyone involved, trusting, strong relationships can be built between team members. Forbes names this lack of trust as one of the fatal flaws of virtual meetings because “the bonding that naturally happens when people meet…is lacking.”
If you set aside time for team-building or just a chance to connect, your team will communicate more efficiently and effectively when they’re on the job together. The Enterprisers Project reports that “Relationships are just as important in a virtual team as they are for a co-located team, but virtual team leaders tend to focus more on task than connection…To accommodate this – and give your team the chance to build relationships – add time to the agenda for casual conversation.”
No Interruptions–For You or Your Customers
With the highest-quality answering service taking your company’s calls, you’re not the only one who is no longer being interrupted. Yes, your meetings are no longer held up by staff running in and out, phones ringing, answering machines crackling on loudly — but, and perhaps more importantly, your customer service is no longer being interrupted either.
When you previously held whole-staff meetings, there were times when calls got missed entirely, leaving clients waiting on the line with no idea as to when they’ll hear back. With an answering service running your calls, uninterrupted customer service is our guarantee.
No Missed Messages
Anybody who has worked on a team knows: if somebody’s out sick, either one of us has to pick up the slack or the ball is getting dropped, today. With an experienced and enthusiastic answering service by your side, your team will no longer have to scramble to cover shifts or take on others’ work. An answering service provides 24/7 support, including taking messages and directing them to the right people, so we serve to fill in any gaps in your communication model, particularly now, as your business shifts to remote working practices.
A Modern Solution to a Persistent Problem
If you had to look for a silver lining to our current state of events, it’s that important changes are happening and they’re happening very quickly, at a pace much faster than they would in other circumstances. And it’s up to us to take advantage of these technological advancements and solutions that will make our current situations easier, if only by a little.
Forbes says, “A crucial – if perhaps under appreciated – aspect of our ability to weather this and future global crises is the development, at speed and at scale, of the very technologies that enable us to quickly adapt and carry on when disruption strikes.” At the highest-quality telephone answering service in the United States, we thought and acted urgently yet flexibly, adapting to an unforeseen global pandemic without a second of interruption to our services.
We’re a reliable and trustworthy partner in the worst of times, and we’ll celebrate the best of times with you when they come around again.
Collaborating with a high-quality answering service is a proven solution that you can implement tomorrow to improve communication and team culture across the board, for all team members.
With us, your team members won’t be struggling to answer calls during business hours as well as find time to do their regular work — all while working at home. Instead, your team can breathe easy and relax, knowing their business is safely in the hands of a truly professional, experienced answering service provider.
