Virtual Assistants vs Virtual Receptionists – What’s the Difference?

Are you unsure whether you should be hiring a Virtual Assistant or Virtual Receptionist for your business? Continue reading to find out the similarities and differences to help you identify which one fits the needs of your business most.

Virtual Services

The ability to hire virtual staff is a gift from technological digitisation and development. With remote working offering increased productivity and savings on overheads, it’s obvious why businesses are considering virtual services such as Virtual Assistants and Virtual Receptionists. As you begin searching for virtual services, you will notice one key thing – there’s a lot of buzz around what’s best for business, Virtual Assistants or Virtual Receptionists. Is one better than the other? Should you hire both, or just one? So, we’re here to answer just that. Read on to learn how the two roles are different to help you decide which one your business needs.

Virtual Assistants and Virtual Receptionists: The Differences

If you haven’t already, you will notice that people commonly interchange both of these terms. However, while both roles can help to efficiently run your business, they do so in completely different ways. So, without further delay, let’s look at what each role entails.

Virtual Assistant – Role Responsibilities

The core of a Virtual Assistant role is that they are someone who interacts with you, the business owner, and, of course, other team members. To put it simply, Virtual Assistants are typically in charge of overseeing small tasks that are very important but don’t need to be done by a business owner. Their role helps to remove the stress and keep you on top of your workload by:

Respond to emails
Online research
Billing and accounting
Social media management
Writing blog posts
CRM
Schedule meetings and appointments
Co-ordinate travel
Data and record management

Virtual Assistants usually work from home and on a freelance basis, rather than from your office. With virtual services, there are absolutely zero overheads that come with hiring. Virtual Assistants can help to elevate the productivity of your team while they take on all the smaller tasks. Bonus? They will work according to your workload and the needs of your business, so you never have to pay a salary when business is slow. Having said that, you may have to share assistants with another business. As they are typically hired on a freelance basis, they will often have multiple clients. This means that they may not be able to focus on your business alone.

Virtual Receptionist – Role Responsibilities

As we said at the outset of this article, Virtual Assistants and Virtual Receptionists have some similarities. While Virtual Assistants are hired to interact and work for you, Virtual Receptionists are hired to interact and serve your clients. In fact, a (virtual) receptionist is usually the first point of contact for a customer, which makes their job very important.

Answer and transfer calls
Book appointments
Provide quotes
Screen calls
Filter cold calls
Engage in Live Chats
Message taking service

Hiring a Virtual Receptionist costs considerably less than hiring a full-time receptionist in-house. Not only will they provide better coverage for your calls, but they will also help to boost your business image. In addition, you never have to worry about paying overtime, employee benefits, and equipment costs. When looking to hire a Virtual Receptionist, you may want to consider not opting for an automated service that lacks flexibility. Automatic Virtual Receptionists are scripted and often have just a few set of answers and your customers may quickly become frustrated when they cannot speak with a real person.

But they can just do both, right?

Many people make the mistake of thinking that they can hire a Virtual Assistant and ask them to also take over the role of receptionist, or vice versa. A Virtual Assistant and Virtual Receptionist have very different skill sets. Virtual Assistants – they remain in the background of your business operations. They must be extremely organised and focus on details. Virtual Receptionists – they are customer-faced and are usually the first interaction your customer has with your business. As both roles require completely different skills it is simply not beneficial for a business to expect them to take on the tasks for both roles.

At Pocket Receptionist, we offer award-winning call answering and guarantee your customers get connected with a real human, every time. To discuss how we can help increase productivity within your business, give us a call today.