SVA Forum

[marilync]

I have been approached by a Business Centre about working with them to offer virtual services to some of their clients. The Business Centre want to prepare new marketing material and, although it would also promote my services, I still need to clarify whether this would be marketed as one of their packages and whether or not I have direct contact with their clients.

One of the services they are keen to offer is telephone answering. Although they have an all singing, all dancing telephone system, they don't have dedicated resource to answer calls and they are all diverted to an answering machine. I think the business centre would still want clients to use their telephone service but diverted to me.

I currently have a couple of clients who I signed up through a third party i.e. Michael at Call Partner. The reason I use a third party, is to ensure that if I am not in the office, calls are still answered - although I have been looking at various systems to be able to deal with calls myself.

Hopefully, I have explained myself well enough to ask a couple of questions:

1. Does anyone else work with a business centre? If so, I'd appreciate some feedback or the opportunity to have a chat offline.

2. What systems do other VAs use for call answering? I know that some VAs work in partnership with each other but I am not sure how this works. I am normally pretty savvi when it comes to understanding how things work but virtual telephone answering confuses the life out of me!!!

I know the owners and have no reservations about their integrity and professionalism but I am not sure how it would all work. i.e. would I be invisible to clients, charges etc.

I've only briefly spoken to them on the phone and will meet up with them to discuss it further and iron out any concerns I have.

I'd really appreciate some feedback.

Kind regards
Marilyn Clark
Ayrshire Virtual Office Assistance

[Call Team]

Hi Marilyn

Hope you are well and that sounds like an interesting opportunity. I don't work with business centres although have marketed to them in the past, with no success.

With regards to Call Handling I used to offer this service myself until I had to go on maternity leave and had to look for a solution. Whilst off on maternity leave I decided that there would other VAs in the same boat and have children to work around etc, would like their own calls answered and to be able to offer the service to clients for an extra income stream.

This led me to start Call Team in October last year. Our team of handlers are all VAs and we work around each others workloads, networking, school/nursery runs etc.

If you want more info on how we could help you i.e. our Reseller Scheme or becoming a Handler drop me an email to lyndsey @ callteam.co.uk

Good luck and I hope that it works out for you.

L
_________________
Lyndsey McKendry
Call Team | Online Transcription |Diamond Secretarial

[marilync]

Hi Lyndsey

Many thanks for the input. I will give you a call.



Kind regards
Marilyn

[Call Team]

No probs just give me a holler of skype / email me your number and I will call you.
_________________
Lyndsey McKendry
Call Team | Online Transcription |Diamond Secretarial