Small business and businesses with less than 50 employees are facing a harsh reality of a huge financial impact of rising minimum wages and overall employment costs. Owners should consider enlisting the support of an answering service to serve as a Live Virtual Receptionist.
Here at Direct Line Tele Response, we understand that in today’s economy, many small businesses have to make some very tough decisions in terms of cost reduction and now with the onset of higher minimum wages, small business viability is at absolutely at risk.
California is bracing itself for another minimum wage increase effective July 1, 2014 to $9.00 per hour. Then once again, beginning January 1, 2016, yet another increase to $10.00 per hour (http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm). So how does this impact the Small Business owner? Potentially in a very huge way.
Not only is the State of California raising the overall minimum wage, there are many regional areas that will far exceed the state’s base wage including San Francisco, San Jose and Richmond. According to the Huffington Post San Francisco, CA, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/02/san-francisco-minimum-wage_n_2397920.html), “After a January 1, 2014 increase, San Francisco now has the highest minimum wage in the country, clocking in at a whopping $10.55 an hour. The previous rate was $10.24, which was five cents shy of Santa Fe’s. But with the increase, San Francisco now leads the nation”. Soon to take top spot though is the City of Richmond, CA, which is set to raise its minimum wage to $12.30 by 2017. http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?id=9472166.
Let’s do a little math…let’s assume you have an administrative assistant answering your telephones, taking messages and updating schedules and you are paying them an hourly wage of $10.55 per hour for 40 hours per week. This is a gross annual wage of over $20K. Now add in all of the direct labor burdened costs such as training, health insurance and PTO. Very scary for a small business indeed.
Live Virtual Receptionists
Here at Direct Line, our professional Live Virtual Receptionists are trained to manage your calls exactly as an in-house member of your administrative staff would. Your call handling is 100% customized and is based on the needs of your business and of your callers. Our custom scripted client solutions can be changed anytime so our Call Agents represent your business to callers exactly in accordance with your instructions.
Our Live Virtual Receptionists are highly experienced in providing outstanding customer service to every caller regardless of what industry you are in or how small your business is. Typically, most businesses employ a receptionist during normal business hours to manage incoming calls, messages and schedule requests. It can be challenging, especially during high call volume time or when someone is out sick or on vacation, to provide exceptional customer service particularly when multi-tasking. This is where we come in. One of the many advantages of having Direct Line provide Live Virtual Receptionist services for you is that we are fully staffed 24/7/365. So what’s in it for you? As our client, your phones are always being answered whether you are available or not. From your caller’s perspective you’re never on break, lunch, vacation or out sick because we’ve got you covered. As you can see, enlisting the support of our Live Virtual Receptionist services will help your small business by reducing your overhead and payroll costs while increasing over service and enhancing your caller’s experience. Our Live Virtual Receptionist services support any business, any industry, any time, all the time.
