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Are virtual offices a good choice for home businesses?
Virtual offices are very much a service that can suit all types of home business and most virtual office
companies can provide customised services to match individual needs. The nature of virtual offices means
they can be just as an attractive proposition for sole traders working from home as for multinationals
looking to break into an emerging market. How you use a virtual office company, like many other services,
depends on the demands and needs of your business. You might not want to answer calls at all, or maybe
you just need an answering service for when you’re out of the office. Alternatively, you might need a
service that takes full responsibility for all of your business's communications.
Why not just use an answering machine for your business calls?
It’s true that a simple low-cost answering machine can take messages for you, but research shows that people
are much more likely to respond to a human voice. Many people simply put the phone down when confronted by
a basic answering machine which provides no interaction, and that business could be lost forever. It’s also
not about simply missing calls. Having a human voice instead of a recorded message maintains your business’s
image and reassures customers that your company is legitimate, accessible and that their call means something.
Virtual receptionists
Just as with a real receptionist, the service can go further. Important calls can be patched through to a
mobile, while cold callers can be discouraged if so desired. Virtual office companies can also take telephone
orders, help bring in new business and increase sales, while costing a fraction of the price of a normal secretary.
Virtual offices can also provide order fulfilment and invoicing and collection services. Because the costs of
providing these services are spread across a number of home business companies, the actual costs for these
services are extremely attractive.
Cost efficiency
Virtual office services offer businesses the opportunity to experiment with new or short-term ventures where they’ll
need to temporarily increase their office resources. Enrolling the services of a virtual office company on a ‘pay
as you use’ basis is a lot cheaper and less risky than investing in new employers and equipment, especially if
the project doesn’t work out.
Environmental issues
A virtual office provides a very important societal reason for its use by all small businesses, at least for some part
of their office activities. By removing the need to commute to and from a regular office there are significant savings
to be made by reducing our carbon footprint. It has been estimated that if just 5% of all small business owners in the
US cut down on commuting to and from their office by deploying a virtual office, more than 103 million tonnes of
carbon dioxide could be saved annually.
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