Category: Telephone answering

Our telephone answering service is UK-based support for your business. One of our most popular services, we provide call answering for a wide range of clients. Some only use us once a year to cover the telephone answering while they’re abroad. Others use Get Ahead for other services and bolt on telephone answering when they need it.

In this blog, we look at how an outsourced telephone answering service can help your business and how it works in practice.

How does a telephone answering service help your business?

The invention of smart phones means that fewer people need an answering service than in days gone by. But telephone answering is still an essential business tool, particularly if you’re a solopreneur or work alone. Yes, you can answer your phone while you’re on holiday, but what if you’re swimming in the sea, meditating on a retreat or screaming on a roller coaster with your amazing family?! A proper holiday is one where you don’t take work calls. You need to recharge your batteries and reconnect with both yourself and the people you care about. Ultimately, it helps your business too. When you go back to work refreshed, you’ll be able to give your business and customers the attention they deserve. This will often translate into business growth. Trust us, breaks are important!

So, what you do you do instead of answering a work call? You don’t want to just leave your customers a recorded message. Quite frankly, it’s not good customer service. It’s impersonal and one message might not fit all callers. If your customers need reassurance, there’s no one to give it. And if disaster strikes, you won’t hear about it until you get back.

But a UK-based telephone answering service offers a better solution. The call will be answered by a real person, working as an extension of your business. They can take messages and provide reassurance that you will deal with the query on your return. They can defuse difficult calls and – if necessary – contact you to report emergencies. How does a telephone answering service work? Our telephone answering service works like this. If you’re new to Get Ahead, contact your local regional director here to get started. And if you’re an existing Get Ahead client, just get in touch with whoever your usually deal with! The regional director will take details about the duration of your holiday, what you would like the call handler to say and any other action they need to take.

Then you simply divert your work phone number to our call centre (don’t worry – it’s very easy and you’ll receive full instructions!). Our call handlers will answer the phone with the name of your business and whatever professional greeting you like to use. They will take messages, and when you return to your desk, the messages will be there, waiting for you.

PS – going on holiday tomorrow? Don’t worry – we can get you set up with our phone answering team in as little as 24 hours!

You’ve fulfilled your dream of working for yourself and being your own boss. This is great news – we’re thrilled for you! But we also know that working alone can be tough. This applies to people in many professions, but particularly business coaches and life coaches, who give so much support to others that they sometimes neglect their own businesses.

In this blog, we look at ways to make working for yourself as fruitful and efficient as your business deserves.

The advantages of working for yourself

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Ambitious entrepreneurs want to take their business to the next level. Depending on where you are in your career, “the next level” might be a taking on a second client, or opening a second office. Whichever step is right for you, outsourcing can help you expand at an affordable pace, without committing to a huge outlay before your return is guaranteed.

Here are three ways that outsourcing can take your business to the next level:

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Sometimes, we have a job on our to-do list that we don’t like doing, or don’t have time to do. Some of those jobs are commonly outsourced – for example, many of us use an accountant and/or an app like Xero to keep on top of our invoicing. But what about cold calling? Or email management? Or social media?

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Get Ahead operates in ten locations around the country, each with its own regional director. The regional director is your central point of contact, connecting you with the right virtual assistants, managing their output and tailoring the package to meet your business needs.

This blog looks at the role of regional directors and their part in delivering the right support for your business.

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At Get Ahead, we spend a lot of time talking about how much time and money our clients save by outsourcing. But the other important benefit of outsourcing is quality. When you outsource to an expert, the work produced is outstanding – just what your business deserves. In this blog, we look at why outsourced work can be of a higher quality than what you can produce yourself – definitely something to bear in mind when you’re planning further steps for your business.

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While many B2B businesses go quiet over summer, many B2C businesses become very busy. If you work in hospitality, tourism, retail, travel or any other business that historically has its busiest period in July and August, it’s important that all your back-office support works perfectly – it’ll underpin your core business and help you get the most out of the season.

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As we head into the summer months, many business owners take time off, whether we’re able to go abroad or simply enjoy what the UK has to offer. It’s so important for your health and for your business that you take a proper break – we always come back refreshed and productive and we’re sure you will too! One of the ways we support business owners taking leave is to provide a telephone answering service. In this blog, we look at our popular telephony service and how it can make a difference to your business.

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Business social media can be a lot of fun; it can also be very time consuming. Love it or loathe it, it’s a necessary part of marketing for any organisation in the internet age. If your social media isn’t getting the results you’d hoped for, or if it’s distracting you from core business, it could be time for a different strategy.

Here are five signs that it’s time to outsource your social media:

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A virtual assistant (VA) can be useful for a small business at any time of year, but especially so over Christmas, when things get busy and people start taking time off for the holidays. Get Ahead VA’s franchisees know how much their VAs are needed during the festive season, and they offer a wide range of services to help out local businesses at this time. Here are 5 key ways that hiring a VA can make a difference to your business this Christmas. 

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