Small Business Stories -Virtual Receptionsts

Ivy Hartman: Welcome to 2007 NAWBO Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. I’m Ivy Hartman and with me is Rima McDonald of Virtual Receptionists. And Virtual Receptionists is exactly what sounds like you have a call center and tell us more about that. Rima McDonald: Yes, our call center is actually based in Georgia, but we run the business from home. I mean myself have a head office in Alabama. And what we do is we actually provide this calls answering service for single man shows like Solo who is looking for somebody to answer the phone for them. Ivy Hartman: And this is an international call center. So you’re taking calls from all over the world. Rima McDonald: We are taking calls from the US but for clients all over the world. We’ve just started giving—providing this service for the Singapore market and soon we will be in Dubai and Australia as well. Ivy Hartman: Fascinating. So tell us of any advice you have for other women business owners when they’re breaking into the global market. Rima McDonald: Well, I think one of the things that they have to realize is that with the internet being so advance right now they don’t have to worry about having to set up additional locations just because they want to go global. They can actually go global right from their own home. And all they need to do is just to find out who can take care of the communication structure like for example the phone, they have to make sure that you set up properly that calls originating from certain countries go to them even while they are in their own country. Ivy Hartman: Okay. Rima McDonald: Yeah. Ivy Hartman: Okay, I don’t think I understand so. Rima McDonald: Okay. Ivy Hartman: If you’re operating a business and they’re using or if you’re starting your own business then you need to make sure that they are using you as a client or as a service then you need to make sure that their calls no matter where they are and their businesses in the world and where it originates, wherever it originates from it will always go to you or that they’ve got their structure set up correctly so it goes to the correct place. Rima McDonald: Yes. Ivy Hartman: Is that right? Rima McDonald: Yes. Ivy Hartman: And you’re a native of Singapore. Is that right? Rima McDonald: Yes, I’m from Singapore. Ivy Hartman: And you launched your own business here in the United States. Rima McDonald: Yes. Ivy Hartman: How was that for you? Do you have any difficulties or anything successes you’d like to share with us about doing that? Rima McDonald: Yes. Recently, Singapore Press Holding actually wrote a story about me. A Singaporean who runs a busy home office in the US, and it’s actually many because I came to the US to try and live the American dream if I can, and then I run my own business from home and I manage to actually expand my business to provide the same service for companies in Singapore without even leaving home. So I am a living example of how a company can go global without even leaving home as long as they know how to set up their communication structure. And because of that they actually wrote about us and started telling people that Singaporeans you have to do business with the Americans and do not worry about not having telephone because you can actually do what Rima McDonald actually did. Except the fact, that I actually moved here because I’ve got married to an American. But I don’t have to move here if I know the structure before I came here. But now that I know it’s good. But I didn’t actually get a lot of help when I came to the US. I have to actually network and make friends with business people and they are so kind enough to actually teach me all these stuff including forecasting, web conferencing, the kind of stuff yeah. Ivy Hartman: You’re getting ready to launch your own online magazine? Rima McDonald: Yes, it’s the Women Online Magazine. Ivy Hartman: Good and when will we see that? Rima McDonald: Middle of June on the 15th of June we’re going to launch it. We have about 20 columnists who will be writing about health and fitness, business, career, love, relationships. Ivy Hartman: All the things important to women and business. Rima McDonald: Yes, everything. Ivy Hartman: So tell us again one key strategy to making sure that your strategic communication or your communication strategy is successful once you’re going to go global. You mentioned that the structure of your communication needs to be, it’s key in making sure that you know if you’re going to work from home and start your own business. Rima McDonald: Yes, I think one of the things that you have to be sure about is make sure that if you’re going to have, you’re going to be answering a lot of calls from local or from overseas. Ivy Hartman: Okay. Rima McDonald: You’re going to make sure that the calls are always attended too and usually they will call you when you are sleeping. So what happens? Ivy Hartman: Oh! Rima McDonald: So if you’re not really for a call center service or whatever to back up when they calls just make sure that you have a professional voice recording system that will record all these conversations. I mean all these messages and then you get back to them first thing in the morning but never, never wait. And if you can actually get up to answer the phone you do that until such time when you can actually hire somebody to make sure that your calls are always answered. Ivy Hartman: Then you could be that person because your call center would answer those calls 24 hours seven days a week. And you’d be able to perform that service, so then an actual person be answering that call for you as your business needs. Now talk about how you kind of work with virtual assistance. I know that you don’t employ them, but there’s an interesting partnership between the Virtual Receptionists and the Virtual Assistant. Rima McDonald: Yes, Virtual Receptionists only answer calls for companies, but we do not do administration work for our clients. And we have that kind of clients who wants the solution. They come to Virtual Receptionists they say, “Can you handle my calls at the same time I need somebody to help me write press releases or something my articles you know article banks.” That’s when I have a group of Virtual Assistants that I worked so closely with. We have about 25 of them. They are actually from partnering company called, The 24 Hour Secretary. And we actually try to outsource a job to them. And they in returned whenever they have clients who require call answering service they outsource the jobs just to us. So in that way, we actually partnering with each other, and if we have joint press releases that we can write together and we distribute them. We do that way all articles, joint articles we do that too. Ivy Hartman: One last question, are small business owners sometimes your clients or do you have major corporate clients for your Virtual Receptionists? Rima McDonald: Yes. Ivy Hartman: Okay, so is that really bigger more bigger clients that are outsourcing their reception calls to you or is that small business as well? Rima McDonald: I’m sorry you asked me if I have corporate clients? Ivy Hartman: Yes. Rima McDonald: No, my target market is small business owners, but they are the kind of business owners who earn at least $100,000.00 a year. They would be the kind of clients who want our service because they are like super busy. They have more than 20, 30 calls per day. Ivy Hartman: What are the benefits of doing this outsourcing as a Virtual Receptionists? Is there other benefits? Are there cost savings to the business owners? Rima McDonald: Yes, definitely because if you have 100 calls a month that is just the normal average of a busy entrepreneur let’s say, the cost is only $179.0 for example that’s only $1.50 per call. And it’s so much cheaper than actually having somebody to manage your calls 24 hours seven days a week. And they do it even on weekends. Ivy Hartman: Thank you Rima. Rima McDonald: Welcome. Ivy Hartman: Very enlightening. Keep it right here at sbtv.com as we continue our coverage of NAWBO at Atlanta 2007.