Davinci Virtual Blog

With the number of digital nomads on a steady increase, it’s not surprising that virtual office adoption has increased as well. However, the switch to a virtual office is not an easy one, especially when it comes to former traditional office workers that now find themselves working from home. 

Whether you are a one person company or the manager of a team using a virtual office, here are some tips that can help you ease into the transition and get the best out of this offering. 

Use different communication channels

Communication is key to the success of any project or business. The traditional office setting allows for workers to interact face to face with one another, which makes communication easier and more natural. To maintain this dynamic, you need to think about different channels that can aid in your communications; think about email, collaboration tools like Slack, messaging apps like WhatsApp or messenger, and the like. 

Conference Calling

The right conference calling platform can make or break your communications. Whether you are thinking about doing just audio or video, you need to make sure that the platform you choose can host several individuals at the same time. Additional aspects you should consider include recording options and screen sharing. 

“Off time”

Working from home and having a virtual office service means that you will be connected 24/7. In order to keep yourself from burning out and to help you  maintain a healthy work-life balance, you should establish off times for yourself and/or team members. 

Embrace the services of a virtual office

Most virtual office providers typically offer services like live receptionists, VoIP, and mail handling. Make sure you get the most of your remote work by taking advantage of these services, as they can help you manage the administrative side of business and help you maintain the line between work and life. These services also help in providing you with an extra layer of privacy, especially if you’re starting a new business venture or project and need to share your address and number with a several individuals or institutions. 

Last but not least, don’t forget the human side of virtual offices. Though technology and these types of services have made it easy for people to work anywhere, any time, it’s important to always keep in mind that face to face meetings are always beneficial and can go a long way. Luckily, virtual offices allow you to use physical meeting and work space as part of the service offering. 

Looking for a Virtual Office? Davinci offers Virtual Office rentals across the globe! 

Technology is transforming the healthcare sector. New Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices enable healthcare providers to diagnose patient issues faster and more accurately. They can also monitor patients and deliver care remotely using IoMT.  In the case of patients, they can monitor and manage their own health using wearables. These and other technologies are critical facilitators of telemedicine, which gives doctors and other healthcare providers the ability to diagnose issues, prescribe medications, and monitor patient status without ever seeing them in-person.

With upwards of 20% of the world’s population—or 1.2 billion people—expected to be over the age of 65 by 2025, the importance of delivering healthcare solutions through new mechanisms such as IoMT and telemedicine will continue to increase. Additionally, research shows consultations with healthcare providers for minor ailments are more convenient and less expensive than office or emergency room visits. This technological revolution in healthcare will be critical in closing the anticipated gap between patients needing care and the number of providers, particularly in the face of a looming 400,000-physician shortage within a decade.

Telemedicine Transforms the Visible to the Doctor’s Office

The concept of telemedicine changes the dynamics of the typical doctor’s office or even hospital. Doctors are embracing virtual office visits that make it possible for patients to receive medical care anytime, anywhere. Patients access doctors and healthcare providers any time of the day or night regardless of their location using their smartphones, video conferencing, and other technologies. With the typical doctor’s visit taking 2.6 weeks on average to schedule and two hours of travel and waiting, it’s very little wonder why patients rate telemedicine very highly. 

While many states prohibited most facets of telemedicine in the past (e.g., physicians could not write a prescription without first seeing a patient in person), many have changed their laws. Further, recognizing the fact that telemedicine can reduce the overall cost of delivering healthcare, three-quarters of healthcare insurers require some form of telemedicine. Thus, it is no wonder that healthcare providers are increasingly turning to telemedicine when delivering care to their patients.

Due to these technological changes, patients no longer need to come into physical offices when seeking diagnosis of certain ailments and the ongoing monitoring of issues. Rather, healthcare providers can see patients without having them come into the office. This also means doctors and nurses do not need to be in the office when dispensing diagnoses, prescribing medications, and monitoring ongoing issues. 

Implications of Telemedicine

So, what are some of the core takeaways when it comes to virtual offices in healthcare?

1. Mobile Explosion—from Doctors to Patients

It is hard to believe, but there are over 165,000 healthcare-related apps in the Apple iTunes and Google Play stores. Care providers and patients download these apps and use them for an array of different healthcare-related purposes. Whenever I see my doctor, the first thing he does when deciding what prescription to give me is look up the diagnoses on his mobile device and sort through the different pharmaceutical options. Concurrently, Patients are just as interested in mobile apps or mobility in general—from conducting their own medical research to monitoring their health.

2. Time Spent in the Office

With the advent of telemedicine, doctors and nurses aren’t tied to a physical office to deliver care to their patients. This means they can spend less time in the “doctor’s office” and more time providing care to patients from virtually anywhere. 

3. Physical Permanent Offices

Virtual offices may allow some healthcare providers to downsize their physical permanent office space. New scheduling applications and telemedicine reduce or even eliminate the need for waiting rooms. With real estate and leases sky high in some metropolitan areas, this can have a dramatic impact on profit margins. For those that require conference room space for larger meetings, rented meeting rooms are a great alternative. Healthcare providers can rent these on demand based on meeting requirements—from staff meetings, to patient consultations, to other non-health-related meetings.

4. Apps Available Anytime, Anywhere, and Any Device

With virtual offices, healthcare providers need access to the critical applications such as electronic medical records (EMR). These must be available 24x7, highly available and reliable, and can be accessed on all types of devices. When these apps aren’t available, healthcare providers are unable to deliver the care their patients require.

5. Video Conferencing and Smartphones

For a proper diagnosis of a medical issue, healthcare providers require more than a phone conversation. Rather, they need to see the patient. But this doesn’t mean they must see them in person. With many video conferencing services, it is possible for physicians to examine a patient virtually. Combined with smartphone technologies and attachments that take vital signs, listen to heart sounds, and visualize ear drums, doctors can conduct a medical assessment as if they were with the patient in person.

Patients Embrace Telemedicine

Not only is the digital era overturning traditional business models (e.g., retail, banking, taxis, etc.), but it is changing the face of healthcare. Virtual offices enable healthcare providers to optimize the time spent with patients—delivering better care while reducing costs. At the same time, the convenience of virtual offices is seen by patients as a much welcome change—nearly three-quarters express satisfaction in telemedicine.

Small businesses leaders and solopreneurs who have their smartphone tethered to their hip envision it as their lifeline to prospects and customers. But you may soon discover the lifeline is an actual albatross that constantly sucks your energy from you and interrupts important conversations and work. At the same time, offering only traditional engagement channels such as phone or email can prove inconvenient and frustrating to customers, who want to engage with business providers through an engagement channel of their choice.

Benefits of Live Web Chat

Wondering how live web chat might benefit your business? I’ve written about the value of live web chat for sales and customer service in past posts. Let’s take a quick trip through some of the scenarios.

1. Customers Want Live Web Chat Options

Customers want to use the engagement channel that fits their circumstances and nature of their inquiry best. Live web chat ranks at the top of the list when it comes to engagement preferences, with more than half of customers indicating they prefer live web chat over other channels. 

2. Expect Live Web Chat on Your Website

Nearly one-third of customers expect to find live web chat on your website and become quickly frustrated (or worse, they simply leave) if you force them to use other engagement channels. For those visiting your website on mobile devices, the expectation for live web chat doubles. The takeaway is that while businesses could forego offering live web chat a few years ago, that is no longer the case. 

3. Gain Engagement Efficiencies

Unlike phone engagement where a sales or customer service agent can field on engagement at a time, live web chat enables multiple concurrent engagement sessions—up to five or six depending on the nature of your business and customer inquiries.

4. Better Web “Returns”

Failing to offer live web chat on your website diminishes the likelihood that a visitor will come back. Nearly two-thirds of customers indicate they are more likely to return if a website offers live web chat.

5. Real-Time Engagement (“seconds count”)

Seconds literally count (viz., 60 seconds or less) when it comes customer engagement. Phone channels can quickly clog, forcing customers into lengthy wait queues. The majority hang up after 60 seconds. Worse yet, most of them never call back again. For sales inquiries, these directly translate into lost revenues. For customer service calls, phone wait queues result in customers leaving you for competitors who provide more engagement options. 

6. Close the Sale

Studies show that three-quarters of customers will not make a purchase on a website unless live web chat is offered. Without live web chat, they walk out your digital storefront, never to return. 

7. Pile Up the Shopping Cart

In addition to being more likely to make a purchase, customers who use live web chat buy more over the long run—upwards of 4.5x. Average order value goes up as well—by as much as 10%. 

8. Conversion Rates

Studies show customers are 40% more likely to purchase online when they engage with the business over live web chat. This makes a lot of sense; live human-to-human engagement builds an emotional connection that cannot occur over a website only. 

9. Customer Loyalty

Frustrated customers translate into dissatisfaction and what is frequently deemed detractors—customers who feel no attachment and passively or actively seek alternative consumer or business relationships. In contrast, those who are engaged, not only are loyal but willing to advocate on your behalf. With live web chat topping all engagement channels when it comes to customer satisfaction, the case for it is compelling. 

10. Faster Problem Resolution

In many instances, customers who use live web chat for help in resolving problems see faster problem resolution than those who use other engagement channels such as phone, social media, and email. Specifically, the ability to share screens over live web chat sessions enables customer service agents to hone in on a problem quickly and efficiently.

11. Customer Convenience

Often, it isn’t possible for your customers to engage over phone. For example, while at work, a customer has limited—or sometimes no—time to place a call. But in the case of live web chat, they can multitask, continuing to work or fulfill personal obligations. Over half of your customers cite this as a key reason why they use live web chat.

12. Competitive Advantage

While the numbers of businesses offering live web chat on their websites has growing exponentially in recent years, there remain numerous outliers and variances across industry segments. Businesses that offer live web chat have an advantage over competitors that do not.

13. Proactive Engagement

Live web chat enables you to proactively engage with website visitors based on their identity and behaviors. This helps you hone with whom you engage and with whom you don’t engage. 

14. Harvest Data

Live web chat captures valuable data used to gain deeper customer insights such as top service issues, webpages that generate the most live web chat engagements, and customer service agents who generate the highest levels of customer satisfaction. Use of natural language processing (NLP) moves analysis beyond numerical data to the actual language used—both by customers and your customer service agents.

15. Quality Control

You can quickly and easily pinpoint product and service issues identify process breakdowns with customer service and sales agents using both numerical and NLP analytics. 

Evaluating Your Live Web Chat Options

With the above in mind, there are a few considerations to keep in mind when vetting live web chat options:

1. No Resources, No Problem

Many small businesses lack the resources—and expertise—to offer live web chat engagement. But outsourcing live web chat to third-party providers like Davinci Live Web Chat services provides them with a cost-efficient, scalable option. 

2. From Static to Proactive Engagement

Look for a live web chat solution that offers static and proactive engagement. The latter needs to be based on both the identity of the visitor (viz., account-based marketing) and their behavior. 

3. Live Web Chat Interface

Brand experience is critically important in the digital era. Thus, it is pivotal to customize the color, size, text, shape, and image of your chat button. 

4. Integrations

Customers want integrated engagement experiences. You require live web chat that integrates with your web analytics, social media sites, customer relationship management system, and helpdesk and ticketing systems. 

5. Reporting and Analytics

Understand what data analytics are required to generate the business insights you need. Some of the outputs to consider include transcription, numerical and natural language data, and reporting. 

6. Security Protocols

Protecting customer data is a nonnegotiable. But it has never been more difficult to protect against malicious intrusions and data breaches. Here, it is important that you confirm that your live web chat provider prevents unauthorized data access, has the right network security protocols in place, and maintains a data backup plan and disaster recovery mechanism.

I could mention other factors such as reliability and availability (amount of permissible downtime), customer support and service level agreements (SLAs), and elasticity (viz., ability to accommodate seasonal fluctuations, etc.). But the above will provide you with a solid foundation on which to build your digital engagement strategy. 

Customer service is a key component of the healthcare industry. Given the nature of the industry, a person’s health, it comes as no surprise that patients and family members often have various questions for their medical providers; whether it is about making an appointment, scheduling treatment, dealing with insurance, or renewing a prescription. 

Answering phone calls in the healthcare industry is no small, nor easy task. And because sometimes the topic of conversation is sensitive, doctors and medical organizations often need to rely on highly trained and qualified individuals. Additionally, some clinics tend to offer after hours call services; which meant that hiring the right staff is a tough challenge. 

Luckily, Live Virtual Receptionists have made a splash in the healthcare industry; making it easier and cost friendly for medical practitioners and organizations to offer excellent customer service, at all times of the day.

Live virtual receptionists can seamlessly merge with the healthcare industry by becoming an integral part of a company or practitioners’ customer relations team. The nature of virtual receptionists will allow those in the healthcare industry to handle a higher volume of calls and respond to these calls 24/7 without compromising the quality of the of customer care. 

When people are sick or not feeling their best, they want to make sure that their questions are being taken seriously and that someone is actively engaged in catering to their requests. For this reason, virtual receptionists are a strategic operations solution for those in healthcare. Additionally, virtual receptionists are trained to answer phone calls professionally and with a personalized brand message- and schedule appointments on behalf of the patient when appropriate.

It’s also worth noting that live virtual receptionists decrease the amount of time that callers spend on hold, which translates into added-value for patients; especially in a world were nationally 80% of calls are answered within 20 seconds. 

Virtual receptionist services can be hired to answer calls with personalized greetings, messages, and scheduling. They decrease the amount of time callers spend on hold, and more importantly, callers won’t be greeted by automated machines. Moreover, virtual receptionists make it easier to do quality control and monitor the state of your customer care, as all phone calls are recorded and those hiring the service can make sure that their calls are being handled in the best manner possible and that requests are followed-up with by the right person. 

Davinci Virtual Office Solutions strives to be #1 in providing our clients with a professional team of dedicated receptionits. We know every call is important, especially to a patient inquiring or needing to schedule an appointement. Let Davinci help you! Check out or benefits for Live Receptionist Services. 

Small businesses and solopreneurs can gain measurable benefits using live virtual receptionists. Admit it. You’re professional and personal lives are stretched—sometimes to a breaking point. A recent study by Gallup of small business owners found that 39 percent report working over 60 hours every week. Thirty-six percent work six days a week, with 21 percent indicating they work seven days a week.

It makes sense that small business owners should look to live virtual receptionists. Often available on-demand, live virtual receptionists enable small business owners to focus on their business while outsourcing administrative functions such as answering—and where appropriate routing—incoming calls, texts, emails, and live web chat. 

Not only does this increase productivity, but it ensures that your prospects and customers receive virtual real-time engagement—getting their questions answered and their problems resolved. In the case of the latter, too many phone calls simply aren’t answered—62 percent according to one study. In addition to frustrating customers and driving down satisfaction and loyalty, unanswered calls can directly impact sales. 

Beyond impacting inbound communications, live virtual receptionists also can help small businesses become more proactive in their outreach to customers and prospects. In this case, live virtual receptionists can be used for targeted sales and marketing call campaigns and outreach to facilitate customer service interactions or advocacy activities. 

The good news is that accessing and engaging with live virtual receptionists has never been easier. Live receptionist services like Davinci Live Receptionists provide small business owners with a low entry point as well as the ability to scale to accommodate business growth and fluctuations in incoming calls, email, text, and live web chat. 

So, now that you’re convinced that you need a live virtual receptionist services, what are some of the things that you should seek in a provider? Following are 11 traits of a good live receptionist against which you can evaluate your options:

1. Reliable and Available

It is critical that they reliable and available. Many customers and prospects simply will not call back if their call goes unanswered or if they are put into a long queue. Studies show you have less than 75 seconds to engage before callers hang up and go elsewhere. Additionally, even in instances where the call is answered, one in five callers will abandon the call. Make sure your live virtual receptionists answer calls in near real time and make the seconds count. 

2. Knowledge of Your Business

Fielding an incoming call or initiating a live web chat are meaningless activities unless your live virtual receptionist understands your business. Customers and prospects will become frustrated very quickly if your live virtual receptionists cannot answer their questions, route them to the right person, enable them to self-serve by finding the right information, or resolve their issue. 

3. Resourcefulness

Memorable interactions translate into positive customer experiences. Live virtual receptionists must understand your business and keep their pulse on the issues confronting your customers. Rather than simply taking messages and forwarding calls, live virtual receptionists take a vested interest in your customers and roll up their sleeves to help them answer their questions and solve their problems. 

4. Versatile and Agile

Live virtual receptionists often serve numerous customers representing varying industries. In these instances, they must be able to quickly and seamlessly transition between customers with widely diverging questions and issues. They absorb best practices and lessons learned, applying them across each of the accounts they serve.

5. Communications Skills

Verbal and written communications skills are a requisite for a live virtual receptionist. Whether speaking with a customer to resolve a service issue over the phone, chatting with a prospect about your products or services over live web chat, or following up with a customer who called the day before about the status of an order, live virtual receptionists must possess excellent communications skills to be successful.

6. Brand Advocates

Live virtual receptionists are often the entry point to your business and those initial interactions have lasting brand impressions. Serving as ambassadors for your brand, live virtual receptionists need to be enthusiastic and knowledgeable about your business and industry.

7. Organized

Live virtual assistants must juggle between a lot of different customers, service and sales scenarios, and tasks that necessitate someone who is organized and able to make quick sense of all of these nuances. Live virtual assistants who lack organizational skills simply cannot keep up with the pace and will falter and fall behind—often dropping the ball or delivering subpar engagement experiences. 

8. Multitask

The concept of doing one thing at a time, doing it well, and then moving on simply doesn’t exist in the digital world. Rather, live virtual receptionists must be able to multitask—serving one customer on the phone while chatting with two others in live web chat sessions.

9. Business Savvy

Not every customer or prospect interaction goes well, and here live virtual receptionists need to know when a call needs to be escalated to higher tier support. Understanding when to escalate a customer interaction from one engagement channel to another is also important (e.g., transition from live web chat to phone).

10. Resilient

It isn’t easy to serve on the front lines when it comes to customer service or sales support. Some calls, live web chats, and email exchanges simply don’t go well. Customers are impatient and don’t want to listen and prospects window shop and lack serious interest. This can be disheartening to some and impact their work. Thus, it is important to look for virtual live receptionists who are resilient and able to quickly pivot from a negative engagement and deliver a great engagement experience for the next customer on the phone or in a live web chat session.

11. Motivated

Some live virtual receptionists work from their home offices, while others work from physical office locations with other live virtual receptionists. In either case, you need professionals who are self-motivated and willing to go the extra mile to find an answer or discover the solution to a problem. 

One key takeaway from the above list is that soft skills—those that aren’t learned—are as critical or more critical than hard skills when it comes to live virtual receptionists. Understanding how your live virtual receptionist provider selects candidates for their team and how they evaluate them on an ongoing basis is important. Those that place a higher primacy on soft skills are likely to be the ones that deliver the best results.