Call Answering Service launched

Well as it's coming up to Christmas what better time to launch our new call answering service!  We could have made you wait till the new website is launched, but we thought we would treat you to a sneaky advance peak of what is coming!

HLS Business Solutions has joined forces with Call Team, a group of professional Virtual Assistants, to offer a new call answering service.

Did you know that 1 in 10 callers who hear an answering machine hang up? You could be missing out on calls while you are travelling, in meetings, away on holiday or simply trying to get some work done.

Can you really afford to lose out on these important calls?

Let us answer your calls for you, our experienced team will answer with your company name, portraying a professional image, and allowing callers to believe that they are talking to a member of your team.

Our team of experienced Virtual Assistant professionals, work together to provide a very high standard of call answering for our Clients.  As Virtual Assistants we have experience up to PA level, and will add value to your business.  Call Team offer an intelligent call answering service.

Remember, if you don’t answer your calls your competitors will!

So what does this cost you? 

The monthly fee of £20.00 includes five phone calls, and additional calls are charged at just £1.00 each. We email your messages to you. If you would like to receive messages by SMS as well as email the cost is £1.20.

How it works

You provide us with some basic profile information on your company, and we provide you with your own telephone number to divert to.

When your clients ring your number they are greeted by our team of experienced call handlers, who answer the phone in your company name.Your caller will be informed that you are not available and they will be asked to leave a message. All the necessary details are taken and your message is relayed to you instantly via email and/or SMS.   

Should you need more than just a basic call answering service we are able to take orders, bookings, manage appointments etc as long as we have the necessary information from you.

Want to Sign Up

Just drop an email to helen@hlsbs.co.uk with any questions that you have, or to request a sign up form.

So what is a Virtual Assistant?

So what is a Virtual Assistant then? Lots of people ask me this when I tell them what I do.  So how do I describe it? The best description I have ever seen comes from Barbara Adams website, ClassicVA:

“The term Virtual Assistant (VA) is an entrepreneur who provides administrative, technical and social assistance to clients from their own professional office”

Basically I like to think that I take your headaches away!

To me, a virtual assistant is like having your own PA; I just don’t work from your office.  The majority of PA’s have years of experience as PA’s or Office Managers, they bring with them the knowledge they have acquired over those years, the contacts they have cultivated, the shortcuts they have learned, and an extremely professional attitude to business.

In my experience no two employers require exactly the same from a PA.  It’s the same being a Virtual Assistant.  You have a standard scope of services, but you work to the clients’ requirements and needs.

A Virtual Assistant can work for any size of company from a sole trader to a large PLC. I have been approached by all of them.  From the traditional PA roles such as managing your diary and email, to writing your confidential mail, making follow up calls to your database, to more specialised skills such as managing your social media accounts and Facebook page, designing your website, and even managing your SEO for you.

You hire a Virtual Assistant for a specific project, a set number of hours per month, or on retainer basis.  It’s a bit like having a pay as you go service, something you can switch on and off as you require, but I suspect, that like many clients, once you have tried it you won’t want to give it up.

Some Virtual Assistants have a particular niche, it could be specialized knowledge of a particular industry such as HR or medical, some have foreign language skills; others are expert at transcription, bookkeeping or credit control.

A group of us now work together for the benefit of our clients, the VA Support Group covers pretty much every skill you could ask for, so that if as an individual we don’t cover that aspect of your business, we can probably utilise the skills within the group to ensure your task is carried out, we can also call upon each other for assistance to ensure that urgent tasks are able to be carried out at short notice.

We even have our own call answering service which I will cover in a future blog.

Don’t be afraid to outsource, it can save you time, money and headaches.  Look at the tasks that consume your time, are you working in your business or on it?  Could someone else carry out that task for you in a more efficient or time saving manner? Ask yourself these questions, and then look at how much additional income you could generate for your business by outsourcing.  Consider the impression this additional resource would have on your clients and their perception of your business.  For example, when I make a call on behalf of a client I introduce myself as their PA or credit controller, immediately their business is perceived as more professional and larger than it actually is.

A couple of my Clients just like to know they can phone me when they need to and bounce ideas off me.  They will still go ahead and do whatever it is they wanted to do, but they like the fact they have someone they can talk to, in confidence, who understands their business and their situations and is on call when they need me.  I can also ask the odd question which they may not have considered.

Others like the fact that I am on the end of the phone when they are in a panic! Be it stuck in the middle of a shopping arcade and needing to find an urgent birthday present that day that is out of stock, or asking me to ring and arrange a surprise golfing present before they arrive at the golf course with their client, or looking at their diary and rebooking an appointment they can no longer get to.  Remember what I said earlier, it’s like being a virtual PA.

So please feel free to contact me should you have any questions about how a VA could help you or your business, or if you would like me to help you find your own Virtual Assistant.  Remember, because of the support of the VA Support Group we can now cover pretty much every requirement you ask of us – put us to the test today!

My Follow Friday Recommendations 27th November 2009

This week my blog is all about collaboration.

I would like to start by repeating one from last week, huge thanks to @EmmaWarren1 for introducing me to @HiHoTweet who sent a very generous jewellery gift for the Help for Heroes auction in memory of Matthew Hatton, and helped us raise a fantastic £6,800.00 on the night.

I have come across a new site @TopTenTips via Twitter over the last couple of weeks which is a really refreshing site; people who are experts within their fields are sharing their knowledge freely in articles covering many topics. Their website states:

“Developing the best resource for UK small business through relevant, reliable and reputable information to build business success

www.Top10Tips.co.uk is an online resource for people interested in the “how to’s” from business.

Provided by independent UK practitioners written for the UK market. Donating to UK charity”.

It’s the sort of site I would have liked to have found several months ago when I was just starting out, but it is relevant to all stages of business so I will be following it with interest.

I have had a great deal of pleasure from supposedly having encouraged some fellow tweeters into blogging this past few weeks and look forward to reading their blogs, @kipfxdesign, @creditmandotnet and whilst on the subject of blogs and articles that are always of interest to me have to mention @lawyer_coach, @Richard_White, @mattchedit and @efficiencycoach

Another one that has been mentioned before is @oddjobswap, a site where people can trade jobs or services, its such simple idea but such a good idea as well, remember to join before the weekend and complete the survey for your chance to win a £30 gift voucher.

Huge congratulations to @NikkiPilkington who made it onto the Forbes Thirty women entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter list this week!

In terms of someone who deserves a huge well done this week I have to mention @ElizabethWells, she has just completed her first year of trading from her lovely shop in the Shambles in York, and was interviewed by local radio this week, as an example of people doing well during the recession. I have had the pleasure of meeting her and she really is lovely, she has been very supportive of charity this year and is just a great example to us all when everyone else is moaning about recession, she has just gone out there and made a success of it.

Talking of being interviewed I had my first ever interview this week, in a teleseminar with @efficiencycoach (my first experience of a teleseminar as well). It was all about saving businesses money on their IT and marketing costs in the first year, and I would like to thank @efficiencycoach for her help and support. I will be covering some of these savings In my regular weekly blogs starting next week so do keep an eye open.

I would like to say thank you to some people, they either make me laugh, or RT a lot for me, or are generally just really nice people to follow and make Twitter such a nice place: @amyaccountant, @markbnorwich, @yourfirstpa, @confidentladies, @ToniHunter, @befabulous and @fuzzyduck

So enjoy your Friday, hope you have a great weekend and look forward to seeing you all on Twitter later!

To blog or not to blog?

Okay, I am a relative new comer to blogging.  I confess that I received some one on one coaching from @efficiencycoach  which gave me a little confidence, and helped me focus on my blog more, however, I don’t claim to be an expert at it.  I just feel slightly more comfortable with it than I used to.

So why should I blog? Well as much as I like twitter it isn’t always easy to get your idea across in those 140 characters.  To me, my blog should be an extension of my website. It will be soon when I move blogging platforms.   It’s a tool for sharing my ideas, my knowledge, my experience, my recommendations and my opinions with my audience.   I would also like to think that it was a tool for two way communication as well.  The blogs I have posted that have received comments really make it worthwhile, and reading the comments that have been posted is  a great way of seeing things from someone else’s perspective, or reinforcing what I already believe.

I don’t always want it to be deadly serious; I would like to think that an injection of humour is allowable, when appropriate.  After all, I am a northern lass!

And, I am sorry, I make no apologies for expressing my opinions in my blog, after all it is my blog, but I will listen to what you have to say, consider it, and still go off and do what I want anyway J

I would love it if my blog inspired someone else, perhaps to try something new themselves, to follow someone new on Twitter, or to consider an alternative opinion.

But most of all, I would like to think that people will enjoy reading what I have written, that it will add value to someone’s day in some shape or form.  

So I look forward to your comments, to seeing you post your own blogs, to interacting with you on yet another virtual level.

And in the meantime… I hope you have a great day!

Follow Friday Recommendations 20th November 2009

My follow Friday blog today really follows on from my blog earlier this week about community spirit.

I would like to say a huge thank you to @EmmaWarren1 for introducing me to @hihotweet who are about to launch a new range of exclusive Help for Heroes silver jewellery. The only person who has a set at the moment is the lady who runs the Help for Heroes project as it doesn’t actually go on sale until 30th November.

Imagine my surprise and delight today when I was asked for an address to send a full set of the Help for Heroes jewellery to for the auction on Sunday! What a fantastic auction prize, and how suitable for this particular auction. Matt is delighted with this very generous donation and I am sure the winning bidder on Sunday will be over the moon with it.

20% of sales from this range of jewellery will go to the Help the Heroes charity so I am more than happy to share a link to the website where you can pre-order these items.

I was really touched this morning when one of the mums from school came up to me, having read my post on my facebook page and handed me a raffle prize for Sunday night as well.

If you would like to still support this event and can't make it on Sunday you can either email Matt on matt_segar@hotmail.com or you can make a donation to the JustGiving page.

Between the lovely comments on the blog itself from : @TheWordWell, @MattchedIT, @SJAbradley, @kipfxdesign and @creditmandotnet and the donations from friends, Clients and @hihotweet above I am so glad that I have been able to help this great cause in some small way. It brings a warm glow to your day, you can have that too, just do one small act for someone else and for no reward and your week will hopefully feel as rewarding as mine has.

What's in it for me??

Growing up I remember hearing a lot about the “good old days”.  When neighbour meant more than just the person who lives next door to you, and people still had a sense of community spirit, you could leave your door open all night, and you could look to your local community for help and support when you needed it.

I didn’t have a particularly good start to the year for one reason or another, I was in a job I didn’t enjoy, I had some health issues and frankly life could have been a hell of a lot better.  However, I got through this by realising that no matter how hard things get or how bad a hand of cards life deals you there is always someone worse off than you.  Every day I got up I found some example of this.

In today’s society too many people think only of themselves. What’s in it for me?  You know, sometimes it’s nice to just go out there and do something just for the sake of it. Okay you might not get paid or get anything out of it, but sometimes that warm fuzzy feeling you get from helping someone else is enough.

I think I have had this on my mind for a while now, as it seems to me that my Follow Friday blog last week resolves around the same theme.  So what has prompted me to blog about this.

I had a conversation this week with Matt Segar, a local lad, who despite his young age, has really stepped up to the mark and it has impressed me greatly.

Sadly, Matt’s best friend Matthew Hatton was the first York soldier to be killed in Afghanistan earlier this year. A tragic and unacceptable loss for his friends and his family.  However, Matt’s family and friends didn’t just sit and dwell on their loss; they decided to do something in Matthew’s memory to help raise funds for Help for Heroes instead, a charity that was close to Matthew’s heart.

They didn’t exactly go for anything easy either! As a group they decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in March next year.  This has meant they are trying hard to raise the minimum sponsorship required.  Matt has organised an auction which will take place this Sunday at the Hilton in York.  Tickets are £10 each and are available from The Black Horse in Wigginton and the Dormouse in Clifton, or from Matt.

He has arranged live music from Jim Harbourne and Alistair Griffin, and the night will be led by Minster FM’s breakfast team and the Right Honourable Lord Mayor and Civic Party will be in attendance.

There are over 54 auction lots, with some pretty great prizes and I know from talking to Matt that this number is increasing daily, if you can’t get there on the night then pre-bids are welcomed so that you don’t miss out.  There will also be a raffle on the night as well.

Talking to Matt was humbling, the amount of time and effort that he has put into this auction is amazing, and he still has his biggest challenge ahead of him in actually climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.  Just looking at the list of auction lots it was lovely to see how much the local community had rallied together.

More information can be found here on Matt’s Facebook page for the auction, or contact me and I will pass your message on to Matt.

Matt’s Just Giving page can be found here as well.

So today instead of asking yourself what’s in it for me, ask yourself what small thing you could do for someone else to make their day better instead.  It may be something small, looking after a pet, baby sitting, going to the shop, or something a little bigger such as visiting an elderly neighbour to offer a bit of company and conversation.  It may be helping a business colleague in some way. But trust me, when you do, that warm fuzzy feeling is worth it.  Let’s bring the community back to our neighbourhoods.

It's all about sharing this week. Follow Friday recommendations 13th November 2009

This week’s Follow Friday blog is slightly different in that my first two recommendations are more about the websites than the twitter personality.

The reason I would like to recommend these first two is that to me both concepts really get across the message that they are all about sharing rather than selling.

The first is a novel site which can be found at http://www.oddjobswap.co.uk

At first glance I mistook it for a site where you would look for a handy man or decorator, but it is so much more than that. Peter and Julie Bruce wanted to boost community spirit and beat the credit crunch at the same time, according to their website. I think it is this community spirit that attracts me to the site. I also had to laugh when one of the services being offered was air traffic control! I cannot see that I will ever need that as a service but you never know! There are plenty of services on there that I could be in the market for though, from marketing, accountants, athletics coaching, gutter cleaning and the rest.

What made this stand out to me is that there are so many professional services being offered. I understand that the site is aimed at work at home parents, perhaps this is why it hits a cord with me, but I can also see it being an excellent resource for a new start up to gain some work, and some Client testimonials as well, to help build their reputation.

The other site I would like to recommend is http://www.networkingnow.co.uk, a new networking forum set up by @kipfxdesign. It’s Twitter id is @NetworkinNow In its first few days it has had over 7000 page views. As a start up business myself believe me when I say I have trawled the forums looking for advice and assistance. It was a pleasant surprise to join this forum and find a group of people so willing to share their advice and knowledge. It’s a great atmosphere, lacking the petty bickering that is often found on forums, and is ad free, which means you are not distracted from what is being said. Okay, it could change over time, as sometimes happens, but I would hope that some of you will join now in its infancy period and help shape the forum, so that it remains an easy going, educational and enjoyable site for all.

To end I want to tell you about a Twitter success story! Someone I follow made a comment to @MissFitUK. I was curious as they weren’t the sort of person to follow what I assumed to be a bikini clad babe! (Spent ages trying to preen my followers of bikini clad babes and Britney’s). I was really pleasantly surprised to find out that she is actually a young entrepreneur who has a clothing and lingerie range for bigger busted women, and her bio also describes her as a skydiving fruitcake! Not only did I think this is someone I need to follow, I also thought I know someone who she should talk to, @ElizabethWells who has gorgeous lingerie shop in York, which caters for bigger busted women. One tweet later and they are working together! @MissFitUK has told me she is bringing out a range of Xmas dresses, I really look forward to seeing them, as have had some awful experiences trying to find Xmas frocks each year, and always seem to end up in trousers instead!

So next time you come across someone on Twitter that will be useful to someone you follow don’t assume they will find each other, make a suggestion, and see what grows from it!