Virtual assistants save cash
Q: I have a growing business in tree care and urban forest consulting and am considering outsourcing our call management. I have found that it is important for potential customers to reach a live person even if they are leaving a message. Are there dependable companies that market to small businesses? We take 25 to 40 calls a week from people inquiring about treating their diseased trees.
East Bay arborist
A: At one end of the spectrum there are call centers - those folks who answer the phone when we are ordering stuff from a catalog or complaining about how our computer is on the fritz. But most call centers are geared to large businesses that receive thousands of calls each week, not to small outfits like yours that field a few dozen calls.
At the other end of the spectrum is the old-fashioned answering service - the kind used by many doctors’ offices for night and weekend calls - where someone takes a message and then passes it on to the business owner.
Then in the middle there’s a growing category of souped-up answering services and virtual assistants who provide more than basic message-taking.
Reliable Receptionist in Walnut Creek is one example of a souped-up answering service. It has the ability to connect calls to your cell phone when you’re out in the field, and to schedule appointments for you in a Web-based program that you can view and edit from any computer.
Owner Victor Mataraso encourages clients to come in and meet his staff, and to provide background information so that his receptionists can answer basic questions.
“Our clients can say, ‘Here are the top 10 issues that come up in phone inquiries, and here are the things we’d like you to do,’ ” Mataraso said.
Virtual assistants are independent entrepreneurs who provide a range of administrative or creative services from their own office. It’s like having a Gal or Guy Friday on a contract basis. A virtual assistant might be editing a report for one client and organizing a conference for another, while answering phone calls for your tree-care business.
“They can help you filter calls, can be trained in answering some questions, and can help you market your business by making outgoing calls,” said Nina Feldman, who runs an Oakland firm called Nina Feldman Connections that provides free referrals to office and computer support businesses. “Hiring a full-time phone receptionist can cost $30,000 a year. Virtual assistants can usually give you a stable month-to-month retainer of a few hundred dollars, with no hidden fees.”
How to find a reliable answering service or virtual assistant? The best approach is the same way you’d find any other service - through personal referrals. Ask other business owners to recommend someone. Check references.
Ask how many hours a day these firms offer live receptionists; some shift over to voice mail at night. Ask what services they provide and how they forward your messages. E-mail? Text message? Pager? Fax? Find out how long they’ve been in business, and how much staff turnover they have.
And call up some of the clients of these firms - at a time when the firm is answering their calls - to see whether you like the way they’d be greeting your potential customers.
Want more info? The Association of TeleServices International offers tips for choosing an answering service at links.sfgate.com/ZBRX.
Q: We run a marketing agency that wants to grow by adding people, but not expanding our bricks-and-mortar facilities. If we hire full-time and part-time telecommuters in California and in other states, do we need to purchase workers’ comp insurance? How about other types of liability insurance?
Eager to expand in S.F.
A: You need workers’ comp coverage for all employees - no matter whether they are working 40 hours a week in your main office, 20 hours a week in their own homes, or one hour a week at the corner Starbucks.
You would not need workers’ comp coverage if these folks were independent contractors. But keep in mind that the Internal Revenue Service and state tax officials have very strict rules for what constitutes an independent contractor.
You can’t simply declare someone a contractor as a way to get out of paying workers’ comp or employment taxes. (For a summary of California and federal rules about employee-versus-contractor, see links.sfgate.com/ZBRY.)
As for liability insurance with telecommuters, Bruce Callander of Sweet & Baker Insurance Brokers in San Francisco offers the following tips:
– Make sure your general liability policy doesn’t include a “designated premises endorsement” that would limit coverage to your main place of business.
– Add a rider to your general liability policy that would provide coverage for vehicles owned by your employees. This is called “non-owned and hired auto coverage.”
“Say you’ve got Mr. Work-out-of-his-home, and he’s running to an appointment in his own car and hits someone on company time,” Callander said. “His personal auto policy is in the first position (for covering liability), but if he is uninsured or under-insured, the plaintiff’s lawyer will say, ‘This happened on company time, therefore there’s liability against the business.’ ”
– Consider adding coverage for employment practices liability, if your business is adding significant numbers of staff. This would cover legal fees and damages stemming from lawsuits over wrongful termination, job discrimination and sexual harassment.
“The larger a company becomes, the more valuable this is,” Callander said. “That’s because as a company grows, you have a series of sub-managers and can start to lose control” over how employees are being managed.
Free legal clinic: Got legal questions about your small business? The Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center and Legal Services for Entrepreneurs are offering a free legal clinic on Dec. 12 in San Francisco. To register for an appointment of 30 or 60 minutes, call (415) 348-6248. You can get help from a lawyer on issues such as contracts, employment law, copyright and trademark, real estate, financing, and what kind of business entity to form.
And more free stuff: Intuit, the maker of QuickBooks, has two new freebies for small businesses. JumpUp.com is a site that offers how-to articles on various aspects of running a small business, along with forums where business owners can share tips and advice.
And for folks on the verge of starting a one-person business, Intuit offers a free program called QuickBooks SimpleStart to track sales and expenses, create invoices etc. Of course if your business succeeds and grows, you’ll need to shell out money for a full-blown accounting program, but SimpleStart could be useful while you test the waters. See links.sfgate.com/ZBRZ.
Send your small-business questions to Ilana DeBare at mindyourbiz@sfchronicle.com, or to Mind Your Business, San Francisco Chronicle, 901 Mission St., San Francisco, CA 94103.
