There is NO WAY I'd want Jo answering phones. Brian has mentioned some of the reasons. As a qualified nurse, she can earn just shy of $60k, why employ her, when I can employ someone for half that? She doesn't work, but if things tightened up, I'd still prefer she went to work and did what she loves and earn that sort of money than slave away in a job that she doens't really like.
My parents ran their CC business like FCC and I know Ma resented the phones after a while.
I run a permanent receptionist but she is a mum so only works 30 hours a week. Over the past 3.5 years, she has definitely lost some of her zeal and
punch.
In the first 2 years, she treated the business as if it was her own. A few thing came into her personal life that have affected her performance slightly. Familiarity breeds contempt and sometimes I catch her almost edging on abruptness. Not often, but occassionally.
This really worked well for us with 2-3 trucks. Sometimes I wish she was full time. When she leaves at 3pm she forwards the phones through to either myself or my lead technician. That can be a bit of a drag.
We're looking at swapping over from a server based job management system to web based in teh near future and that'll make it easier for us techs to access calendars etc.
John