People ask what we do and I usually say six words. We answer your business phone. That is the whole category, and it is older than the internet. Here is what it means in practice.
Someone calls your business. Instead of ringing out to voicemail, the call is picked up, in your company's name, by someone who is not you.
That is it. Everything else is a variation on who picks up, what they are allowed to do, and what happens next.
A good answering service does four things with every call, in order.
That last one is the dividing line in this industry. A traditional answering service stops at the message. The caller still has to be called back, and while she waits she is dialing the next business on the list.
This matters more than the feature list, because the failures are what lose you customers.
Any service that will confidently answer anything is a liability wearing your company's name.
There is one question that settles it. When the phone rings and you cannot pick it up, what happens right now?
If the answer is voicemail, you need something. If the answer is a receptionist who is already at capacity, you need something. If the answer is your cell phone at 9pm on a Saturday, you need something, and you probably needed it a year ago.
If the answer is a staffed front desk with real coverage and a real overflow plan, you are fine. Some businesses are. Most are not, and the ones that are not usually do not know it, because a missed call produces no evidence.
Call your own business. Do it tonight, after hours, from a number nobody there recognizes.
Listen to what a customer with a problem and a credit card would hear. If it is a full voicemail box, a dead line, or twelve rings and nothing, you have your answer and it cost you two minutes to get it.
Pricing in this category is usually per minute or per call, which means a busy month costs more and nobody can forecast it. We price it flat and monthly instead: chat at $200, voice at $500, both together at $575. Month to month, cancel any time.
The comparison that matters is not against zero. It is against one booked job. In most trades a single recovered job pays for the month.
No. Voicemail records a message after the caller has already decided you are unavailable. An answering service picks the call up so the caller never reaches that decision.
They are told they are speaking with an assistant if they ask, and the assistant never pretends otherwise. It still answers in your business name, because it is answering on your behalf.
It routes to your on-call phone immediately, using rules you define. Your business decides what counts as an emergency, not us.
Yes. The booking goes onto your calendar during the call and the caller gets a text confirming it. That is the difference between a message and a booked job.
Nobody sets out to miss calls. It happens because the phone rings at the worst possible moment and there is nothing behind you. Put something behind you. That is the entire product.
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