Professional Telephone Answering Service

A call answering service handles incoming phone calls on behalf of a business or individual. This service typically includes answering calls, taking messages, and forwarding calls to the appropriate person or department.

Call answering services can be especially beneficial for businesses that receive a high volume of calls or operate outside of regular business hours.

By outsourcing their call handling to a professional phone answering service, businesses can ensure that all calls are answered promptly and professionally, improving customer satisfaction and overall efficiency.

A telephone answering service works by providing a professional and efficient solution for managing incoming calls on behalf of a company or individual. When a call comes in, it’s answered by a trained operator who is knowledgeable about the specific business or industry.

The operator gathers all relevant information and handles the call based on predetermined protocols or instructions provided by the client. This could involve taking messages, scheduling appointments, transferring calls, or providing basic customer support. 

The goal of a call answering service is to ensure that all calls are handled promptly and professionally, improving customer satisfaction and freeing up valuable time for business owners to focus on other tasks.

Using a telephone answering service firstly ensures that all incoming calls are answered promptly and professionally, even during peak times or outside of regular business hours. This helps to enhance customer satisfaction and prevent potential clients from being directed to voicemail or going unanswered.

Additionally, a phone answering service can provide a personalised and friendly customer experience, building trust and credibility with customers. Furthermore, outsourcing call answering services can be incredibly cost-effective compared to hiring full-time receptionists, as it eliminates the need for additional office space, equipment, and full-time employee wages. 

Overall, using a call answering service can improve customer service, save time and money, and contribute to the overall success of a business.

Any business that struggles to get to the phone on time all of the time can benefit from using a telephone answering service. Businesses that benefit from our reliable, professional call answering service include:

• Medical practices
• Construction firms
• Estate agents
• Solicitors
• Small businesses
• Accountants
• IT & software companies
• Opticians
• Dentists
• Recruitment agencies
• Franchises
• Driving instructors
• Taxi firms

Yes, a telephone answering service is designed to handle multiple calls at once. Call answering services typically have a team of trained professionals who are skilled in efficiently managing and handling incoming calls.

Using advanced call management systems and technology, they can handle multiple calls simultaneously, ensuring that each caller receives prompt and professional assistance. This capability is especially beneficial for businesses that receive a high volume of incoming calls or those that operate in industries where quick response times are crucial.

By outsourcing their call handling needs to a professional phone answering service, businesses can ensure all their calls are efficiently managed, improving customer satisfaction and allowing them to focus on their core operations.

Our most popular telephone answering service packages start at £200 per month, while plans for smaller businesses start at £49. All bills are optimised every month, so if you have a quieter month or your business is seasonal, we work with you and ensure you’re only paying the appropriate call answering service tariff each month. We price to the second, so your bills will never be rounded up to the nearest minute.

We understand that sometimes you have more free time or a sudden increase in calls.

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! We optimise your account based on your usage. If you use our call answering service less in one month, we adjust your package accordingly.

And if you use more, we upgrade you automatically. You’ll always get the best value telephone answering service, without any effort on your part.

Yes, we can provide an after hours call answering service, allowing you to effectively extend your opening hours and respond to more customer queries during evenings and at weekends. Our telephone answering service is available between:

• 8am-8pm Monday to Friday
• 9am-5:30pm Saturday
• 10am-4pm Sunday

We make sure your messages reach the right person in their preferred way, whether it’s email, text, or our customer portal.

Don’t worry about losing important messages – we store them in your client portal for easy reference.

We even provide call recordings so you can see how our phone answering service PAs handle each call, so you can request changes if needed.

Our standard call answering service contracts are offered on a 30 day rolling period, after your free trial and minimum commitment period of 90 days is over.

When you sign up for our telephone answering service, you’ll get a team of professional PAs assigned to you.

Your team will consist of three PAs and your account lead.

If one call answering service PA is busy, the others will take care of your calls. You’re in good hands!

Absolutely! The level of call handling we do depends on your chosen package. If you signed up for managed live chat, our virtual PAs will focus on assisting with customer queries online.

When you use our telephone answering service, you can specify if you want us to handle all your incoming calls or just help with overflow.

Additionally, we can set up automatic diversions for specific calls, such as when your phone is busy or if the call goes unanswered for a certain time.

We’ll only answer the calls you’re happy for us to. As part of your phone answering service onboarding, we’ll discuss your exact requirements, regardless of whether you’re signing up for your free 7-day trial or as part of a longer term contract.

If we take a call from a wrong number or answer a sales call you don’t want to deal with, we can politely decline the call if you’d prefer and even ask for you to be taken off sales lists so you don’t get similar nuisance calls in the future.

During your call answering service onboarding, we’ll gather the contact info of all the employees we’ll be working with. This will help us quickly forward calls and messages.

You can let us know how you want us to answer calls and how you want to be notified about messages (text, email, or via our client portal).

We don’t just provide telephone answering services, we also offer complete call recordings for every call we answer.

This gives you the opportunity to review how your call answering service PAs handle your incoming calls and make any necessary changes.

You’ll have direct access to all our forwarded calls whenever you want through your client portal.

No, we don’t use AI as part of our telephone answering service. We believe that nothing beats the human touch, and hearing a friendly, professional voice at the end of the phone when you ring a business with an enquiry or contact a healthcare practice to make an appointment. When you choose Face for Business’ call answering service, you can expect a people-first approach.

An answering machine is simply there to record messages and kicks in after the phone goes unanswered for a certain number of rings. In contrast, a call answering service does answer the phone, and the caller will be greeted by a human call handler who will deal with their enquiry or take a message, ensuring it’s passed on to the right person. A telephone answering service provides a much more professional, human touch than an answering machine. Read more about phone answering services vs answering machines.

A telephone answering service and virtual receptionist can both answer calls for your business. The key difference is that while a call answering service will answer calls promptly and take messages for you, a virtual receptionist can also carry out other administrative tasks. These could include tasks such as booking appointments and other traditional receptionist duties.