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LIVE PHONE ANSWERING
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Be Agile
Reducing costs and working smarter is the way of the future. Flexibility and agility are so important for small businesses. It is just too costly to be locked into long term overheads that no longer provide the value they once did. While research shows that customers still prefer to contact businesses by phone, rather than emails, and texts and bots, it just doesn’t make good business sense to employ your own in-house reception for the call handling. There are so many other forms of communication now. Be agile and adapt to the change - use a digital receptionist.
A live 24 hour answering service is a great solution to meet these changes. Research also tells us that many Americans just can’t be bothered talking to a voicemail machine or listening to playback from a voicemail machine, and that means your potential customers and businesses too! So if you think voicemail is still a feasible communication option for your business, you might need to think again about your inbound call management.
Learn moreHonest Pricing
Our call answering plans are based on per call packages. We don’t charge by the minute like our competitors. So we give our customers a clear on-demand receptionist service plan with no hidden fees. Per call packages mean that our customers know exactly how much they need to pay each month. We also never lock clients into long term contracts – so you can change your call plans anytime you like. Many of our customers start out with a call package of 50 calls per month ($119 per month) and adjust their plan when their business grows.
Virtual Headquarters has more than 15 years call answering industry experience and our pricing is driven by our valued customers, paying per call is how they like it, and many have been with us for several years. We even offer bilingual services and call routing for our customers. When you choose Virtual Headquarters as your live answering service you know that even when some of your callers like to take their time expressing themselves and delivering their message, you won’t be charged more for it.
Learn moreChoose Experience
A telephone answering service can be a wise decision if you choose the right company. Telecommunications can be tricky, how do you make the right choice and who do you pick?
The right choice means you’ve selected a phone call service for your call handling that has been serving American businesses for at least five years – don’t risk your phone call answering to any virtual reception company that may not have industry experience.
An expert virtual receptionist service that's provided call answering for many years will also easily understand your requirements. They’ll have all the knowledge needed to set up your answer service without any delays or stress. The professionalism that comes from a long history of service means that Spanish speaking receptionists who offer multiligual support and a free trial should be normal, always check that these two items are on offer. Here at VHQ we offer prospective customer a 7 day FREE trial of our answer services to let them try it out for themselves.
Learn moreGet your FREE 7 Day Trial NOW
When you sign up today you'll get a FREE 7 day trial to see just how great our service really is!
Virtual Receptionist, Virtual Answering Service, Virtual Receptionists
There are many different names for our call answering service. You can even call our professional team ‘virtual receptionists’. We are a telephone answering service but unlike many of our competitors – our business hours receptionists are mostly based right here, in America.
We are also known as an remote receptionist service or a call screening or call overflow service and some customers call us their virtual reception or virtual office receptionist. Unlike some of our competition, we don’t charge by the minute, we charge by the call.
There is a third thing that makes us different. Experience. We have been involved in the call answering industry for more than 10 years.
Using our professional phone answering service is a smart way to grow your business. Great customer service is like gold, you retain customers and you gain customers. It’s all about relationships. If you treat your customers well and respect them, they feel it.
If your company doesn’t have a virtual reception that means either you are paying for an in-house receptionist (and paying even when the phone doesn’t ring) OR you and your team are trying to answer every single phone call yourself. Either way, a virtual receptionist may be a better solution.
Grow your business with a live virtual receptionist service.
Whether we call it live phone answering or remote reception services, it’s the same thing, a call answering service that works on behalf of your business.
This sort of service is definitely not outsourcing to other continents, it’s an American voice that warmly welcomes your callers.
When you join the thousands of businesses that use a professional answering service you’ll be in good company, a virtual reception is a growing trend across America and for great reasons.
Just some of the reasons:
1/ Many US small businesses use a call answering service because they need to reduce costs and they have realized the money they can save by not employing an in-house receptionist.
2/ Companies that are totally focused on customer experience prefer to use a live answering service because they want to guarantee an immediate service response with a warm friendly voice promptly answering the call in just the right tone - every time.
3/ When a business has a strategy to really grow and capture sales opportunities 24/7 they select a telephone answering service so that a real person can also be there to answer customer questions, no matter when.
4/ Every business owner needs to build an operational structure that ensures optimum performance and reliability. That means using a virtual receptionist team that can be relied upon to never miss a call. Successful business managers need to manage their precious time. That means also making sure that their key staff are also not constantly interrupted by general phone inquiries.
What Sort Of Business Uses An Answering Service?
Almost every sort of business can benefit from a virtual receptionist service, and remember we are not talking about some call centre on another continent, we are talking about an expert American virtual receptionist service that knows your business. So what kinds of companies use an answering service?
- Businesses that want to be available 24/7 and who need after-hours answering use virtual reception services. Plumbers, electricians and emergency business and household service companies quite regularly use receptionist services - so that callers can always speak to a real person at any time.
- Any American business that sells products and services across other time zones either within the US or international will often use live virtual receptionists, especially if speaking to a real person is important to the sale.
Virtual Answering Service
What other kinds of companies- Any small business that wants to make a good first impression should use a virtual answer service.
- Many one person enterprises use a virtual reception service. Legal and wealth consultants who are regularly on location visiting clients, lawncare and landscapers, technical specialists, artists and designers, and health and wellness practitioners all use virtual receptionists to ensure they are not interrupted while they work.
- Busy marketing and advertising studios employ a call answer service to deal with call overflow from campaigns and sales drives.
- Firms that want to reduce costs and save on their overheads often make the decision to move their in-house receptionist to another role or just downsize the roles that aren’t cost-effective anymore. Lots of modern businesses say it doesn’t make sense anymore to employ and manage your own receptionist , especially when the phone isn’t ringing.
Telephone Answering Service set up?
It’s a simple step by step process. One of the first things to think about is what personalized greetings you’d like callers to receive from your virtual receptionists. The call answering team will always use exactly the same greeting, but you can always change the greeting by using your control panel or just give the customer care team a call. It’s a smart thing to change the greeting now and then, especially during holiday seasons or special marketing campaigns where you are expecting some call overflow.
Virtual receptionists
You also get the option of getting a local number or an 800 number to complement your virtual reception service. Many of our customers like to keep their old number, so they just divert their number so that all the calls go straight through to their call answering service. So that’s the greeting and the phone divert solved. Then there are just a few other things to think about, such as what sort of calls should be transferred direct to you or your team? Just give yourself some time to consider how you’d like to prioritise your calls, perhaps anyone asking for you or your staff by name gets call forwarding to you? Whatever you decide, just clearly instruct your call service and they will always obey your directions. It’s also a wise idea to provide our team with a short, detailed narrative about your business and what you do, so that your live answering service can answer calls on behalf of your company with the confidence of really understanding your company and what you require for message taking. We believe in delivering a great service for your customers with our customer service.
How would you like your messages delivered?
Then finally, do you want your telephone answering service team to send messages via SMS or email. This just means how do you want to receive the caller detail for all those other phone calls that your virtual reception handles? The professional receptionist will expertly summarise the call and message the detail, just instruct how you want to receive those updates and they can be delivered to you anywhere in the United States or potentially the world.
That’s it.
Our call answering can grow with you!
Many of our phone answering service customers start with a basic call service and increase their package as they grow. With our services you can choose an answer service package that suits your business at a specific time and then adjust that package at any time in the future. Upscale or downscale. Whatever you need. Add on a service to cover national holidays, expand the reach to customers by offering live answering outside of normal business hours – your live answer service offers versatility and flexibility. We won’t try to lock you in with complex long-term contracts. We are one a successful professional live answering services simply because we provide our clients with a versatile service they can trust.
We charge by the call, not the minute
When you look into the costs involved with a telephone answering service you will see that a large number of our online answer service competitors are charging for their services on a per minute basis rather than a per call basis (we charge per call). From our experience "per minute" passes the risk of longer calls on to the consumer with the provider reducing their risk. Here at VirtualHeadquarters.com we are an answering service company that believes in providing a level of certainty to our customers. Our customers do not know how many minutes’ worth of calls they receive but they usually have a pretty good idea in terms of how many actual calls they receive. Our average call length is around 1.5 minutes so this means that if you are looking at the various answering service companies and are trying to compare apples with apples then our 100-call package would give you around 150 minutes. When you run the comparison you see that our call center is actually providing a great value virtual receptionist service.
Virtual receptionists free up time
Think of all the things that you and your key staff members can do with all of that free time that is made available once you get your phone service up and running. Maybe you can use the time for strategic planning or tending to your most profitable customers. You could also potentially use this time building new alliances and expanding your customer base. Whatever you decide to do with that time it will be more productive than simply taking those calls yourself.
Great for small businesses
A call service just makes sense for small and medium sized businesses as well as providing e-commerces support. Why leave your callers to deal with an answer machine or an automated system when they could be talking to a live person with a great service focus who can then provide them with real-time messaging. It is like having a virtual secretary! Do your small business a favour and get yourself a free trial for our virtual answering service. Our team is great at customer query resolution.
Choose wisely
We understand that there are many call answering companies that provide inbound services in the US market. There are a number of reasons why you should consider Virtual Headquarters as the American answering service company that you deal with. Firstly, we have great price plans when compared with the competiotion. Secondly, we charge by the call and not the minute so it is easier for you to understand what it is going to cost you. Thirdly, we have receptionists based in the USA who understand how business is done in the USA and understand service outsourcing. Fourthly, we are constantly refining our systems to provide a better service for our customers.
Like a free trial of our services?
Why not give our professional phone answering a trial run? You can sign up for a 7 day free trial of our cloud-based receptionist and test us out without even providing a credit card. If you are not happy with our service then you haven't lost anything. If you are happy then you may have found the receptionist service that you were looking for.
Frequently Asked Questions
It very much depends on how complex your processes will be. If all you want is to have a live virtual receptionist available to answer calls when you are not there then it will only take a matter of minutes. If you have more complex instructions in terms of what you want the virtual receptionist to do in different situations and where you would like emergency calls forwarded etc then it may take a little bit longer. Either way, by getting a live virtual reception service to handle your calls you will save yourself a lot of time and give yourself more time to focus on the important aspects of running your business.
Not at all, we operate on a month to month agreement if you require an answering service. If your circumstances change or you decide not to use us anymore then you can simply give us a month notice and we can stop the service. Also, if your circumstances change and your call volume increases or decreases then you can change your package at any time. We like to give our customers flexibility.
During business hours your incoming calls will be answered by our team of virtual receptionists located in Phoenix Az. Outside of business hours your call will be answered by either our Phoenix team or similar teams that operate in the UK or in Australia. Regardless of where these after hours calls are answered the receptionists would be using the same system and would be accessing the same data. The whole operation operates seamlessly.
Many of our customers report that their customers regularly think that the receptionist is sitting in their office. Unless you tell your customers that you are using an answering service they quite likely won’t pick up on it.
Prices will vary depending on how much you use our service. We have structured a number of packages that include a specific number of calls to make things easier for our customers. Basically, you get a package containing a specific number of calls for a set fee. If you use more than this number of calls then you pay a per call fee for excess calls. We find that this approach works well for our customers. The average small business customer spends around $150 per month for their answering service which is really quite affordable compared to the cost of employing your own internal receptionist.
Different answering service companies have different approaches to how they charge for their services. Many adopt a per minute approach whilst here at Virtual Headquarters we charge on a per call basis. This can make it quite difficult for prospective customers who are trying to compare different offerings from the different answering service companies. From data that we have on calls we have determined that the average call that we answer is around 1.5 minutes so if you multiply the cost per minute by 1.5 you should get a reasonable comparison. We believe that charging on a per call basis for virtual reception services makes it easier for the customer to get a feel for how much they will end up paying.
It really depends on your circumstances. Some customers are looking to open a business in a specific state or a specific city and would like a telephone number that is suitable for that particular location. Other customers want to look like a National business so decide to go for an 800 number. We have even had customers who pay to have local numbers in a whole variety of locations so it makes it look like they have a local office in a whole range of cities.
Not necessarily, we have phone answering packages but we also have virtual assistant packages. Your virtual receptionist can answer the phone and then follow instructions, ie, they might give out information to the customer in respect of your business, they may assist in taking orders or they may assist the customer in completing a web form. There are a whole range of things that a virtual assistant can do and we would be happy to work through your ideas with you.
No, we understand that many smaller firms like CPA practices and law firms operate at all hours of the day so we provide answering services 24/7/365. These days people expect businesses to be contactable at all times of the day and night. Our after hours answering service can take your calls when you are not in the office or when you are trying to focus on other strategic issues.
The great thing about our virtual reception service is that you can use it when it suits you. Some customers use it as an overflow service while other customers use it when their in-house receptionist is on their lunch break or on vacation. Some other customers use it as their full time reception service. It really is totally up to you.
People seem to dislike automated messages these days. Many people would simply hang up rather than leave a message.
Here are a number of reasons why we believe an answering service wins out over a recorded message.
Personal Touch – A live person answering your call feels way better than a robot recording. It’s like having a real conversation with someone who cares about your concerns and questions.
Flexibility – You can customize a telephone answering service to match your business’s needs. The operator can follow specific instructions, ask tailored questions, and assist with resolving your problem.
Immediate Response – Live operators can handle issues on the spot, which beats a recorded message any day. This means happier customers and fewer headaches for you.
Professionalism – Live operators bring an extra level of professionalism to your business. They can give your customers a polished, attentive experience that a recording just can’t match.
Enhanced Customer Experience – Having a real person answering your calls can make all the difference in how your customers perceive your business. A friendly virtual receptionist can make your customers feel valued and appreciated, which can encourage them to come back for more.