An answering service is an outsourced service that answers your incoming telephone calls. The calls are answered and then a message is sent to your business by email. With our Virtual Headquarters answering service we aim to answer your incoming calls within 6 rings and to have your message with you within minutes of the original call.

Yes, during business hours your telephone calls will be answered by a live virtual receptionist. After hours you can either opt for our live after hours answering service or you can have an automated service. Either way, you will be notified of your calls within minutes and will be able to respond to the important ones when you see fit.

It is really quite easy, when you sign up for your free trial you will be allocated a unique telephone number. This number will be either an 800 number or a local number for a region that you select. You will then need to divert your existing number to this allocated phone number. If you want us to answer all of your calls then you would divert immediately while if you want us to answer calls that you can’t get to then you may transfer after 5 or 6 rings. Once you have diverted the calls then the new allocated number would be the one that we answer. Our receptionists would answer that number and deliver a message that you have agrred with us. The receptionists would take a message from the caller and would then email you with the details of that message.

For a lot of small businesses it gives them back the time that they need to focus on strategy rather than being dragged into the basic admin work at all times of the day. Other people find that it gives them back the time that they need to reaquaint themselve with contacts or friends and family. Businesses also find that it is a good way to ensure that they don’t miss out on any leads or any potential sales that come in after they have left for the evening. A Virtual Receptionist service can also be a good way of providing vacation cover and cover when staff are on leave.

We have similar businesses offering in both Australia and the United Kingdom. If you need calls answered within these markets as well then please talk to one of our friendly customer care representatives.

Yes, our answering service system links in to a number of popular appointment systems. Give our customer service team a call to find out if we have a link in to the system that your business is using.

Our virtual receptionists are predominantly located in Phoenix Arizona. We also have receptionists located in Australia and the UK however these receptionists are primarily focused on those markets. During US business hours your phone calls will be answered by our Phoenix based staff.

You could, however research that was done in Ireland showed that a high percentage of callers will simply hang up if they encouter a machine on the other side of the line. In some of these situations it may be a potential customer who is calling and you may be handing them over to a competitor by not having a live receptionist answering those calls.

No, we can answer as many or as few as you want, it is entirely up to you. Some businesses like to have us act as their virtual receptionist and take all calls whilst others prefer to have us just take overflow calls, after hours calls or calls when their own receptionist is away from their post. Whatever type of service you are after then we are happy to help out.

It depends very much on the answering service in question. The majority of answering services either charge by the minute or charge based on the number of calls. Here at Virtual Headquarters we believe that the charge per call method is much more predictable than charging by the minute. From the data that we have analyzed each call on average is around 1.5 minutes so if you are trying to compare the 2 pricing models you need to take this into account. Also, call length may vary based on the industry that you are in so you need to consider your own call length before choosing a provider.

What it costs you will depend very much on how much you use the service. To make things easier and more predictable for our customers we have several packages that cost a set fee and include a set number of calls. At any point, if you think the package is not working effectively for you then you can change to a bigger or smaller package.

There are a whole range of things that we can do. We can transfer calls directly to you, we can transfer them to colleagues, you can give us a list of numbers to try, you can have the call transferred to your hotel room or your serviced office. If you would like to find out more about the possibilities then why not have a chat to one of our customer care representatives. We pride ourselves on our overall flexibility when it comes to dealing with our customers calls.

We do not believe in long term contracts. We operate our answering services on the basis of a month by month agreement. When you sign up for our service you prepay for the month ahead. If you wish to cancel at any time then simply give us one months notice and we can cancel your agreement. Despite not having long term contracts we find that our customers still stay for a considerable amount of time because we provide a great value service.

No, there are no setup fees for establishing your answering service. Much of the setup can be done using our online portal however our helpful customer service representatives are happy to help you through the process.

Yes, we offer a 7 day free trial of our answering service to new customers. It is a great way to test out our service and to see if it is a good fit with your business. You don’t need to provide a credit card to sign up for our free trial and our belief is that once you have seen how good it is you will want to continue on to become a paying customer.