Recommendations for call answering service

[brickphone21]

Hello,

I was wondering if someone might be able to help with this one.

Could anyone recommend a good and fairly priced telephone answering service please? We're just looking for a company who will take our calls when we are unable to then send an e-mail with the caller's details.

Please do not recommend Voipfone though, they are massively increasing their prices for this.

Many thanks

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

No Missed Calls

UK Business Forums profile page for No Missed Calls

www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk

 

[fantheflames]

With some configuration, you could use https://www.podium.com/. There are cheaper alternatives out there too.

 

[Oli CSnotepad]

Hello,

I was wondering if someone might be able to help with this one.

Could anyone recommend a good and fairly priced telephone answering service please? We're just looking for a company who will take our calls when we are unable to then send an e-mail with the caller's details.

Please do not recommend Voipfone though, they are massively increasing their prices for this.

Many thanks

Hi there

I work as an Account Manager at CSnotepad, a call answering service in Brighton, we can 100% provide the service you describe and our entry plan starts at £45 + VAT a month. Would you have the time for a call today or sometime this week to chat through why you're looking for? Please send me a message if so!

All the best - Oli

 

[brickphone21]

Thank you for your help everyone. I will take a look today and work something out.

Very unimpressed with voipfone.co.uk as they are bumping up their prices 150% for the same service so we've decided to move elsewhere.

 

[Mark T Jones]

I've historically used answer.co.uk - which worked well for me.

 

[IanSuth]

As well as nomissedcalls there is firstcallhelpdesk (www.firstcallhelpdesk.co.uk) they cover 24x7x52

 

[fisicx]

@cjd may be able to offer some explanation.

 

[Ozzy]

There is also The Genie who I know personally, local to me, although haven't been on here for a year so not sure if they'll see this ?

 

[cjd]

@cjd may be able to offer some explanation.

Happy to share a business lesson

We introduced the PA service as an adjunct to our normal customer service operations - for which we won the Institute of Customer Service Award btw. We did it at marginal cost to us as we could soak up the extra PA calls across our 20 or so tech support staff. We have charged £1 per call (regardless of call duration) for 10 or so years with no minimum charge and no minimum use per month.

The service has grown and there are now dedicated staff answering those calls. I recently got round to reviewing our costs because I was being asked for more staff to meet growing demand and found that we were we losing money on the service - on our staffing costs alone. So we make a loss at the gross margin level before any other charges like supervision, network cost, call costs, overhead etc etc. If we added another member of staff to cope with the extra calls we'd lose even more.

So we did a business case for continuing the service or shutting it down. We also did a competitive review and found that no-one of any size was as offering a service as ad-hoc and cheap. Almost all have minimum monthly plans with no pay per use options. All were far more expensive. If you do the sums yourself, it's plain that it can't work - work out the minutes in the day and divide them into wages, NI and pension cost (we're a living wage employer). There are hidden charges in other services too, like telephone numbers, call back charges and call forwarding charges. And probably all manner of worker exploitation scams. All of which don't apply to us.

So we decided that we could keep the service, price it competitively and make a small profit on staff costs. We increased the price to £2.50 per call which is totally pay as you go - some people are making less than a call per month, they can still do that. We then have a series of plans offering discounts - they start very low, £10 per month for 5 calls (so £2.00 per call) going down to £1.50 per call for heavier users.

It will be possible to find cheaper services I'm sure, but please bear in mind that anything much cheaper is not sustainable, unlikely to be as good and most will contain a catch of some kind.

 

[No Missed Calls]

Hello,

I was wondering if someone might be able to help with this one.

Could anyone recommend a good and fairly priced telephone answering service please? We're just looking for a company who will take our calls when we are unable to then send an e-mail with the caller's details.

Please do not recommend Voipfone though, they are massively increasing their prices for this.

Many thanks

Hello!

Not sure if you have found anyone yet, but we offer a fantastic Pay As You Go service here at www.nomissedcalls.co.uk

Please give us a call on 0330 223 4881 and ask for Rosie

 

[IanSuth]

Jeremy Hawke mentioned you in the 2nd post and then I did as well in post #7