Phone Answering Service / Virtual Receptionist

Nednats

fuzzball172 wrote: »

It looks like there could be a potential business opportunity here... How much would you be willing to spend per phone call? Any stay at home parents could make a little sideline out of being a virtual receptionist. My second telephone number company offer this service...
Call Whisper - Audio Solution

Identify your Inbound Call

Our Call Whisper service will play a Voice Message to the Receiver of the Call before connecting it, informing them which Phone Number, Company or Advert the Caller is responding to.
This service is particularly useful for Businesses with more than one Brand or for a receptionist answering calls for than one Business.

ttnc.co.uk

Might be worth looking in to...

Companies that I have seen that offer an real person answering the phone charge between £0.85 - £1.05 a call plus a monthly fee. A bit similar to how you operate. But I would be willing to pay more than that if there wasn't monthly fee.

The monthly fee is much as I am expecting to get less than one call a week. But say I got one call a week and paid a monthly of £30. Each call is costing me more than £7.50 which I am not will to pay. Plus some companies are charging a setup fee £50. Overall it is to expensive for what I want from it. If I pay montly fee I have to pay that for a month even if I get no calls.

I reckon this could be done alot cheaper. If I paid £1.50 a call this seem alot per call it is cheaper than a monthly fee.

There is defently a gap in the market for this kind of service as I have been searching for days now and still haven't found a soultion.

paulwf

Nednats wrote: »

There is defently a gap in the market for this kind of service as I have been searching for days now and still haven't found a soultion.

In reply to this and your earlier reply to my comment...something like this could be done from home as long as it was on a big enough scale. I worked for a text answering company (like AQA or 118 text) and there would be a network of us working from home logged on to the server answering questions. Presenting a professional image was never a problem as the basic training was excellent...the only difference is that you would need to insist employees worked in a quiet room which might limit the potential for stay at home moms and suchlike. In fact the business model could be very similar, the company would get £1 a call with 30p of that going to the employee on the assumption that they can handle a call every 3 minutes.

Specifically in reply to your previous comment...if you used just one person obviously find someone you know is professional, and yes there is the risk of a missed call but a 90+% answer rate should be achievable. It was just an "off the wall" comment though.

Nednats

Thank you to everyone who replyed to this thread.
After some research I found a company who will charge to answer our phone £1 per call. But after phoning them with an enquiry and expeneriencing how the deal with their own customers I don't want them dealing with mine.
I think I have now worked out a temporary soultion. Get a SIP number and divert it to few select people I trust and are contected to the company. A system where one phone rings for a few seconds and if not answered diverts to someone else. I thought about get an few old mobile phones but I think it would be more convient if went to their existing phone. The problem is how do they idenify the call as from my company and answer it my company name? I know a call whispering service was mentioned earlier in this thread. A call whispering service is cheaper than a answering service but I was wondering if there was a cheaper way. If I had daul sim adapter in a mobile phone am I able to tell which sim is recieving the call? any other ideas anyone?

Flower7_2

paulwf wrote: »

My mad thought for the day...loads of people on the Up Your Income board spend significant amounts of time doing surveys, click throughs and reviews for very little money. Could you find someone to give a cheap mobile to, give them some training, then divert calls to that phone when you are busy? 50p to process a call (total processing time 5 minutes) would pay min wage.

Just been reading through and brain was ticking over at the same time - have you thought about a friend at home with small baby, granny at home, friendly neighbour etc. taking it one stage further - anyone out of work could set up some sort of business doing this - I'm no telecoms genius (there's probably some easy technical setup to do this) but mobiles are so cheap now pure basics would be different mobile different client, different script etc!

HappySad

Flower7 wrote: »

Just been reading through and brain was ticking over at the same time - have you thought about a friend at home with small baby, granny at home, friendly neighbour etc. taking it one stage further - anyone out of work could set up some sort of business doing this - I'm no telecoms genius (there's probably some easy technical setup to do this) but mobiles are so cheap now pure basics would be different mobile different client, different script etc!

Yes & you only purchase a cheap mobile with no cost as the calls are all incoming.