Office telephone assistant Challenge!

Kaybenson

Hi everyone,

My Cousin own a law firm. Sometimes when he's busy or away to court, a pre-arranged telephone assistant pick his calls REMOTELY and deliver the message via email to him.
I recently ask him how much the service cost him and to my surprise its 1 pound per call. I believe there should be a cheaper one somewhere.

Anyone knows any cheaper one?

Thanks

JPS29

Why not just divert the call to mobile, if cant answer there's voicemail so you can listen to the message and ring back.

Kaybenson

Thanks. Any other suggestion guys?

paulwf

Knowing the price per message isn't very useful on its own. If he only gets the odd call here and there so he ends up paying £5 a week then I doubt there are options that are going to be much cheaper. OTOH if he is paying for example £100 a week then it is worth looking around.

The level of service is also going to be important. Presumably a messaging company is required that has multiple staff so they can answer calls immediately at random times, and also deal with them in a professional and confidential manner.

scheming_gypsy

JPS29 wrote: »

Why not just divert the call to mobile, if cant answer there's voicemail so you can listen to the message and ring back.

that could work out more expensive.
1 - call from landline to mobile for the duration of the call
2 - then he has to listen to the voicemail and it's not free on all tariffs (if i remember correctly)
3 - then he'll more than likely return the call from the mobile which could possibly cost

swbrua

Google voice offers this service for free I believe, but not sure if it's available in the UK.

jhp

swbrua wrote: »

Google voice offers this service for free I believe, but not sure if it's available in the UK.

At present, Google Voice accounts, Google Voice numbers, Google Voice texting, and the Google mobile apps for Google Voice are for US users only.

It does not supply a free personal call answering service.

swbrua

jhp wrote: »

At present, Google Voice accounts, Google Voice numbers, Google Voice texting, and the Google mobile apps for Google Voice are for US users only.

It does not supply a free personal call answering service.

Ah yes, but they do transcribe and email voice mails, I assumed that would be a suitable option for the OP, but if it's still US only then what they support/offer doesn't matter.

Horace

I know that there is a company called Jam (https://www.answer.co.uk) who offer a PAYG service at £1 per call, they seem to be fairly efficient. There are other companies out there who charge similar rates.

There is an alternative however, your cousin could switch his phone off and have the calls divert to voicemail whilst he is in court thus it would save him some money but to be honest lawyers get paid a fair amount of money to £1 per call is not too bad in the scheme of things and no doubt he could claim this expense from the firm he works for?

Kaybenson

Thanks guys.

My cousin is fine with the current company who charges £1 per call. I was the one that challenge him that there must be a cheaper one out there. Something like £200 per month flat rate appears reasonable to me.