Answering services for small businesses can help startups, and medium-sized enterprises increase customer satisfaction and frequent purchases. An answering service is perfect for your business to create a great first impression on your customers. Therefore, it is a critical element of your overall business growth.
Answering services can provide you with a wide range of options to help you streamline your business processes. A small business answering service can cost you anywhere from 30 to several hundreds of dollars per month. However, their benefits and effects on your business are enormous.
Best answering services for small businesses:-
Ruby (Ruby Receptionists): Overall the best answering service for small businesses who require a reliable service
Abby Connect: The 2nd best answering service for small businesses to multiply the productivity with a virtual assistant
RingCentral: The best choice for businesses who require quick results via an intelligent live answering service
Pat Live: The best choice for companies seeking instant growth by answering your calls
AnswerFirst: Best answering service for teams seeking live services.
What is the right answering service for my business?
While there are several answering services available in the market, choosing the right one can be a bit challenging. As mentioned above, I have listed some of the best-known answering services. I will describe them in detail in this blog.
5 Best Answering Services For Small Businesses in 2022
Answering Services For Small Business In Details:
Everything You Need to Know About Answering Services for Small Businesses in 2022
#1. Ruby: Overall The Best Answering Service for Small Businesses
Ruby Receptionist is an answering service that can take calls, receive messages, welcome callers, and even direct calls. Ruby acts as an extension to your internal teams. Their role is to get the most out of every interaction with customers.
With its headquarters within Portland, Oregon, Ruby Receptionists was founded in 2003. They offer a wide range of voice services to small and medium-sized companies. Ruby works with companies across various health, legal, finance, and education industries.
Ruby is a trusted call answering service that boasts around 13,000 customers. They assist you in growing your sales by providing personal experiences to your customers 24/7 throughout the year.
Ruby Receptionists provides live virtual receptionists, as well as chat support. Answering customer inquiries in real-time is a crucial aspect of the customer experience. Ruby Receptionists lets you interact with your customers, whether they’re messaging you via the internet or dialing your business number.
Ruby is among the most reliable companies providing telephone service available. The staff members from Ruby are known for being courteous and friendly. The majority of users recommend Ruby to small businesses due to its value in growth.
Managing your Ruby Receptionists service is easy enough that you can manage everything from your mobile phone. You can handle everything from holding calls to setting up a client message, checking for incoming messages and calls, as well as syncing your calendar and contacts while on the move.
Compared to other services, It has custom frequently asked questions and an intake. That means that the majority of your questions are addressed within their FAQs.
Features:
- A dedicated group will help you expand your business by enticing your customers to make purchases.
- appointment scheduling, call transfer, and Text messaging
- Receptionists are on call 24/7 to ensure that you please your potential customers.
- It offers customized FAQs
- Ruby mobile app can transfer calls over to virtual receptionists and take messages, voicemails, etc.
- All plans include a bilingual assistant
- Learn more about how to expand your company from their learning materials.
Ruby Receptionist Price:
The price plans are in the following order:
- Call Ruby 100 ($319/month for 100 minutes)
- Call Ruby 200 ($599/month for 200 minutes)
- Call Ruby 350 ($999/month for 350 minutes)
- Call Ruby 500 ($1,399/month for 500 minutes)
#2. Abby Connect: Lowest Priced Answering Services for small businesses
Abby Connect is a wildly loved live answering service designed for small-scale businesses. It provides English and Spanish bilingual receptionists and voicemail to email. Personalized transfer tunes and unlimited recording and voicemail boxes.
Abby Connect is a Las Vegas-based small business answering service. Abby Connect refers to a live receptionist answering service with an experienced team of professionals to assist you with your phone calls. They’ve worked with clients from the financial, legal, and business sectors since 2005.
Live answering service is available throughout the day and night, seven days of the week. It lets your customers talk with a live agent without interrupting your employees’ work.
Abby Connect is a phone answering service provider with an entire team of professionals who take messages on your behalf. They will give you a higher return on your investment and save you time so that you can focus on other, more critical tasks.
Abby Connect offers new clients an opportunity to test their service for 14 days free of charge. After the trial, the cost of having an Abby Connect live receptionist answer your calls will be based on the volume of business calls you receive every month.
Abby Connect is a highly suggested answering service. Customers appreciate how quickly receptionists assist their customers and save a lot of their time.
Although they are virtual receptionists, the person taking care of your calls is a human being. The person who greets you will ask for directions and transmit all of your messages.
Features:
- They can provide you with customized answering hours, 24-hour service as per your requirements
- Appointment scheduling, Bilingual Receptionists
- Affirmative and dedicated answering service
- Recordings and voicemail box
- Receptionist service of top quality
- Your customers can make reservations for their appointment
- Transfer and announcement of a call
- Custom transfer tunes
- Solutions for Voicemail
Abby Connect Price:
There is a 14-days free trial. Pricing plans are as follows.
- 100 mins ($279/month)
- 200 minutes ($499/month)
- 500 mins ($1,089/month)
#3. RingCentral: most reasonable and Best Answering Service
RingCentral is a cloud-hosted VoIP answering service suitable for any business. The service is easy and simple to use. It is available in a variety of plans. You can pick the one that is right for you.
RingCentral offers its virtual service in 56 countries. With over 100 integrations to apps, including Google, Salesforce, Okta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Box, RingCentral is versatile and can easily integrate into most businesses’ workflows.
RingCentral arranges its services into two different tiers: small businesses and enterprise clients. The business tier for small businesses provides a complete small business answering service that comes with an auto-attendant system to handle your messages, calls, and online meetings—all in a highly safe environment.
To make the most of it for optimal use, you must have access to an internet connection, a cable or high-speed DSL, and a fiber-optic connection.
After you’ve installed it, you’ll be assigned a technician to walk you through the procedure and ensure that the program is working correctly.
RingCentral is among the top brands in the field, and their answering services don’t displease. Although they don’t have an actual receptionist who can take phone calls, their automatic receptionist comes with custom greeting and call rerouting capabilities.
The most impressive thing about it is it offers many features, including holding music and a virtual receptionist call recording, call forwarding and call logs, call monitors, alerts for messages, and answering rules. Its conference bridge can handle more than 1000 phone calls and other features that allow you to organize your video conferences.
Auto-attendant from RingCentral acts as an artificially generated receptionist sending calls to your company’s appropriate department or desk via one of a series of automated choices. Although it’s not as effective as having a person take your calls, it is more effective for a small-sized business with a call volume excessive for one person.
Features:
- You can connect with your clients via instant messages, calls, or video conference calls.
- Allows you to forward calls to ensure that your staff can receive calls from any place.
- High-quality video and voice communications
- User interface that is easy to use
- API Integrations Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and more.
- Installation and support for customers
- It lets you track your meetings, calls, and quality of calls with a single interface and gives an actionable report.
- Comprehensive messaging services
- Advance campaign administration capabilities and outbound dialing capabilities.
RingCentral Pricing:
- Essentials plan is $19.99
- The standard plan is $24.99
- The premium plan is $34.99
- The ultimate plan is $49.99
#4. Pat Live: Best Answering Service for instant growth
PATLive provides you with friendly receptionists who can take phone calls for you. They’ve been in business since 1990 and offer 24 hours a day customer support to help you make time savings and grow your business simultaneously.
The company is based in Tallahassee, Florida. PATLive is a voice-service provider that offers various virtual receptionist options, custom scripts, video calls, texts, and many more.
Pat Live is a well-known phone answering service that provides the opportunity to try a 14-day trial for free as well as a range of packages. The more expensive the package you buy each month, the more features that come with the minutes.
The customers of PATLive are happy with their services. Some of them are unhappy about receptionists who behave as if they don’t understand what the caller is saying.
It has a client portal that allows you to see your billing rates and call volume. It also includes all the features and will enable you to alter your script via the portal.
The company has representatives who are always ready to take your phone calls around all hours, with your supply script.
If a follow-up call is required, they receive the message on your behalf and forward it to you.
In addition, they will offer you a complete process of processing your order, verifying the payment, and verifying all the information about your income.
Features:
- Live chat available 24/7/365
- A mobile app that keeps you informed via notifications.
- It is accompanied by an unconstrained trial period of 14 days.
- These agents work on behalf of you
- Receives messages on behalf of your company and makes appointments for your customers.
- It comes with a range of plans from which you can select from
- assists in processing your orders using the ability to bill and support for payment.
PATLive Pricing:
- The basic plan costs $39/month and $1.95 per number
- Starter plan costs $149 per month and includes 75 minutes
- Standard plan costs $269 per month, which comes with 200 minutes
- Premium plan costs $399 per month and provides 350 minutes
- Pro plan costs $69 per month and comprises 600 minutes
- Pro Plus plan costs $999 per month and comes with 1000 minutes
#5. AnswerFirst: Best Answering Service with Virtual Assistant Services
AnswerFirst is an answering service provider that provides live support 24/7, takes your calls, makes appointments with customers, and assists in processing orders.
AnswerFirst is a US-based firm that helps companies provide better customer service and improve customer satisfaction. The company is based in Tampa, Florida. AnswerFirst is a telecommunications firm that serves customers in the real estate, healthcare, IT, financial sectors. With the help of 58 staff, AnswerFirst provides a range of back-office, voice, and other BPO services.
AnswerFirst is the top answering service provider in the industry. There are a few drawbacks to their service. One of the biggest disadvantages is the absence of a free trial that most service providers offer. And Second, they bill each 28 days, meaning you must pay your bills each month each year 13 times!
Their most recent project involved working with a law firm and responding to more than 300 calls per day. With outstanding customer service and speedy response time, the company’s services include 24/7 answering and customized hold announcements. Their client has gained many advantages with the help of AnswerFirst.
Features:
- 24/7 support as well as a contact center
- Order processing and order taking
- message taking and Voicemail
- Reservations and scheduling appointments
- Security Monitoring
- Appointment scheduling
- Transfer service for live calls
AnswerFirst Pricing:
$30 per month + Pay per minute ($0.80 – $1.25 per minute)
(FAQ) Answering Services For Small Business.
1. How to Choose an Answering Service for Small Businesses?
For the best answering service for your small business, you should consider the following factors:
- Experience in the industry: Check if prospective companies have employees specially trained to provide service for your sector. This is crucial because knowledgeable agents will better understand your customers.
- Flexibility in Timings: The company which offers flexibility. Do you want your phone always answered or at least a portion of the time or even in the rare instances that you aren’t able to?
- Call recording: Find out which answering service is the most effective for small-sized businesses and provide call recording. This is an essential step that will ensure crucial customer information is recorded.
- Quality service: The service that greets your customers with kindness, sensitivity, and well behaved is very much needed.
- Bilingual receptionists: Find out which answering services can handle bilingual sources.
2. What are the Benefits of a Small Business Answering Service?
Like other answering services for businesses, answering services designed for small-sized businesses take care of calls from both directions to assist organizations and provide those benefits.
- Enhance Customer Service by answering calls quickly.
- Help you expand and grow your business to meet your needs.
- Processing outbound marketing campaigns
- Improve customer experience with personalized, personal handling of calls.
- Customer support and technical service
- Let you use personal days, sick days, or vacation time without having to leave your office unattended.
- Filter or block junk calls and other non-emergency needs of callers.
- Improve satisfaction of clients
- Clients can communicate with each other through email and text messages
- Ensure that calls are directed to the correct people at the appropriate times.
- Give your business greater leads and convert leads to paid customers.
- Let customers know they are being heard and their needs fulfilled.
- Make it easier to purchase more frequently.
3. What kind of business can benefit from a good answering service?
Whether big or small, any business can benefit from the right answering services. It is essential to communicate with customers and answer their calls. This is something you can’t ignore.
Below are some of the Businesses that use answering services.:
- Medical services and medical professionals like doctors, physiotherapists, etc.
- Services related to educations and educational institutions.
- Fitness services, catering services, etc.
- Financial advisors, audit firms, etc.
- Carpenters, home cleaners, and other providers of home services
- Marketing services, consulting services, Office infra providers, and other professionals
- Packers and movers and travel agencies, and other transportation services.
4. Types of answering services?
Answering services are different in how they operate and what types of businesses they are being used for. Answering services generally fall under three categories:
- Interactive voice response systems (IVRS): These automated answering services prompt callers to press numbers like 1 for billing, 2 for technical support, 0 to continue the menu (or another prompt).
- Call centers: Call centers are designed to handle large numbers of calls. They don’t require personalized care, Ex:- telephone service call center.
- Virtual receptionists: We call them “virtual receptionists” because they follow the same call handling procedures as in-house receptionists and answer your phone just like an actual receptionist.
5. How Much Do Business Answering Services Cost?
A few factors can impact the cost of answering services for small businesses.
- Agency size and reputation
- How much time you are going to use the service and which time of a day(day or night shift)
- What are the different types of features the service will provide, etc.?
These companies typically design their subscription plans per minute, per call, and per month. Prices for small and medium-sized businesses start at $50 and can go up to several hundreds of dollars monthly.
Many agencies offer customized pricing. This is a cost-effective option considering that companies can pay according to how many calls they receive.
6. An answering service merits and demerits
You should carefully consider your decision to use an answering service. It is an investment to enhance your customers’ experience and the future of your business. While any business can benefit from an answering service, it’s not necessary for every business.
Pros of an Answering service:
- It is more affordable than hiring a part-time or full-time employee
- More Opportunities for your business.
- Some of the answering services are Flexible and customizable
- Allows callers to reach someone real when you or your staff are unavailable
- Lowers the number of callers reaching out to your competition
Cons of an Answering Service:
- The basic service is limited by the call handling information you provide to the service.
- Not as well equipped as a call center to handle high call volumes.
- More expensive than voicemail or automated tools
- A wrong or an immature service provider could cause more problems and make it harder for you to solve them.
Hence, You should look for a provider with an excellent reputation for customer service and offers a variety of options.
7. Most frequently asked questions before hiring an Answering Service for Small Businesses.
Here are some of the points you must consider before hiring an answering service for your business. It may be small or medium-sized.
- How much money will I save by hiring an answering service for my small business compared to an in-house receptionist?
- Budget is the most crucial factor to consider first. Can you afford the budget to hire a full-time or a part-time basis answering service?
- What software and techniques are you currently using to manage the customer’s communication?
- Who will take care of the phone if employees inside your business are not in the office?
- What time of the day do calls typically be received?
- What are the common problems that indicate my small business needs a virtual receptionist service?
- How much maximum time coverage are you able to provide?
- Which is the backup plan for emergencies?
