Frequently Asked Questions

Any business that receives phone calls from customers, prospects or colleagues can benefit from our telephone answering service. Below is an example of a few business areas where we can help…

• Small Businesses Without A Secretary/Receptionist – If you haven’t got a receptionist or secretary then the task of answering the phone may fall to the business owner and key personnel. This can be the cause of constant interruptions when in meetings or trying to complete important tasks.

  As an alternative to employing a secretary or receptionist and taking on the extra costs and responsibility of an employee, a telephone answering and reception service is a more cost-effective and simpler solution to your requirements. You can rely on our PA’s to always be there on time, they won’t be off sick or take holidays and you’ll only pay when you use the service.

• Small Businesses With A Secretary/Receptionist – You may already have reception or admin staff who answer your calls, but what happens when they’re already dealing with a call, are away from their desk, on holiday or off sick?

  You can divert your calls to our reception team who’ll pick up calls when you can’t. You can choose to use our flexible telephone answering service for overflow calls (when your line’s engaged or is not answered within a certain number of rings) or to help cover periods of staff absence.

• Businesses That Require Holiday and Sickness Cover For Call Answering – If staff members are taking time off then you may need support for a short period of time to help answer your calls and take messages. We have no minimum contracts and flexible options that are perfect for short term cover

• Businesses That Require Overflow Call Management – Whatever the size of your business you’ll have times when your reception staff can’t take a call. We can pick up overflow calls and even patch them through to the right person. Your customers won’t even realise their call has been answered off site.

• Mobile Businesses – If your business requires you to be away from the office for most of the day (for example if you’re a plumber, mobile hairdresser or consultant), then a telephone answering service will not only ensure you don’t miss a call, but will also help you provide better service to your customers as you won’t have to worry about answering the phone to a new prospect when you’re in the middle of an important job for another customer.
• Start Up Businesses – Make sure you never miss a call from a valuable customer or a new prospect. Divert your calls to your our reception team when you’re not available to take a call or when you’re already on the line.

  Like many start up businesses you’ll be closely watching the pennies. Our flexible service is a perfect way for you to carefully manage your budget whilst ensuring that you never miss a call. After all, you don’t want to waste money generating leads only to then miss the call!

• Businesses Who Want To Carefully Monitor Marketing Campaigns – If you’re investing in marketing then you need to know whether your money has been well spent. We can carefully log all your enquiries by source to make sure you know which advertising method is working the best; we can even provide you with different telephone numbers to test different campaigns.

• Businesses That Send Out Information/Brochures – We can send out information on your behalf. We’ll take the caller’s details (and send you these in a message) and send the information they have requested (by email or post) without you having to lift a finger!

One of the benefits to you of working with an owner managed business is the flexibility we can offer. We try our best to help our clients in any way we can. If you’re interested in a service that isn’t listed below, then please get in touch and speak directly to the business owners (Chris or Andy) and we’ll see what we can do!

• PA Services

  Firstly, let me say this - we are not a call centre. We are a small (relative to a large call centre) owner managed business and we pride ourselves in getting to know our customers. And because of this we are able to offer a service that is a little more personalised than many of our competitors…

  • You can call in and speak to your receptionist to pick up your most recent messages
  • Our receptionists can make calls on your behalf, perhaps change an appointment time, notify a customer that you’re running late or simply pass on a message

• Virtual Reception

  If you employ a receptionist to answer your calls and put them through to the correct extension, then you could save your company time and money by outsourcing this service.

  Employed receptionists take lunch breaks, holidays, and time off sick, plus you have to pay salaries and national insurance contributions etc. By outsourcing this service you can save yourself the hassle of covering periods of absence as well as saving your company money.

  Your Office & PA can act as your receptionist, answering calls and patching them through. This service is fully flexible, we can answer all your calls or just act as an overflow or back up service when your receptionist is not available.

• Mailing Services

  We can receive, sort and send on your mail, either by post of scanned copies. Businesses who find this service useful:

  • Require a UK postal address – perhaps newly launching in the UK
  • Don’t have the time to sort post or are fed up with receiving junk mail
  • Require post sorting and sending to people at different addresses (perhaps home workers etc)

• Diary Management

If you’re an appointment based business and use (or can move to) an online diary, then we can handle your callers appointment requests immediately, whilst we are on the phone to them.

Our customers who already use this service tell us that this works really well for them and saves them the time and cost of having to return calls themselves or hire a receptionist.

“The team are bright and do so much more than answer the phone. They book and rearrange appointments and return customer calls. They are valued members of our organisation” Helen Wood, Simply Team, London SW12

Our team are experienced at managing diaries for a variety of practice based businesses such as physiotherapists, medical centres, hairdressers and beauty businesses and driving schools (amongst others).

• Online Ordering and Payment Processing

Using your website or other online order and payment terminal, we can process over the phone orders and payments ensuring that you capture the sale immediately without any need for return calls.

“The team process orders, take payments, check stock levels and provide contact information for suppliers” Daren Casey, E Sup, Guilford

Setting up our telephone answering service is simple – just follow the simple steps below…

• Register for our FREE, 14 day no obligation trial (takes 2 mins max!) online or call 0800 433 40 30
• As soon as we receive your details Chris or Andy will call you to explain the process and set up your FREE customer account
• We’ll confirm when we’re ready to go live (usually within a few hours of receiving your free trial registration) and make sure you understand how to divert your calls so you can start using our service

Click here to register for our FREE, no obligation 14 day trial

The only condition of our FREE trial is that you’re not on holiday. If you’re looking for holiday cover only, then we are more than happy to provide this. In fact we don’t tie any customers in with lengthy contracts so you can easily set up the service just to cover holidays.

We are so confident that we can consistently deliver a high standard of customer service to all our clients, that we offer a unique “World Class Service Guarantee”.

Our guarantee is our promise to you that we’ll always live up to our promises – You’ll get free calls for a month if we fail!

Your FREE, 14 day, no obligation trial, can be up and running within a few hours. All the information we require to set your account up, such as preferred greeting, key personnel, contact details etc, can be entered by you via our secure client website or, if you prefer, you can call and complete the form over the phone with one of our receptionists. Once this is completed it only takes a couple of hours for us to check the details and set you live.

Our telephone answering and reception service is available:

• 08.30 – 19.00 Monday to Friday
• 09.00-14.00 Saturday

After hours your lines will be diverted to voicemail. You’ll have your own dedicated service with a greeting personalised for your company (you can record the greeting yourself if required). You can call in to your secure line to pick up messages at anytime. We’ll also check for voicemails each morning (with the exception of Sunday) and send you the details on a message.

You can also choose to have notifications of your voicemails sent directly to you by email. This way you’ll be notified as soon as a caller leaves a message.

Simply click here to complete our online form to set up your FREE 14 day trial, or call 0800 433 40 30 and speak to one of reception team who’ll set up your account for you.

We have flexible options including monthly invoiced or Pay-As-You Go accounts that are suitable for all levels of use. There are no tie-ins or minimum contracts and everyone gets a FREE, no obligation, 14 day trial to fully test our service at NO cost.

After your trial prices are as low as £1.06 a call or £26.50 a month.

Click Here to see full details on our pricing options

We do NOT charge any set up fees.

All customers receive a completely FREE, 14 day no obligation trial – We do not take any payment details until the FREE trial is complete.

We’ll set up your service and allocate and train your reception team free of charge. We do this because we hope to benefit from a long term partnership with you, not a quick win. We’re so sure that you’ll love our service and enjoy working with us that you’ll want to stay a client for years to come.

Setting up our FREE trial is simple – Just follow the link below, fill in your details and we could be answering your calls within just a few hours.

Unlike many telephone answering services, we will NOT charge you for any wrong numbers, as long as these account for less than 5% of your call volume.

You can also tell us how you’d like us to deal with unsolicited sales calls; we can either take a message as we would do with any other caller or simply say this number does not accept sales calls. If you choose not accept sales calls we will make every effort to identify these calls and you will not be charged.

There’s no need to worry about working out how many calls you receive a day, or how many we’ll answer and how many you’ll answer, because our unique flexible pricing structure takes all the guess work away!

All new customers start with a 14 day, FREE, no obligation trial. This enables you to try out our service completely FREE and gives us the chance to review your call volumes and recommend the most suitable call package for your business.

Then every month you can review your account to check that you’re still on the best available option. If you would be better off changing your call package (up or down) for the following month, simply let us know  (by the end of the month ready for next month) and we’ll make the change. You can change switch packages every month if necessary!

There are NO minimum contract terms.

If you have chosen a monthly invoiced account and you wish to discontinue using our services then you simply need to let us know in writing (by email) and your service will end one month from that date.

If you have chosen a Pay-As-You-Go account then there is no notice period required - simply let your credit run out and your account will be closed.

Having no minimum contracts allows you to take a break from using the service for a couple of months if you need to (perhaps during quieter times or holiday periods).

Our telephone answering service is fully flexible to your needs. You’re 100% in control of when we answer your calls. To give you an idea of the different ways you can use the service there are some of the options below:

You can divert…

• All your calls to us for a particular line. Multiple lines can be diverted at the same time e.g. your landline and your mobile
• To us only when you or your staff are out of the office
• To us so we pick up calls when your lines are engaged or the call is not answered within a certain number of rings

You can choose exactly when you want to divert your phone lines to us.

You can divert unlimited lines to your dedicated phone number (DDI) at any one time.

However, if you require more than one incoming line (perhaps you want a separate greeting for your sales department for example) then you’ll need to call us to arrange this additional facility.

Yes you can.

Mobiles can be diverted in the same way as landlines. You can choose to divert your mobile to the same line you use for your landlines, or you may prefer to take a separate line for your mobile to allow a more personalised greeting (e.g. Hello Joe Soap’s phone, can I help you?)

When you become a client we allocate you a dedicated phone line (known as a DDI in ‘techy’ speak!) for your company. When you require your calls answering you simply divert your phone lines to the new number. Your calls will then be answered by our reception team in your company name, just as if they were a receptionist directly employed by you and sat in your office.

No. There is no need for you to change your business phone numbers. We do supply you with a new number but this is simply a line for you to divert your current phone lines to.

If you do require a new number such as 0844 or free phone, then we can also provide these for you.

We offer a 14 day FREE, no obligation trial so you can “Try Before You Buy”. We find that this is the best way for you to…

• Discover whether a telephone answering service is right for your business
• Test our services to make sure we meet your expectations
• Get to know our team, and for our receptionists to start to gain a good understanding of your business, who your key customers are and what types of calls they’ll be receiving.

There’s absolutely NO catch. When you sign up for our 14 day FREE, no obligation trial, you receive full set up of your account and 14 days telephone answering service completely FREE – no charges at all. The only stipulation is that you don’t dash off on holiday for 2 weeks leaving us to hold the fort!

There is no obligation for you to continue using our services at the end of the trial (although we’re confident you’ll be so thrilled with our service that you’ll want to continue working with us!). Chris or Andy will call you after day 12 of the trial to gather your feedback and find out if you want to continue with our telephone answering service beyond the 14 day free trial. You’ll then receive a detailed report which will show you key information on the calls we answered on your behalf (including how quickly we answered the phone).

If you wish to continue with our service all you need to do is decide (using the information we have provided you with) which call plan you would like.  Your service will then continue seamlessly.

• To find out more about our FREE, 14 Day, No Obligation Trial click here
• To get started straight away and sign up for our FREE trial click here

The trial is completely free with no obligation for you to continue.

Once the 14 day trial is complete you can choose not to continue with the service by notifying us in writing (by email) including your reasons for not continuing (this is for our own monitoring purposes so we can continue to improve our services).

Your messages are relayed to you immediately in the most convenient way for you.

You can choose to receive your messages by:

• Email
• SMS
• Logging onto our secure website with your own password
• Calls being patched (transferred) directly to you
• A combination of above

You can update how you receive your messages on a daily basis (with no charges). For example, if you know you’re in an all day meeting and can’t be disturbed then you may choose to have all messages sent by email for you to pick up at the end of the day. The next day you may be out and about between a few appointments and would prefer to receive messages by SMS so you can return calls throughout the day or have VIP callers transferred through to your mobile. The choice is yours (and, unlike many of our competitors, there’s no charge for making the changes).

As your account is set up we allocate a dedicated phone number to your company, this is known as DDI in ‘techy’ terms! You simply divert your phone lines to your new DDI number and our state of the art phone system will then recognise when a call is for your company. Your receptionist will then answer all calls that come via this number in your company name.

You can choose to have more than one DDI linked to the same account so calls for different departments can be answered with a different greeting (e.g. sales, customer services). Please call 0800 433 4030 if you require this additional service.

As part of our “World Class Service Agreement” we commit to answering all calls in less than 15 seconds.

Our research has shown us that the best time to answer a call is between 2 – 6 rings (too quick and the caller’s quite often not ready).

Your messages will be sent to you in your chosen format immediately. Our receptionist will make sure that your message is logged and sent to you before taking another call.

You can log into our secure website to see copies of all the messages that have been sent to you for that day, week or month. You can also see how many messages have been sent for that month to check that you’re on the most cost effective call option available for your business.

No – and we’re not a call centre. We’re a team of professional PA’s.

We never tell callers that their call is being answered by another company. We’ll agree with you what we should say to callers (you’re out of the office, unavailable etc) and advise the caller someone will call them back. If the caller comes through again before you’ve returned the call we’ll apologise that you’ve been busy and we’ll pass the message on again.

We are located in Cheshire and you’re welcome to visit to meet the team for yourself

As part of your set up process we’ll capture key information about your company. We’ll store information such as directions to your offices, postal address, website, key personnel and contact numbers. You can also provide us with any further information we’ll require.

Remember, callers don’t expect receptionists to know everything about your business. If we’re asked a question we don’t know the answer to we’ll tell the caller that we’ll pass on their query and that someone will call them back.

Telephone Answering Services:

Next step is simply to set up your FREE 14 day trial. This is easy to do online or over the phone (0800 433 40 30) with one of our PA’s. We’ll take plenty of information about your company so we can answer your calls appropriately, but one thing we won’t take is bank or credit card information.

You can keep your wallet in your pocket so to speak!

Our trial is Genuinely FREE and with NO OBLIGATION – we don’t request any payment information from you during the free trial. This information is only requested when you choose to continue after the trial.

To get started with your FREE trial click here  to complete your application online, or call 0800 433 40 30. You could be up and running within a few hours.

Other Services:

To find out more about the rest of our services then please get in touch to discuss your individual requirements.

Click here to enquire online, or call 0800 433 40 30 and speak to Chris or Andy. For more information on the additional services we offer, such as diary management, order taking and payment processing and mail services – click here