Telephone Answering Services

Perhaps you’re a sole trader who feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day to deal with the entirety of your to-do list, including answering incoming phone calls. Maybe you run a business that lacks the time or the staff to pick up every single phone call you receive. So, what’s the solution? To answer every incoming call, you simply need more time. Thankfully, that’s exactly what we provide. We create time.

This isn’t more time to answer all of these incoming calls though. It’s time to deal with the other important aspects of your business, including the calls that really matter to you. It’s peace of mind that you can get on with these other parts of the business, that keep it moving forward, without missing a single call in the meantime. How? Well, because we take care of that for you.

With our telephone answering service, we’ll answer your incoming calls 24/7 for 365 days a year, so you never have to miss a call again. By ensuring that your customers always speak to a human at the other end of the phone, rather than a recorded message or a robot when you’re unavailable, you can provide amazing customer service at all times, with the help of the alldayPA telephone answering service.

We love talking to existing and potential clients about the ways that we can help them and add value to their business. If you’d like to find out more about our telephone answering service, get in touch with our friendly team, who will be happy to answer all of your questions.

How do professionals answer the phone?

Professionals should always answer the phone with the aim of providing the customer with a positive first impression of the company, as well as an overall positive experience. Professionals will answer the phone with the following things in mind:

• Politeness: It’s important not just to answer the phone politely, but you should remain polite throughout the entire call. Even if the customer gets angry or begins to raise their voice about the subject of the call, you should remain calm, polite and professional. Even when you’re having a bad day and it can seem easy to forget about telephone etiquette and manners, you must remove your own personal feelings from the call. The customer won’t know what kind of day you’re having, so remaining calm and polite is key to providing a strong first impression.

• The tone of voice: Perfecting your tone of voice is essential as it can set the tone for the call and can help the customer to feel comfortable and at ease, helping them to open up. With the wrong tone of voice – such as a tone that suggests you’re distracted or rushed – the customer will begin to feel like they aren’t being listened to or taken seriously. Maintaining a positive, friendly and professional tone of voice will help the customer to feel comfortable and understood.
• Pace: You should speak at a pace that is clear and easy to understand. Speaking too fast will make a customer feel overwhelmed with the information that they’re receiving, yet talking too slow can sound unprofessional and as though you’re unsure of the information you’re conveying.
• Pronunciation: Mispronunciation can provide a poor first impression and indicates a lack of professionalism. It can also lead to misspellings, which can have serious consequences if they feature on important documents, such as invoices. Your PA will always take care with pronunciations, ensuring that they pronounce your business name, and other key names correctly, to maintain a high level of professionalism and to ensure that customers think they are talking to an employee of your company.

Our Starter Package

This package is ideal for start-ups or small businesses that would like to witness our telephone answering service in practice. This package is an entry-level solution that remains fully flexible. Calls cost 99p each, and you can easily top-up using PayPal. This package starts at just £9.90, which includes credit for 10 calls, and the most expensive option is still just £39.60, which includes credit for 40 calls. This package comes with email customer support, and your PA will take caller details such as their name, phone number and message.

Telephone Answering Package

This option is a step-up from the starter package as you’ll receive more support and more options for your incoming calls. As with the Starter package, your PA will take the name, number and a message from the caller, but you will also have a call forwarding option, as part of the service. As well as email support, you’ll have app access for customer support too, and will receive a message via email and SMS to alert you of an incoming call that your PA has taken. To find out the cost of this package you can request a quote online, as the price is calculated based on your estimated monthly call volume. 

Virtual Receptionist

With this package, you can enjoy the benefits provided by the Telephone Answering package, as well as many other perks that will make your life, and the life of your teams, so much easier. As well as the 24/7/365 service as standard and a full human service provided by UK based staff, businesses with a virtual receptionist can enjoy remote switchboard services, customer service outsourcing, diary management, multiple staff availability and so much more. As with the majority of our packages, you can request a tailored quote for this package, based on your monthly call volume.

Outsourced Call Centre

This package is our biggest and provides your business with its very own outsourced call centre. This package includes all the benefits that come with the virtual receptionist contract, as well as so much more. If you use alldayPA as your outsourced call centre, you’ll have bespoke CRM integration and outbound call centre services, as well as email and live chat management and so much more. Prices for this package are based on your monthly call volume and are therefore tailored to the needs of your business.

Have complete control over your calls

With our service, you’ll still have full control over your calls, even if you aren’t answering them. Thanks to our app – the Virtual Office from alldayPA, you have control at all times, whether you’re working from home, in your office or even on holiday! Wherever you are, you’ll always have access to your Virtual Office. On the app, you can:

• Access all of your messages.
• Adjust your availability, so we know when to transfer a call across to you or when to take a message from the caller.
• Set greetings, so that your PA answers every call in the way that you have chosen.
• View your call data, to stay informed about your busiest times and the number of calls that we have taken for you.
• Provide us with a list of VIPs, so we know your most important callers names, numbers and the company that they are calling from.

Keep your work/life balance stable

Many people have a work phone and a personal phone, in an attempt to separate work from their personal life. However, many will find themselves answering calls outside of work hours, to avoid missing a lead and to protect their reputation. Yet all of this can seriously affect your work/life balance. This balance between your personal life and your career is often considered essential for your mental health, to prevent burn out and to still maintain a good family life with successful personal relationships.

Using a telephone answering service removes the need to have several phones for different calls, the fear of missing leads and the negative impact on your work/life balance. Using the service can keep your work/life balance stable, as you won’t have to answer calls beyond your working hours or when you’re enjoying down time – we can take care of them for you.

Be ready for your most important calls

You can sometimes be caught off guard by inbound calls, leaving you feeling unprepared, especially if you consider the caller to be one of your VIPs. You can sometimes feel as though you’re lacking the specific information the caller needs, especially if you answer the call away from your office and without access to the resources you may need.

When we deal with your incoming calls and take the caller’s name, number and message, you can then prepare to call them back. This additional time means that you can gather any relevant information that you may need to inform them of during the call. This ensures that you maintain a high level of professionalism and knowledge on the call, all of which will work in your favour when it comes to a caller’s first impression of your company, or the quality of your customer service.

Save on personnel costs without sacrificing customer experience

For the most fabulous customer service, you’ll probably need to invest in the likes of training and performance monitoring for your staff, to ensure that they are performing their roles well and are upholding the reputation of your company. Regardless of the number of staff you have, the cost of training and performance monitoring or quality control within any business can be expensive. However, without this vital training, you run the risk of sacrificing customer service.

If hiring a single receptionist to deal with calls seems like an option for your company, you have the worries of their absence and current staff spend to consider too, not to mention that for most businesses, receptionists won’t be available 24/7, or the cost of having this cover 24/7 is extremely expensive. Working with alldayPA means that we’ve got you covered all day, every day – let us handle your calls and manage your customer interactions, without worrying about compromising on amazing customer service.

Never deal with cold callers again

As much as it can be a nuisance, it’s common for many salespeople to make cold calls in an attempt to sell their product or service. Whether it’s a cold call for double glazing or something else you don’t need, or an automated message to inform you of your eligibility for compensation, dealing with cold callers whilst trying to do your job, or operate a business, can be extremely frustrating. You may even feel like it’s slowing you down throughout the day.

With our telephone answering service, you’ll be pleased to know that you’ll never have to deal with cold callers again whilst you’re trying to do your job or run your company. Any cold callers that try to ring your number will be put through to your designated PA, who will deal with the caller professionally. This can save you plenty of time and energy, to invest elsewhere throughout the day.

Get a business landline number, without needing a landline

One of the main benefits of the service is that you’ll get a business landline number, without needing a landline. Some business owners do question whether or not they need a landline number, especially if their business is new. Having a landline number is essential, we think, for many reasons. And if your business operates without a phone line, it may be time to reconsider your strategy – customers still appreciate speaking to a human when they need valuable information or when they have an issue.

Having a business landline number can increase the trust between customers and your business – many people are wary about mobile numbers and potential scams, whereas a landline will indicate that your business is legitimate and well-established, increasing your credibility too. The lack of a phone number can also cause issues for your business listing on Google. Your business phone number is key in local searches and the lack of a number can often be viewed as a red flag by search engines. A landline number will also allow you to keep your business and personal calls separate – you can keep your personal mobile number private, using this for solely personal communication if you’d prefer.

Free up time to let you focus on the important things

There are many different aspects to running a business, many of which require a lot of time, effort and consideration. Dealing with incoming calls, especially those that are unexpected, have the potential to slow you down and take up a lot of time in your day. However, by removing these inbound calls from your day – with the help of our telephone answering service – you can create more time to focus on important aspects of your company such as business meetings, new projects and developments, your strategy and operations. 

You can take care of these fundamentals without missing out on potential new business or revenue from calls, as we’ll deal with these calls for you, ensuring that they never go unanswered. We’ll make sure that the customer on the other end of the line receives the best possible service and first impressions of your company.

Keep records of your calls, without having to take notes

Keeping a record of your calls and any relevant data – such as your busiest times – can be useful for planning ahead and distributing resources where needed. However, keeping these records, obtaining the data, and note-taking can all be time-consuming and confusing sometimes. Yet with our telephone answering service packages, you’ll have access to our Virtual Office app, which gives you access to your call data whenever you need it. You can find out information such as how many calls we’ve taken on your behalf, as well as which times are your busiest. 

Businesses now operate and communicate globally 

As technology has evolved, businesses have found it increasingly easier to offer their services and products to a global audience. Whilst this can mean more revenue and business opportunities, it also comes with the issue of different time zones, which can make it harder for businesses to communicate with international consumers. One of the ways to resolve this is through messaging platforms and chatbots that are available at all times, whenever the customer needs support. A messaging service allows you to reply at a convenient time, and a chatbot should provide the customer with the information and the solution that they need. But are these always the right methods of communication to implement?

As we have just discovered, consumers value human interaction. In fact, a lack of human interaction can deter them from using a business, and the services and products they offer. So, if your business operates globally and your consumers want that human interaction, what’s the solution? A wise one would be a phone line that’s manned 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but to hire an in-house team for this can be extortionate. That’s exactly where alldayPA comes in – we can provide 24/7 customer service to your international customers so that their call never goes unanswered. 

Remote and flexible working will be here to stay

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, some employers were welcoming a shift towards remote working and flexible working. Yet since the pandemic, which has forced many offices to close and many workers to set up offices in their own home, many that had never considered remote working now sometimes even prefer it to the old way of doing business. Even when the pandemic has ended, it looks like remote and flexible working will be here to stay, as employers recognise the benefits that this brings to their staff.

This shift to flexible working is beneficial for all. For small businesses, they can work in whichever way will benefit their company and aid their growth the most. As for larger corporations, staff that are usually confined to set working hours and a lot of pressure can now adjust their working hours to suit them, whilst enjoying a mix of office working and remote working.

All of this has been made possible because of technological advancements – consumers can communicate with companies through several ways, at any time, and vice versa – we’re always within reach. We can work flexibly to enhance productivity, and even benefit our mental health, without compromising on customer experience and the delivery of excellent customer service. 

Whilst staff enjoy flexible working hours and probably an easier, enjoyable life as a result, your customers can still reach you at any given time, with the help of alldayPA’s telephone answering service. Because we provide a 24/7/365 service as standard, you can allow your staff to work flexibly and remotely with peace of mind that your incoming calls will still always be answered.

Using our Virtual Receptionist service, Digital Marketing Director Sam saved 68.3 hours every month, with an average of 240 calls answered by us, giving him time to focus on growing his business and helping his clients thrive.

Business Support & Consultancy

Business support firms and consultancies often have a lot to balance, from communication with clients, strategies and planning, meetings and check ins with what businesses you work with to crisis management, people management and of course, the running of your own business on top!

Many business consultancies are hesitant to use a call answering service, as they think it will impact negatively on the experience of not just existing clients, but potential new ones too, however, this is far from the case. When one of our PAs picks up the phone, you can feel confident they’ll be a professional, cordial and capable presence, able to answer calls on your behalf exactly the way you would in your office. We’ll always answer with your company name and, depending on your unique package with us, can direct calls to the right person, make and cancel appointments and meetings using your own calendars and CRM tools, so your caller won’t even know they’ve been speaking to a call answering service. Then, we’ll pass all of the call details onto you in real time, so you can pick up return calls as quickly as possible. Call answering services also allow you to gather a little more information ahead of speaking to your inbound leads and show them you know what you’re talking about, all without compromising on the professional service your clients expect to receive.

Manufacturing & Trades

In the manufacturing and trade sector, there are plenty of times when you simply aren’t able to get to the phone mid-job. The nature of this kind of work means that answering every call you receive as it comes in just isn’t an option, particularly

for smaller business and single person operations. For business owners in this sector, the job you’re on needs to come first, which can lead to you missing out on business to competitors simply because of poor timing and luck!

You want to be the first, and only, call that a potential client makes, and missing that call can be what makes or breaks your next big project. With alldayPA, you’re able to take your calls when you’re free, and direct them straight to us when you can’t get to the phone, confident that we’ll offer a professional, amiable service and you won’t miss a lead again.

Small Businesses

Small business owners are some of the most hardworking, motivated and dedicated people we have the pleasure of working with, but that means that they are almost always stretched for time! Working intelligently to make the most use out of the resources that are available to you is key to success for many SMEs, and that includes optimising your processes to reduce admin time and costs, without compromising on the effectiveness of your processes. By working with other businesses and outsourcing the most tedious admin tasks, you can improve your output and help your team make the most out of the workday, actively developing and growing your business.

Many small businesses also find that they are receiving sales calls, calls about recruitment services and other services they don’t want or need, as well as general spam calls. With a call answering service, you’ll never have to waste your time on spam callers again! Finally, budgets in small businesses can be very tight, and the costs to hire, train, monitor and develop a receptionist simply aren’t there. Working with a call answering service is considerably more affordable than hiring a full time receptionist, and also allows you to be much more flexible about when you can take calls, as 24/7 call answering is available as standard.

Large Enterprises

There are plenty of universal truths in business, however, the concerns of SMEs and large enterprises are often very different. Whilst the cost of hiring a receptionist is less of a concern for a larger enterprise, the time it takes to hire, train, monitor and professionally develop a new team member does have an impact on teams and their productivity.

Many large companies want to be seen as friendly and personable, but when customers call, they’re faced with an extensive automated phone system and long hold times, and might not even be able to reach a human at the end of the process! Having a human being on the other end to pick up the phone and speak directly to a customer, even if it’s just taking their message, making them feel heard and arranging a callback, can make such a big difference to the overall customer experience, and provide that personal touch that many larger companies lack. With our Outsourced Call Centre service, we can also help you manage social media messages and live chat, book appointments and take orders, as well as passing calls and messages on to the appropriate teams. If you work internationally or with clients across different time zones, having this point of contact available all day is vital, which is why we offer 24/7 answering service as standard, without any extra charges.

Our Outsourced Call Centre service saved 38.4 hours for Adam, a Financial Advisor, with alldayPA handling almost 200 calls every month to let him focus on the important stuff.

Technology

We are quick to adapt to changing needs of our customers, thanks to continuous investment in our technology and a passion for our industry. We’re always looking ahead to the next big thing in our industry, allowing us to always offer the most comprehensive, practical and integrated solutions to our customers. This includes a £15m investment into our call technologies, allowing us to improve, expand and enhance our offering to keep up with the needs of companies in today’s business landscape. 

As well as our seamless call diversions and quality service, we are able to send you information and messages about your calls in real-time, so as soon as our team hangs up the call, you’ll know exactly what it was about, who called and can take the next steps from there. We can send you this as an email or SMS, so you don’t ever miss a message. With our virtual receptionist package, we can also direct calls to the right member of your team as well, to make the customer experience quick and easy when they get in touch with your business. Our customers can also choose a custom hold message for their calls and notify us of their availability, VIP numbers and monitor call data using the Virtual Office App in conjunction with their alldayPA account.

We also have our calls handling spread across four separate contact centres, which allows us to ensure that our customers don’t have any downtime, even in the event of a power cut. 

Amazing customer service

Ever since we first started offering telephone answering and professional receptionist services to our customers in 1999, our customers have been at the very heart of what we do. We’re a family business, first and foremost, and even as we’ve grown over the last 20 years, the importance of that has never been lost on us. A useful product is all well and good, but if you don’t feel valued, respected and understood by the people you do business with, you won’t get the most out of that product or service. At alldayPA, we want to build strong relationships with our customers and create solutions that make sense for their businesses. We work with more than 24,000 businesses, so we’re confident we have the experience required to build a bespoke solution that helps your business reach its full potential. We know from experience that the best way to build a business is to build strong relationships with customers – it’s exactly why we do the job that we do.

No answering machines

Being stuck on a ringing phone or reaching the answering machine is a frustrating experience for anyone, particularly if you have an important issue to raise, or you’re looking for a new product, service or partner. Potential customers are far more likely to go with a competitor if they can’t reach you the first time around, but there’s also no way that small teams or one-man businesses can catch every call without the help of an administrator or receptionist. At alldayPA, we endeavour to answer every single call to our network within three rings so your potential customers aren’t waiting for long, and we never use answering machines to take our calls. Every call is picked up by one of our experienced PAs who will be able to answer your potential customers professionally and competently, in line with your business’s requirements, before passing this information onto you in real-time.

Over more than 20 years in business, we’ve seen an increasing number of call answering services start outsourcing their call centres overseas in order to save money and make life easier for themselves. At alldayPA, we have never and will never outsource our telephone answering services. We answer all of our calls ourselves in our UK-based call centre, with the help of experienced, friendly PAs who understand the businesses we work with and are able to quickly and efficiently take your calls just as you would yourself! We can also help you by booking appointments, making cancellations and working with your CRM system to ensure that every call ends up where it should be.

100% UK based

We believe in the importance of being open and communicative, not just with our customers but within our business as well. We are, at our core, a family business, and so having our call centre here in the UK (Manchester, to be exact!) is so important to us, and our customers can feel secure knowing that we won’t be directing your calls abroad or to anyone who doesn’t meet our high internal standards.