Select Call Centre

1) How does a telephone answering service work?

Each account is unique and configured according to your company's instructions. Calls are answered with your chosen "answer phrase". "Thank you for calling Joy of Dance, how can I help you?" or "Wilson Oil employee check in line, your PID number please?" are both examples of answer phrases for two very different businesses - and two very different purposes!

In most cases, a caller may make one of several different types of calls. The caller may be a customer, a potential customer, a sales person or someone else. This is why we script all our accounts. If the caller is a potential customer, we'll click "customer call" on our screens and then follow up with a question like: "Are you looking for North American or International sales?"

If a sales person is calling, our instructions may indicate that we take a message and email to purchasing.

2) What's a "DID"?

DID stands for Direct Inward Dial, and that is a number we own that identifies each of our accounts. Some accounts have many DID's, while most accounts just have one. DID's can be local or toll free and there is no extra charge for toll free numbers. Our customers then call forward their business number to the number we have provided. Sometimes businesses choose to advertise our number directly (especially in the case of toll free numbers). That's OK with us, but we always retain ownership of the number.

3) How much will I pay?

That depends on how busy our operators are on behalf of the account. A small business that only receives a few calls per month will pay a fraction of what a very busy account will pay. Our call switch system keeps track of all operator minutes for each account, and we will review these reports periodically with our customers.

4) What kind of rate packages do you have?

Many of our smaller to mid size accounts pay a "flat rate" each billing period. Periodically, often once per year, we review account traffic with each customer and negotiate a new flat rate.

Large accounts usually prefer to pay directly for usage. Many of our large accounts are in the energy sector. They can be very busy at certain times and very slow at others. Paying directly for operator time every four weeks ensures that they only pay for the actual amount of services used.

5) What other fees do I pay?

We charge a $50 set up fee for most accounts and a line fee of $70 per billing cycle. We do not charge extra for holiday answering or late-night calls. After all, that's what we're here for.

6) Do I have to sign a contract?

Our customers never have to sign a contract

7) How long does it take to activate an account?

For most accounts we can be up and running on your behalf within 48 hours. Larger accounts take longer but you will have an account manager guiding you through the process.