I have just read on another thread about offering a telephone answering service for clients.

Can anyone tell me how this works please? not sure exactly how one would go about this.

Thanks in advance

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VA-Karen
www.elite-va.com

The client would have their calls forwarded to your number and you would answer the phone as if the clients were calling YOUR clients phone. I hope that made sense. lol.

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Serita Diana, the List 2 Close Assistant
REVA Academy

Thanks Serita. I wasn't sure if it was a resource on the net. I think possibly this is a service I will not be offering currently.

Thanks for the info.

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VA-Karen
www.elite-va.com

I would like to offer telephone answering services. I used to work for a telephone answering service company and the calls were back to back so I think it would be hard sometimes to do this completely on your own.

There are services you can sign up for where a client can forward their number to yours or to a voice mail box that you can access, distinct rings for different incoming numbers, etc. I'm sure if you do a search on here you'll find some threads that talk about which services people have used for this. There are not a lot of VAs that offer this as a service but those that do and who do a good job can be in demand. However, I suspect it's not generally offered as a service by VAs as it is very time consuming and I think most clients will expect to not pay a very high hourly fee for this service.

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Kimberly
Facebook Marketing Magic!

This is a service I'd like to offer to my clients.

I do have a question on how to charge for telephone answering service. My client is wanting to forward calls on a random, as needed basis. This could be only a few hours a week or month - but not a regular basis. thanks for any input.

Carol

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Classic Exec
Your Virtual Administrative Consultantwww.classicexec.com

Carol - Do you have a retainer for this client or is it project priced?

I would be inclined to say that any time your client has his number forwarded to you is billed at your regular hourly rate (assuming you have a retainer and/or some type of support contract and you're not project pricing). I say this because a phone ringing every 5 or 10 minutes would shoot my concentration all to heck and I wouldn't be able to get anything else done during that time frame.

If you think you would be able to get other work done during that time, you could just charge time for each phone call according to your normal billing methods.

If you're project pricing, this is very difficult to do, because you don't know the frequency of calls. If you know the approximate duration of calls (if they're very similar in scope for customer-service type questions, or if you're mainly going to be acting as an answering service and taking messages and determining if they need to be relayed to the client immediately or if they can be dealt with later), you could figure out a "per-call" rate of $X, include x number of calls per day/week/month in your base price, then say something like "calls over x per day/week/month" billed at $x per call" or something like that.

Good luck with this one - I don't offer answering service because I don't like to be chained to my desk and also because figuring out how to do it would give me a headache.

I do have a client that I do this for and I charge my standard rate for this.... not sure if this helps or not. If not, feel free to ask more specific questions!

That sounds real interesting. I can imagine the phones ringing off the hook. lol

This is a service that Adepteo are now starting to offer at great affordable package prices!

You can basically have calls forwarded to our office and have them answered as if they were physically in your place of work. We can send you e-mails of who called and bring calls important calls to your attention. Other services include accepting mail/using our number if you wish to keep your information private, screen calls and allow you to use our conference room facilities.

It just helps you get on running your business with peace of mind that everything is being taken care of professionally.

Have a look on the website and contact us if you are interested!

Google 'Adepteo'

Hope this helps.

I have since learned a little more about this service, especially here in ABQ. If you have someone that offers office space by the hour, they are often set up for phone answering services - you could refer your client if it was not something you wanted to take on - i agree that it can be way too time consuming. If you are in the Albuquerque area Office Alternatives offers this service.

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Classic Exec
Your Virtual Administrative Consultantwww.classicexec.com

My doctor uses a answering service to cover for them while they close for lunch. After hours you get a message. Seems like a good service to offer to smaller practices. And with the different time zones you could get several clients for different times of the day.

However, you wouldn't be able to accomplish much during those times that you are covering the phones.

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Teressa@Reese Virtual Assistant
www.reeseva.com

Good advice. I am going to look into that destinctive ringer identification. That would be perfect.

This is a great service to offer.. But my question is: What if you are maybe only receiving a few calls a day.. how would you charge this? I assume it would be too hard to charge your hourly rate.. when you may receive only 4-10 calls a day.

Would it be easier to charge a weekly rate? Based on how many calls your clients thinks you will get?

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