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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Virtual Assistant Solutions - Providing high quality business support

With the lainch of Google voice, this service is much easier to offer and manage. It's a very effective tool to have calls forwarded and tracked even if you're unable to answer every time. Google has a lot of great tools for organization and consolidation of tasks and information!!

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My client forwards her calls to my cell and I have a special ring tone for her. My outgoing v/m says you have reached the office of Diana Cole. So it works for everyone.

I charge a $50 fee per month on top of my hourly rate to help alleviate the overage of minutes.

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Diana W F Cole
http://dianawfcole.weebly.com

One of the jobs in the office world that I strongly dislike is answering the phone. It happens that I have to do that in my "other job" office. I could not imagine offering that service as a VA, due to my strong dislike for it. I think that it has a lot to do with interrupting other work and, as someone has already posted, shooting one's concentration all to pieces. I'm glad that there are folks like you, who want to provide that service. Good luck with it.

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Collaborative Business Support

Originally Posted by vasolutions

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?

Hi,
Mona here, Im offering this service to my international contacts. Ive decided to offer my stardard hrly. rate, regardless of how many calls. The plan I've worked out is to answer the phones est. 10am -2pm., the other calls that come in will go to voicemail. As for ther ringing, after hours, turn the ringer off since the calls go to voicemail.

I use a VoIP telephone service which is great and it allows me to offer call handling amongst other phone services. The client can forward calls on/off to me at agreed times, or I can order a separate number for them which will always ring in my office and the end user (customer) doesn't notice a thing. I also arrange for annoying telemarketer blacklisting, professional voicemail greetings, call queueing, etc. In fact I made a spec call to a mobile hairdresser in my area this evening to introduce my services and she was shocked to hear such a thing (in a good way) and she's looking forward to getting started as she's always getting interrupted while she's doing treatments. She was happy to hear that she can switch on my call answering service as and when she pleases (obviously within office working hours) when she's working or on the road and was happy about the rates too.