If you search for the best telephone answering service in the UK, you will find plenty of companies telling you that they are the best.
I am not going to do that. After more than 25 years in this industry, I think there is a much more useful question to ask:
What actually makes a telephone answering service good?
Because the answer isn’t the longest list of features, the cleverest technology or necessarily the cheapest price. For me, it’s much simpler.
When one of your customers calls, do they receive the sort of service you would want them to receive if you had answered the telephone yourself? That’s really what matters.
So, if I were choosing a telephone answering service for my own business, these are the things I would look at.
1. Who is actually answering your telephone?
This might sound like an obvious place to start, but today it isn’t. The telephone answering industry is changing rapidly and AI receptionists are becoming increasingly common.
We use technology at OfficeFront. Of course we do. You couldn’t operate an efficient modern business without it.
But we still believe the actual conversation with your customer should be handled by a trained human receptionist.
Why? Because callers are human.
They hesitate. They change their minds halfway through a sentence. They have different accents. They sometimes don’t explain themselves particularly well. They can be worried, annoyed, confused or simply in a hurry.
A good receptionist recognises this and adapts.
If I were comparing answering services, therefore, my first question would be very straightforward:
Who, or what, is going to answer my customers?
2. Do they sound like part of your business?
There is a considerable difference between somebody answering:
“Hello, telephone answering service, can I take a message?”
and:
“Good morning, ABC Solicitors, how can I help?”
The caller shouldn’t feel as though they’ve reached an outsourced call centre.
A good telephone answering service should answer using your company name and follow instructions agreed with you. More importantly, the receptionist needs enough information to deal with the call intelligently.
Perhaps certain calls need transferring immediately. Perhaps a new enquiry requires particular information to be collected. Perhaps one member of staff takes calls on Monday and another on Tuesday.
Businesses aren’t all the same, so their calls shouldn’t all be handled in exactly the same way. The best telephone answering service for your business should feel less like an external supplier and more like an extension of your own office.
3. What happens when the call becomes complicated?
This is where I think you discover the difference between simply answering a telephone and providing a reception service. Most calls are easy. But not all of them are.
A customer may not know who they need to speak to. A potential client might explain something in a rather roundabout way. Somebody might ring about something completely unexpected.
And sometimes people just want somebody to listen. A receptionist needs to be able to use judgement.
That is something we have learnt repeatedly over the years. Telephone communication isn’t simply about hearing the words somebody says. Tone, patience and context matter too.
The person answering represents your company for those few minutes. That’s quite a responsibility when you think about it.
4. Can they transfer calls as well as take messages?
Sometimes a message is exactly what you need. Sometimes it isn’t.
If an important customer rings and you’re available, you may simply want the call transferred to your mobile, home office or another member of your team. A telephone answering service should make that process straightforward.
For businesses with several people or departments, this becomes even more important. The service effectively becomes an off-site switchboard, directing callers to the appropriate person while maintaining the impression of one joined-up organisation.
Your caller doesn’t need to know where everybody is. They simply need to reach the right person.
5. How quickly will you receive your messages?
A beautifully taken message isn’t much use if you receive it tomorrow. Ask how messages are delivered and how quickly you can expect them. If somebody has called about a potential piece of business, you want the information while that opportunity is still warm.
People have become increasingly impatient. If they cannot get hold of one business, finding another takes seconds.
We can complain about that, but I don’t think we’re going to change human behaviour. So your telephone answering service needs to work at the speed your customers expect.
6. Look carefully at how you’re charged
This is not the most exciting subject in the world, but it is important. A low advertised price doesn’t necessarily mean a low bill. When comparing telephone answering services in the UK, find out exactly what you’re paying for.
Are calls rounded up to the nearest minute?
Are there charges for transferring calls?
Are there minimum usage commitments?
Is there a long contract?
Are there additional charges that only become obvious after you’ve joined?
I have always preferred straightforward pricing.
You should be able to understand what a service is likely to cost before you start using it. And I would be slightly suspicious of anything that requires a calculator, a spreadsheet and half an afternoon to understand.
7. Can the service adapt when your business changes?
Businesses don’t operate at exactly the same level every day of the year. Your receptionist might be on holiday. Three members of staff might suddenly be off sick.
You could launch a marketing campaign and receive considerably more calls than normal. Or you may simply reach the point where answering every telephone call yourself is stopping you from doing the work customers are actually paying you to do.
A good answering service should be able to adapt. You may need overflow support today and something closer to a complete outsourced reception service in two years’ time.
Changing supplier every time your circumstances change rather defeats the object.
8. Will they let you try it?
This is something I would always recommend. You can read websites and brochures until the cows come home, but the important thing is hearing what happens when somebody actually calls your business.
How is the telephone answered?
Does the receptionist sound natural?
Is your company name pronounced correctly?
Are your instructions followed?
Do the messages contain the information you need?
Most importantly:
Would you be happy if this was your customer’s first contact with your company?
At OfficeFront, we offer a free trial for precisely this reason. I’d much rather somebody experience the service and decide whether it works for their business than buy it because we’ve written some clever words on a website.
9. Don’t forget why you’re doing it
It is very easy when comparing telephone answering services to get lost in features, technology and prices. But come back to the original problem:
Why are you considering a telephone answering service in the first place?
Usually it is because calls are being missed, staff are being interrupted, customers aren’t always reaching the right person or employing another full-time receptionist doesn’t make financial sense.
The service you choose should solve that problem. If it creates another administrative job for you to manage, something has gone wrong.
So, what is the best telephone answering service in the UK?
There isn’t one answer that applies to every business. And yes, I realise that’s an unusual thing for the owner of a telephone answering company to say.
The best telephone answering service in the UK is the one you can trust to speak to your customers properly when you can’t.
For me, that means real receptionists, clear communication, sensible pricing, flexibility and people who understand that answering a telephone isn’t just about taking down a name and number.
Every incoming call represents somebody. Sometimes it’s an existing customer who needs help. Sometimes it’s a supplier.
And sometimes it’s a person who has never dealt with you before and is deciding, during that first telephone call, whether they want to.
That’s why we’ve always taken answering the telephone seriously at OfficeFront.
We’ve been doing it for more than 25 years and, despite all the technology that has changed around us during that time, one thing hasn’t changed very much:
People still like talking to people.
If you’d like to hear how OfficeFront would answer calls for your business, you can try our telephone answering service free of charge.
No robots. No complicated sales pitch.
Just give us a call. A human will answer.
Peter Radcliffe
Founder, OfficeFront
