AnswerForce is a 24/7 live call answering service with live web chat support. The company supports over 2,500 small and medium-sized businesses with customers in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
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About AnswerForce
Virtual telephone answering services allow individuals or companies of any size to have someone on hand to answer calls 24/7 at a fraction of the cost of hiring team members in-house.
AnswerForce targets small service businesses, franchises, and other service industry professionals. This includes businesses and franchised across home services, HVAC, plumbing, and more.
AnswerForce ensures that you have customer support available around the clock regardless of your business hours. This is particularly useful if you have customers overseas.
When you sign up for a plan with AnswerForce they assign a team of virtual receptionists to answer your calls using a customized script..
You choose when to forward your calls and leave the rest up to them. You can then track calls, minutes used, messages, and all your other stats via their web or mobile app interface.
How AnswerForce Works
AnswerForce outlines a simple 5-step process to seamlessly hand over your inbound calls, appointment scheduling, web chat, and other communications to their team:
- Choose your plan (more info on plans and pricing below or contact your sales representative).
- You will receive a number.
- You will be given a basic script with the option to customize it.
- Schedule a setup appointment.
- Start forwarding your calls and leave the rest to their team.
AnswerForce’s Services
AnswerForce offers a range of services to enable your customers to connect with a member of their team easily, and quickly.
Their core services are:
- 24/7 Live Phone Support – with 24/7 virtual receptionists, your calls will be answered the way you prefer, every time. Never miss another call.
- Live Message Relay – they’ll send your incoming call messages instantly through the AnswerForce App, SMS text, or email. The choice is yours.
- Appointment Booking – they make it easy for customers to arrange
- call-outs, book site visits, and more.
- Live Web Chat – web chat gives customers another way to interact with your team 24/7 and have their questions answered quickly.
- Lead Capture – Proactive receptionists will qualify and capture the information from your inbound calls so you can begin scoping the job.
- Lead Response – their team can also place outbound calls to new contacts from webform submissions or your business software, in 5 minutes or less.
- Lead Re-engagement – just like retargeting, the AnswerForce team can contact and qualify older leads who have shown interest in your franchise in the past.
They have some good reporting tools to keep you up-to-date. For example, you can check how many minutes you have left, the number of calls that have been answered, call recording, the ability to track when calls are coming in to determine the highest call volume time and days, and more via their desktop/mobile app interface.
AnswerForce Plans and Pricing
AnswerForce has many pricing plans available to suit every company size. Here are a few examples as a reference:
- Intro – $259 per month for 200 minutes + 50 chats, plus a $99 one-off setup fee and a charge of $1.80 per each additional minute used.
- Best Value – $359 per month for 300 minutes + 100 chats, there is no setup fee and a charge of $1.70 per each additional minute used.
- Basic – $349 per month for 250 minutes + 75 chats, plus a $99 one-off setup fee and a charge of $1.80 per each additional minute used.
- Standard – $649 per month for 500 minutes + 150 chats, there is no setup fee and a charge of $1.70 per each additional minute used.
- Premium – $959 per month for 800 minutes + 250 chats, there is no setup fee and a charge of $1.60 per each additional minute used.
- Enterprise– $1,179 per month for 1,000 minutes + 300 chats, there is no setup fee and a charge of $1.60 per each additional minute used.
*Pricing at time of publishing
Their rates are very competitive. All plans include 24/7 cover, live call transfer, instant message delivery, unlimited script updates, bilingual services (Spanish), video call software, and online account access.
All packages now include live chat answering too – both on your website and on Facebook messenger. So you can make sure that every enquiry is answered by a real person 24/7!
The Basic and Best Value plans also include appointment setting, custom scripting, CRM integrations, a web landing page, live web chat, click to call, eCommerce order entry, and web form lead response.
There is no charge for the first 30 calls under 30 seconds on all plans, any calls over 30 seconds are always rounded up to the nearest minute and billed this way and all plans are month-to-month.
AnswerForce Alternatives
AnswerForce’s pricing is a bit more competitive and all their plans come with live chat included in the packages with no extra cost. Although they don’t offer a free trial, they offer a month-to-month service with no contracts to tie you in. They also offer scalable solutions, so should you run out of minutes in a month, you can upgrade to a higher package to save on paying out–of-bundle rates and vice-versa if you’re using too few minutes.
Gabbyville and Ruby Receptionists are two highly rated virtual telephone answering services operating on a similar model. They offer free trials, so you can try before you buy so you can make an informed decision.
Your Turn
Have you worked with AnswerForce? If so, please leave a review below to help others with their decision.