Ruby Receptionists, sometimes referred to as Call Ruby, is a Portland, Oregon based virtual answering service for small businesses. The company was founded in 2003 by Jill Nelson, who remains on as CEO.
All the virtual receptionists work out of the company’s Portland call center, and can get you 16 hours of phone coverage a day (12 on the weekends).
The advantage for business owners is to not have to worry about staffing a phone line in-house, or getting disrupted by calls during your work day.
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Ruby Receptionists Services
The Ruby Receptionist service can also give small companies the “illusion” of being much bigger, when customers are promptly greeted by a cheerful, professional receptionist on the phone.
The big idea? Creating real, meaningful connections with callers—building trust and helping you win business.
You can customize the “scripts” and provide other guidelines to Ruby that they’ll follow on your behalf.
The company can even make certain outbound calls on your behalf, to confirm appointments or to relay information, but wouldn’t be considered a lead generation or telemarketing service.
How Ruby Works
You can forward any number to your live Ruby Receptionists, or even get assigned a toll-free number.
They’ll answer with your custom greeting, take messages, forward calls to the appropriate department, and answer FAQs on your behalf.
You’ll get email alerts when you have a new call logged, and can track your usage and real-time call reports in the Call Ruby online dashboard. It’s modern technology coupled with old-fashioned professional, friendly receptionists—so you never miss a beat.
Bilingual Support
Ruby offers service in Spanish at no additional charge.
Ruby Receptionists Intro Video
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Ruby Receptionists Plans and Pricing
Call Ruby has 3 pricing tiers, which are based on the number of inbound minutes you expect your new receptionist to receive.
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The popular “Impress” plan includes 100 receptionist minutes for $299 a month.
At $2.99 a minute, it’s not a cheap hourly rate virtual assistant, but the true value is having someone “on call” during your business hours for a very low monthly charge.
Unless you’ve been answering the phones yourself for some time, you might not have any idea of the call volume you’ll receive. In that case, it probably makes sense to start at the lower tier and scale up as needed.
The “Engage” plan is the next level up and includes 200 receptionist minutes for $599 per month.
Finally, the 3rd tier allows for up to 500 receptionist minutes for $1269 per month — over 8 hours of inbound talk-time.
If you go over your allotted minutes in any of the plans, additional minutes are simply charged a pro-rated rate on your service level.
All plans come with a 21-day money back guarantee. There are no long-term contracts, but requires a 30-day cancellation notice to terminate the service.
Ruby Receptionists Alternatives
Ruby is one of the most prominent companies in this space, though services like Gabbyville might also be considered.
| Ruby Receptionists | Gabbyville | DaVinci | 1-888-GoAnswer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Rating | not rated | not rated | ||
| Established | 2003 | 2013 | 2006 | 2003 |
| Minimum Monthly Cost | $299 for 100 minutes | $229 for 150 minutes | $99 for 50 minutes | $110 for 100 minutes |
| Price per Minute | $2.99 | $1.53 | $2.00 | $1.10 |
| Set-Up Fee | $99 | $95 | $75 | |
| Trial | 14-Day Free Trial | 14-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Risk-Free | |
| Learn more | Learn More | Learn More | Learn More | Learn More |
On the more “virtual assistant” side of things, I’ve seen some people turning to Uassist.me for on-call receptionists — but no guarantee the call gets picked up every time like with Ruby. (Uassist’s US-branch, Uassist.US is testing a similar call-answering service.)
For outgoing calls, Outbounders.com might be worth a look.
Your Turn
Have you worked with Ruby Receptionists? If so, please leave a brief review of your experience below to help others with their decision.
I have founded 5 companies and all of them started with Call Ruby. If you are looking for cheap. Forget them. If you are looking for polite, well spoken, educated….use them.
I tried out Call Ruby for a couple of months and was rather disappointed. The quality of the people answering my calls was entirely inconsistent and I presume that’s based on the fact that they ‘assign’ 10 receptionists to you, with another 10 for backup. Some calls were answered unprofessionally, others in monotone … and that’s not to mention that the actual call itself had a bad connection. Not worth the money at all.
I have been happy with Ruby except for the fact that every year they do a 10% price increase. It is no longer to $409 stated above. I was just notified they are now increasing from the $449 (in May of 2015 when I started it was $409) and will now be $489 plus 2.45 per minute above. I always go over. They are chatty with my customers but I liked that about them but not at these prices. It’s really getting to be too expensive. Perhaps they should consider paying less for national advertising to get new clients and work on maintaining the ones they have.
I was also a Ruby member and things were going downhill so I found another service. I also agree with others that having the same 1 or 2 people answering your calls is helpful as they get to know your business better.
I searched around and ended up going with RepsDirect.com since they seemed to offer the best value along with some other perks like offering text messaging. I have been very happy with their service so far and would definitely recommend them.
Are you paying $1650 per month? I can get a staff person for a little more than that
I have been working with Ruby for several months. I must say, I was very reluctant to allow someone remote to speak with my clients. However, I am so glad I did! They are very professional and I have received many, many compliments. Most of the time, my clients don’t realize they are not in my office. I actually had a client visit my office and wanted to speak to the “nice young man” who answers my phone sometimes. Of course, I had to confess that this person wasn’t actually located in my office building!
They truly aim to spread happiness and you can hear them smile through the phone. Their service has relieved my staff from constantly grabbing the phone every second. I highly recommend them.
I have to agree with what Andrea said in the previous post. I’ve been a Ruby customer for a year or so and steadily the prices have increased. The service quality is all pooled so my callers dont get a level of consistency. I ended up trying one of the company’s mentioned above, http://www.gabbyville.com and their service so far has been preety good. They apparently divide customers into small groups that allow for more of a boutique service. Im preety happy with them now and my costs have dropped by half. They have a plan that starts at $99/month
Ronald,
If you’re ever looking for something with the same level of familiarity, but offering more services to help your business, check out RemSource. They make sure that your customers talk to the same 1 or 2 people each time they call, and get really integrated in the day-to-day to run all the administrative tasks. They also do bookkeeping – highly recommended!!
I have been working with Ruby for several years and initially they were great: I never went over my monthyl allowance, calls were responded to quickly and questions were answered thoroughly. Over time, plan prices have increased substantially and the call quality has gone down considerably. Questions that used to be handled using the FAQ section for free are now not dealt with initially – so that I have to request a callback from Ruby, which is an additional per-minute charge.
Most disturbing – it seems that Ruby staff stay on the call for longer than is necessary – I have gone over my monthly allowance by several hundred dollars multiple times. My call log shows that staff are staying on calls for 15-30 minutes at a time. When I have complained to Ruby about this, they credited my account – for $25 – but have not worked to remedy the issue.