Is a telephone answering service in Barnsley worth it for a one-person business?
It is worth it when the calls you miss would have paid you more than the service costs. A telephone answering service in Barnsley starts at £59 a month with us, so for a sole trader the question is simple: does one missed call a month turn out to have been a job? If the answer is yes, the sum works. If your phone hardly rings while you are busy, it does not, and you should keep your money.
Everything below is meant to help you answer that for your own business, not to talk you into it.
Where are we, if not in Barnsley?
Just over the boundary. Reception Hub's one address is in Wath upon Dearne, which sits in the borough of Rotherham and in the same Dearne Valley as Wombwell, Goldthorpe and Thurnscoe. We have no office in Barnsley and will not claim one. Your 01226 number, or your mobile, stays as it is, and it is answered in your business name when you divert it.
What does your evening look like now?
If you work alone, you may know the second shift. You get home, eat, and open the missed calls list. Some numbers you recognise. Some you do not. You ring them in order. One has already found somebody. One does not pick up. One wants a price for a job you cannot picture from a description. By the time you have finished, it is the back end of the evening and you have won, perhaps, one of them.
With the phone answered during the day, the evening starts from a different place. Each caller has been spoken to, and what they said is in a text:
New enquiry, 11.05am. Garden wall down after the wind, Darfield. About four metres, wants it rebuilt in matching brick. Home after 4pm. Told you would ring this evening.
That is an invented example, but it shows the difference. You know who to ring first, what they want, and when they are in. The caller knows somebody is coming back to them, which is the reason they have stopped ringing round.
Which calls are worth paying somebody to answer?
New customers. They do not know you, they owe you nothing, and they are the ones who move on when nobody answers. A supplier can ring again. A customer whose job you are halfway through has your mobile and can text. A regular knows you will get back to them.
So you do not have to send us everything. A divert can be set to pass a call on only when you do not pick up, which keeps the people you want to speak to yourself and catches the rest. The code for that kind of divert is in our article on diverting a mobile.
How many calls would you use?
You can measure it before you spend anything. For two ordinary weeks, count the calls you miss during working hours. Your phone's call list does it for you. Double the figure and you have a month.
The Light plan includes 30 calls a month, which is one or two on each working day. If your count comes in under that, Light is the plan, and nothing about the answering is cut down to make it cheaper. If you go over in a busy month, each extra call is £2. Every call is logged, so after the first month you are not guessing.
What if you want the job booked, not only the message taken?
That is the Growth plan, at £249 a month for 100 calls. The caller is asked your questions, a visit goes into your calendar, and an urgent call can be put through to you. It suits a business where the visit is what wins the work. There is a page for each of the main trades: builders, plumbers, gas engineers and electricians.
With the cold months coming, heating engineers may also want to read why winter boiler jobs are lost to missed calls. Essential and Premium sit either side of Growth, and all four plans are compared on plans and pricing, along with the setup fee, which you pay once: from £49.50, normally £99.
What about the calls that come after tea?
Be clear about this before you choose a plan. Light and Essential cover business hours, so a call at eight in the evening still rings your own phone, as it does now. Out-of-hours options begin at Growth. If most of your enquiries arrive in the daytime while you are on a job, Light does what you need. If your customers ring once they are home, ask us for the exact hours on Growth, and get them in writing, before you decide the bigger plan is worth it.
When is it not worth having?
When your work comes from a handful of contractors who have your mobile and will always get you. When you are booked so far ahead that a new enquiry is more of a nuisance than a help. When your customers would rather wait a day for you than speak to anybody else. In any of those cases an answering service is a cost with nothing coming back, and we would rather you found that out here than a month in.
How do you find out for certain?
Try it for a week. The trial is seven days, it is free, and no card is asked for. Divert your phone, do your normal week, and read the messages each night. If they are jobs, you have your answer. If they are not, stop the divert and nothing has changed.
Ring 01709 222834 to set it up, or send your details through the contact page. The general workings are explained under telephone answering service, and the other towns we have written about are under areas.