Is there a telephone answering service in Rotherham that is really based here?

Yes. Reception Hub is a telephone answering service in Rotherham in the plainest sense. The registered address is Century Business Centre, Wath upon Dearne, S63 5DA, and the number you ring us on, 01709 222834, starts with the Rotherham dialling code. Calls are answered from South Yorkshire, by a person, using the name of your business.

It would be easy to stretch that into something it is not, so here is the limit of it. Answering a phone is not local work in the way fitting a boiler is. It happens down a line, and a business in Rotherham gets exactly what a business in Cornwall gets. What this page can honestly offer is narrower: if you would rather give your phones to a firm from your own borough than to a call centre at the other end of the country, you can.

What happens when your phone rings and you cannot get to it?

You keep your number, whether it is an 01709 landline or a mobile, and you divert it to us at the times you choose. From there:

  1. The call is picked up with the greeting you wrote, in your business name.
  2. The caller's question is dealt with from your notes: what you do, where you cover, what happens next.
  3. Their details and the reason they rang are written down.
  4. A text and an email reach you while the call is still fresh.

On the Growth and Premium plans the call can end in something firmer than a message: an appointment in your calendar, or the caller put through to you. There is a full walk-through on the telephone answering service page, and the divert itself takes a couple of minutes with the codes in our guide to diverting a mobile.

Which Rotherham businesses is it for?

The ones where the phone is how work arrives and the owner is the person least able to answer it. A borough that runs from Maltby and Dinnington up to Wath and Swinton has a lot of people working alone in a van, at a chair or at a desk. We have written a page for each kind, because the calls are not alike:

  • Plumbers, where the caller with water coming through the ceiling rings the next number within a minute.
  • Electricians and gas engineers, where some calls are a safety matter and need sorting from the routine ones.
  • Builders, whose phone is split between new projects, merchants and the customer whose kitchen is in pieces.
  • Salons, where answering means walking away from the client in the chair.
  • Accountants, whose phone is busiest in the weeks they have least time for it.

If your trade is not on that list, the service still fits. The script is written around your business, not picked from a shelf.

What does a call look like in practice?

Here is an invented one, to show the shape of the message. Imagine an electrician who is second-fixing a kitchen in Wickersley when a call comes in from Rawmarsh.

  • 2.20pm. Answered in the electrician's business name.
  • Caller. Name, mobile, address and postcode in Rawmarsh, read back and confirmed.
  • Why they rang. Sockets in the kitchen keep tripping. Started this morning. Nothing smells of burning.
  • Also noted. It is a rented house, and the tenant has given the landlord's name.
  • Told. The electrician will ring back before five.
  • 2.24pm. Text and email sent.

Nothing in that needed the electrician to put a tool down, and nothing in it is a guess. The job is still theirs to win at five o'clock, with the facts already in hand.

What does it cost a Rotherham business?

The same as it costs anybody. There is no local rate and no premium for distance, because distance does not come into it. Four plans, each with a set number of calls a month:

  • Light. £59 a month for up to 30 calls.
  • Essential. £129 a month for up to 50, answered exactly as Light is.
  • Growth. £249 a month for up to 100, with booking, call transfers, qualifying questions and out-of-hours options.
  • Premium. £399 a month for up to 150, with callbacks, quote follow-ups and two hours of admin support.

Setup is a single charge, from £49.50, normally £99. What each plan includes, and the price per call beyond the allowance, is set out on plans and pricing. To see what the missed calls are costing you first, the calculator on the homepage works it out from your own figures and shows the sum.

Do you only answer for Rotherham?

No, and it would be misleading to let this page suggest it. We answer for businesses anywhere in the UK, and we have one address, the one in Wath upon Dearne. There is no branch in any other town. The other places we have written about are listed under areas, and the kinds of business we work with are on who we help.

How does a Rotherham business get started?

For a week, free, without handing over a card. Divert your phone for the hours you are busiest and judge it on what lands in your messages. If it does not suit, switch the divert off and you are back where you started.

If you want to ask a question before any of that, you are ringing a Rotherham number: 01709 222834. Or leave a note on the contact page saying when to ring you.