Imagine this. You come into your office (or go downstairs to your home office) and get a phone notification. It’s a message from your personal receptionist with reminders of the day’s appointments, calls, and messages from important leads. Instead of proceeding to do business in between hanging on the phone, you are now free to give your undivided attention to high-priority matters. Sounds like the kind of service a big corporate boss gets? Not anymore! Because that’s exactly what live receptionist services provide to any small business.
Make no mistake — a live receptionist (or live virtual receptionist, as they’re also called), isn’t a bot or some kind of automated smart technology. A live receptionist is a remote secretary (or a team of several people) that takes care of all your business communication. From basic services, when the live receptionist answers your calls, provides callers with basic information, and forwards important calls and messages to your team, to an advanced service when the receptionist can be trained to a business’s highly specific needs, a live receptionist is perfect for any business with above-average call loads and only several team members.
Here’s the roundup of the 5 best live receptionist services and information to help you choose the best one for your needs.
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Ruby
? Industries: Legal, healthcare, real estate, finance, home services
❌ Unlimited calls: No
Ruby provides a 24/7 live receptionist service including call answering, outbound calls, greetings, scheduling, and bilingual features which are included on all its plans. A standout feature of Ruby is its additional Live Chat service. Live Chat is for those businesses that want to outsource the live chat feature on their website. Instead of referring users to a chatbot, site visitors will be connected to a real person who will be able to answer questions or transfer them to a specialist from your team. However, Live Chat is a separate service provided by Ruby and isn’t included in Ruby’s Live Receptionist plans.
Davinci Virtual
? Industries: legal, healthcare, finance, real estate, technology consultants, advertising and media, service industry
❌ Unlimited calls: No
Davinci is a virtual receptionist service that also provides a pack of office solutions. These include live virtual receptionist services, live web chat, auto-receptionist, and even coworking spaces. In the live receptionist services arena, Davinci offers 2 types of plans — business and premium. The business plans offer basic virtual receptionist services such as live call answering, call forwarding and screening, voicemail management, and advanced call routing. Only premium plans include scheduling, outbound calling, bilingual receptionists, order processing, and customer care.
Gabbyville
? Industries: legal, healthcare, finance, IT, accounting, construction, automobile, entertainment
✅ Unlimited calls: Yes
Gabbyville is the only provider in the market that bills on a per call basis vs. per minute, and each call allows the caller unlimited talk time with the live receptionist. Also, you get unlimited talk after the receptionist transfers calls to the end user. The per call method is incredibly convenient for businesses with a focus on customer service and support (tech, billing, service, etc.). Such calls take a longer time to provide the customer with needed service. Gabbyville’s service will save a business both money (think of 40 calls averaging 3 minutes = 120 minutes vs. 40 plain minutes) and double the customer service since with unlimited talk time, you don’t have to count the minutes that your receptionist gives to each client. Moreover, you can be sure that no Spam call gets into your pricing plan. Only real calls are counted as such. Find out more about Gabbyville.
AnswerHero
? Industries: legal, healthcare, service providers, IT, real estate, finance, hospitality, nonprofit
❌ Unlimited calls: No
AnswerHero is a very straightforward live receptionist service that does what it says: answers calls for you so your team can focus on more priority tasks. It provides services such as bilingual receptionists, appointment setting, message taking, and lead capture. If you’re a growing business or practice that wants to capture leads, have basic information answered by a live receptionist, and have that information sent to you via messages and email, AnswerHero will meet your needs.
PATLive
? Industries: real estate, medical, legal, other professional services.
❌ Unlimited calls: No
PATLive offers a live receptionist solution that may suit business owners looking for a variety of options. Offering 6 plans, PATLive offers quite a few different takes on features and minutes. While this may seem reasonable for a small business, we wouldn’t suggest the cheapest plans in the bundle, since you’ll be missing out on key features that only a human can do. (For these basic types of calls, we suggest getting a VoIP auto-attendant, aka virtual receptionist to fill in.) On the other hand, PATLive offers some great industry-specific features for larger businesses and specific industries, like specialized receptionist training. If you plan on your agents handling topics that demand special training and are willing to pay for that, PATLive is a good option.
✅ Our choice
As the only virtual receptionist service above offering unlimited talk time, Gabbyville live receptionist wins our day. It’s incredibly handy for businesses and e-commerce handling a considerable number of customer service, billing, and support calls. For these businesses, Gabbyville’s live receptionists will both maximize customer service and save costs.
Final word
Hiring a live receptionist to answer business calls may sound like an important investment to make. Sure, it’s not one of the cheapest services around, but that’s because at its heart lies real human interaction on both ends. Remember that with a live receptionist, you’re hiring a real human being that works for you every day yet only for a fraction of the price you’d pay a staff member for a 40-hour workweek. For all the benefits of live communication both you and your customers get, that’s a great way to relieve your mind for those tasks that demand undivided attention. It’s also an accessible way for a small business to experience the perks of service usually reserved for big corporate bosses. But not anymore. Not with a live virtual receptionist.
