Frequently Asked Queestions

Statistics show that on average, businesses miss 15% of incoming calls. Of those callers, 80% won’t try again if they get an engaged tone and 70% won’t leave a voicemail.

Sound familiar?

If you’re doing everything you can on the marketing front to attract the right people’s attention, but then miss their call when they do get in touch, what’s the point?

Work with a call answering service and you’ll never miss a sales enquiry or an important client call again.

Web chat can bring many benefits to your business. It’s important to be available to customers at a time that suits them, in a way that’s most convenient for them. Web chat is often the preferred method of communication for those with limited time. Our web chat service will make sure you’re covered.

Web chat can lead to improved leads from potential customers – a short but effective engagement at the right time can be key to converting new prospects. If website visitors can’t find a key bit of information they want from your website they will very likely go to a competitor’s website to try their luck there instead.

With well-managed chat, you can answer their immediate questions or settle doubts and it has been shown to positively influence customer opinion. It’s also often a cheaper way to manage conversations with customers. Chat agents can typically manage multiple chats simultaneously, increasing customer satisfaction whilst decreasing costs. What’s not to like about that?

With Verbatim, your chat will be well managed. Every one of our small team is fully trained, friendly and professional by nature and they’ll be well briefed about your company and client base before they handle your web chat to quickly answer any questions that your website visitors might have.

Because our chat agents can typically manage multiple chats, it’s also a very cost-effective way to deal with your customers.

What’s not to like about that?

We take your calls from 8am-6.30pm Monday-Friday and 9am-2pm on Saturday.

Outside these hours we offer a free unlimited voicemail to email service.

We also offer a 24/7 service which operates 365 days a year including Christmas and all UK bank holidays.

Our web chat answering service is available:

9am-10pm Monday to Friday.

9am-7pm Saturday to Sunday & UK bank holidays.

For call answering, first of all, you choose which calls you’d like us to answer.

You can leave all your calls to us, or only have us step in when you’re unavailable to take them yourself. You may be on another call, in a meeting, or just out for a spot of lunch. Just let us know which calls you’d like diverted to us and over what hours and we can get to work supporting you straight away.

Our web chat software is very simple to install and integrates with all leading website software including WordPress, Shopify, Wix and Drupal. We go to great measures to ensure we know your business inside out before we get started. It means most of your website visitors won’t have so much as an inkling that anything’s changed, not least that you’ve outsourced your web chat.

Simple.

For call answering, it’s a very simple process at your end and there is no extra technology. All you need to do is to contact your telephone provider to arrange a call diversion facility on your account. Or if you prefer we can call them on your behalf. Set up is simple and we have most accounts up and running within 24 hours. In fact, very often in less time than that.

For web chat, we work with you to get your chat box live on your site as quickly as possible and usually it’s very simple. We have taken clients through the process from designing a custom chat box and installing the code on their site within hours of registering. 

Your calls and/or chats will be picked up by one of our experienced call handlers. Every one of our small team is fully trained, friendly and professional by nature. They’ll be well briefed about your company and your regular callers before they start to handle your calls or web chats.

Our team is full of exceptional people. They are the life of the business, and we treat them accordingly. As many of our clients have told us, with our team “you can hear the smiles”.

As a result, our staff turnover is tiny, which means our call handlers and virtual receptionists have all the experience you’re looking for when you’re not answering calls yourself.

Outsourcing your calls and web chats is far more flexible than recruiting in-house, as you can adapt the amount of work you need from us as often as you like. Not to mention the fact it cuts out the resource-heavy recruitment process and other unnecessary business costs entirely.

How we respond to your calls or chats is entirely up to you.

We work with an extensive range of companies, all with very different business approaches and answering requirements.

Yes. You’ll find our headquarters in West Berkshire on the outskirts of Newbury and all of our call-answering and web-chat answering staff are based in the UK.

Feel free to drop by for a visit.

Yes. For call answering, our standard approach is to provide a personalised voicemail to email facility outside of usual working hours, so all messages left are automatically emailed to you as a sound file.

If, however, you need a live call answering service round-the-clock, that’s no problem either. Why not take a look at our 24/7 call answering service option. 

For reference, our usual working hours are from 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday, and 9am to 2pm Saturday (excluding bank holidays).

Web chat answering is available 9am-10pm Monday to Friday and 9am-7pm Saturday to Sunday & bank holidays.

Under no circumstances will any of your incoming calls be missed or rejected. Rest assured that we can answer multiple calls on your behalf at any one time.

Firstly, you let us know what your preferred greeting is for your customers and clients and whether there are any particular ways you’d like us address regular callers.

Essentially, at the heart of everything we do is adaptability.

Our call and web chat handlers are consistently polite and used to adopting an appropriate tone for different callers.

One rule we stand by is to never be too overfamiliar. It’s all part of our mission to be courteous.

If one thing’s for sure, it’s that with Verbatim, your reputation is always in safe hands.

Not once.

We make sure we have all the details of your regular callers before we start answering your calls.

Not only does this avoid embarrassing situations by allowing us to address them personally, you can give us specific guidelines or actions to follow from one regular caller to the next.

Yes. All your telephone calls and web chats are logged.

We’ll email you the details as and when calls or chats happen and you can keep tabs on everything as often as you like by visiting your secure online portal. Leads (with full transcripts) are sent immediately – ready for you to convert from your web chats.

Of course you can. In fact, we encourage you to let us know your status from day-to-day so we can handle calls and chats in the most helpful way possible.

It’s simply a case of giving us a call, emailing or using your secure online portal to keep us in the know.

Nothing —landline or mobile, it’s all included in your monthly plan.

Better still, we’ll always let you know who’s calling you before we put them through, so you can choose to take the call or not.

For call answering, we’ll work with you to agree the best fixed-fee monthly call plan for you, anticipating how many calls we’re likely to handle for you in that time. 

For web chat, the amount you pay is calculated by the number of chats you have per month. You will be placed within one of our packages e.g. up to 50 chats per month. Your 30-day trial will give us an expected monthly chat allowance based on your monthly needs.

If we overestimate, or you have a quiet month, unlike with other call providers your unused calls will simply rollover to your next month with us, no questions asked.

And if your usage continues well below the calls initially allocated in your plan, we’ll help you move to a more suitable plan.

Yes. But wait, it works in your favour!

You see, it’s essential we spend a little time getting everything in place – learning all about your business and regular callers – if we’re to perform to the best of our ability on your behalf.

This small upfront cost ensures you get to make the most of our answering services and expertise in the long term.

No. If you set up with us, the first 30 days of web chats (capped at 100 chats) are completely free!

You can take on our call answering services on a month-by-month basis or start with a fixed-fee, fixed-term subscription of 12 months plus.

Here are just some of the reasons why our existing clients have chosen Verbatim over anyone else…

• You’ll be provided with a unique personalised answering service thanks to our in-house technology which allows us to customise services to your specific needs.
• Your clients will never feel like their calls or chats have been outsourced.
• Each office space has noise cancelling measures, and each staff member wears a noise cancelling headset.
• Our UK-based team are all proactive, friendly, professional and experienced in customer service, with many carrying high-level NVQ qualifications.
• We offer you a dedicated account manager to help from the very beginning.
• We strive to become a part of your business by reflecting your values, your ethos and your brand image.