No matter what the industry, service levels and pricing are interlinked. The quality of service provided by a Telephone Answering Service (TAS) is usually related to their charges and billing structure.

Considerable variations exist in how different call answering and virtual office providers bill their clients. There is now a profusion of telephone answering services in the UK. These range from individuals operating as Virtual Assistants to Serviced Offices who offer it as an add-on, right through to the Telephone Answering Service that doesn’t do anything else.

Consequently, even companies that appear to charge the same headline rate and billing structure may send out invoices with completely different totals for the same number of calls. A wide variety of systems are used in the telephone answering industry and these will lead to variations in the way bills are calculated. Even providers that use the same software may end up billing different amounts because some might price by the minute, some by the message, some for unsolicited sales calls, and others for all calls. Even where all calls are billed by the minute there may be differences. Some offices might bill the client for ringing their own line, others not; whilst others with a very low price per minute may include the ring time and any time where the caller is placed on hold.