In 2024 there is a low barrier to entry to starting your own telephone answering service, call center business, or bringing these services in-house for an existing business.
With cloud-based solutions, you simply need a reliable internet connection and a computer to get up and running.
Telephone answering services are in demand, with the global contact center market expected to grow by about 46% from 2020 to 2027 (Source: Statista).
To run an efficient answering service, your telephone answering software (tas software) needs to allow you and your team to easily manage calls, and agents, access phone scripts, track calls and provide client billing. Below we’ll cover the 5 best answering service software for starting and scaling your business.
Not looking for software? Check out the best inbound call center service providers in 2024.
5 Best Answering Service Software of 2024:
- nSolve – Best overall answering service software
- EVS7 – Best for multi-channel support
- Dialpad – Best for small businesses
- Five9 – Best for mid-market and enterprise businesses
- RingCentral – Best industry-specific options
What is the best answering service software?
Here are my recommendations for the best answering service software in 2024:
1. nSolve
Best overall answering service software
nSolve has been developing software products for over 20 years and developed nCall in 2003, their answering service software for telephone answering services, virtual receptionists, and call centers.
nCall offers the complete answering service software package to get your answering service business up and running in no time. nCall enables you to provide the best customer support through functionality to handle multiple calls, manage multiple clients, use custom scripts, transfer calls, and much more.
There are a few requirements that you need to get started with nCall. You’ll need a hosted VoIP PBX, compatible VoIP handsets, headset, computer, and hosted servers. They offer a reasonable one-off fee if you want them to help install, configure, and provide full training on nCall.
Unlike EVS7, nCall software must be installed onto your device, so you’ll need to ensure you have met their PC and server requirements.
Features:
- Cloud-based or on-premise
- Fully scalable
- Easy setup (new agent setup in less than 15-minutes)
- VoIP integration
- Configurable scripts and client greetings
- Client resources
- Client message delivery
- Automatic call logging
- Data analytics
- Customer support
- Optional software modules
Price:
- You’ll need to fill out their contact form to get more pricing details.
- nSolve offers purchase and rental options for nCall and payment plans. Payments can be spread over time to help offset the initial cost.
- You can also request a trial license and a demo video via this form.
Reviews:
- You can see their customer testimonials on their site here.
2. EVS7
Best for multi-channel support
Electronic Voice Services (EVS7) is by far one of the largest providers of telephone answering service software and has been in operations for over 25 years and serves over 15,000 customers. They are a US-based company with international operations serving small to enterprise businesses.
Fox is their all-inclusive cloud-based answering service software. So you and your team don’t need expensive on-premise infrastructure or hardware to start receiving and handling calls.
You simply need an internet connection and a headset where you can then log in via a web browser and start handling calls.
EVS7 has a simple setup process. You first create an agent account, then a client account, add specific client instructions or scripts and contact details, add your branding, then test calls. EVS7 provides direct inward dialing (DIDs) that your clients use to forward calls directly to your agents.
Their reporting makes invoicing and billing your clients easy. For example, you can see breakdowns of calls by client and how much time was worked along with other reporting metrics.
Features:
- Fully cloud-based
- Unlimited calling
- Omni-channel communication (email & texting)
- Handle multiple calls & clients
- Scalable solutions
- Reporting
- Invoices and Billing (QuickBooks integration)
- Warm transfers
- HIPPA compliant (for medical answering services)
- Cloud call reporting
- API integrations
Price:
- EVS7 telephone answering service software can be billed Monthly or Yearly, which includes a 20% savings. In addition, their Fox answering services is per agent pricing, which includes unlimited calls and is $149/month per agent.
- Pricing is based on simultaneous users, so you can have more than one user per seat if you have shifts.
- Although they have very competitive pricing in the answering services market, you may be able to get a discount if you have a large number of seats needed.
- Schedule a free demo today
Reviews:
- G2 4.5 stars
3. Dialpad
Best for small businesses
Between meetings, operational hours, and getting work done, many small businesses don’t have the time to answer all the phone calls that come through on a given day.
If you are a small business and need an answering service, you have a couple of options. You can hire a live answering service provider to have their agents handle incoming calls on your business’s behalf or create your own answering service and use a virtual receptionist feature as Dialpad offers.
Dialpads virtual receptionist feature can route incoming customer calls to the correct departments, provide important information with personalized greetings, or prompt callers to leave a message.
Getting started with Dialpad is pretty straightforward. First, you choose your phone number or use an existing business number. You then record your greetings and any personalized messages by department, create your call menu and flow, and set up routing.
Features:
- Virtual receptionist features
- Call prioritization
- Personalized greetings by department
- Customized greetings
- Direct calls to the right team
- Calling forwarding
- Call routing
- Call analytics
- Enterprise-grade security
- Unlimited calling, SMS, and MMS
- AI features
- Google integrations
- Unlimited video meetings
- Web and chat support
Price:
- Dialpads virtual receptionist is included in their business phone plans. Their standard plan is $15/month per user if billed annually. $23/month per user if billed monthly.
- They also have pro and enterprise-level plans that offer more features.
Reviews:
- G2 4.5 stars
- Capterra 4.5 stars
- Gartner peer insights 4.4 stars
4. Five9
Best for mid-market and enterprise businesses
Five9 serves over 2,500 customers worldwide and is a cloud contact center solutions leader. They have a range of products and solutions for small to enterprise-level businesses.
Five9 offers advanced self-service solutions like their interactive virtual agent (IVA) that exceeds the quality of standard interactive virtual response (IVR) solutions. IVA offers more conversational self-service so users can engage with a virtual agent instead of a generic question branch.
IVA uses AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand user questions in real-time and provide the appropriate info or directions to users.
With an IVA, businesses can automate tasks like:
- Appointment scheduling
- Call steering (directing users to the correct department)
- Virtual concierge
- Payment processing
- Product recall
- Appointment reminder
- Inbound ticketing
- And much more
Consider using an IVA to automate your virtual receptionist tasks if you are a larger organization. In addition to IVA, Five9 offers an impressive suite of cloud contact solutions to enhance customer experiences and reduce operating costs.
Features:
- Interactive Virtual Assistant (IVA)
- One platform
- Seamless IVA to live agent transfers
- IVA templates and easy-to-use IVA builder
- 25 authentic human-sounding avatars (not robots)
- Voiceover capabilities
- Appointment scheduling
- Card payments
- Password resets
- Order lookup
- Much more
Price:
- Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA) can be included as an add-on to any solution bundles offered by Five9. Currently, there are four bundles, with the lowest Core bundle starting at $149/month per concurrent user. You can visit their pricing page to request a quote and discuss it with their sales team.
Reviews:
- G2 4 stars
- Capterra 4.2 stars
- Trust radius 7.7/10 rating
5. RingCentral
Best industry-specific options
RingCentral offers business communication products such as business phone systems, messaging, video conferencing, inbound cloud contact center, outbound, engagement and support, video meetings, and more.
They have solutions catered to small to large businesses in multiple industries—everything from financial services to retail and professional services like legal and accounting.
Within their inbound services, their omnichannel routing can optimize routing to offer your clients and customers the best possible customer experience. Through their automation solutions, you can have calls routed through self-service flows, virtual holds, chatbots, and call deflection.
Features:
- Inbound cloud contact center
- IVR/self-service
- Virtual hold
- Chatbots
- Call deflection
- Omnichannel routing
- Skill-based routing
- AI digital routing
- Voicemail routing
- Data-driven routing
- Workforce management
- Supervisor tools
- Agent tools
- Administration
- Analytics
- Integrations
- Security and compliance
Price:
- To get the features that can help with call answering needs, you need to contact sales to get a quote on their contact center solutions. They have four product tiers under the contact center pricing that you can discuss with the sales team. Depending on your unique needs, they can offer custom pricing.
Reviews:
- Gartner 4.5 stars
- G2 3.9 stars
- Capterra 4.3 stars
Wrapping things up:
In this post, we covered answering service software to support answering service startups and businesses looking for answering service software solutions.
Call Center FAQs:
What is a telephone answering service?
A telephone answering service is a live answering service where agents answer phone calls on behalf of businesses to help new and existing customers with customer support, appointment scheduling, lead info collection, and much more. Agents typically follow a script that is provided by the business.
How do I start my own answering service?
To start your own answering service business, you need a computer, headset, and answering service software. With software like EVS7, you don’t need expensive hardware or to download software. Instead, you can connect directly to the software via a web browser and start answering calls. You then need to get clients and confirm the messaging, scripts, and operational information so you can assist callers appropriately. Your client will then need to set up their phone system to forward calls to your phone numbers, and then you can begin taking calls.
What is the best small business answering service software?
The best small business answering service software is Dialpad, in which you can use their virtual receptionist feature included in their lowest tier pricing. Their virtual receptionist feature allows you to create personalized greetings by department, route calls, provide important info, and more.
What is a virtual receptionist?
Virtual receptionists are real people or automated response systems handling your calls like an in-house receptionist. For example, businesses use virtual receptionists to greet visitors and answer calls.
