Frequently Asked Questions About Our Answering Services

Call us any time or sign up with our online application. Experience our award-winning answering service right now by simply dialing 800-777-1564.

Once we receive your application and payment information, we can provide you a toll-free number and put you in the queue for account setup. We can typically get basic answering service accounts set up in 1-3 days.  Call center services and more complicated answering service setups might take longer.

No. You will sign a month-to-month service agreement and can cancel at any time. If you want to cancel, we simply ask for 28 days' notice in writing (fax or email) so we can adjust our staffing levels.

We've been in the business since 1977. Our parent company, The Perfect Answer, has deep roots in the industry dating back over half a century.

Yes! We accept all major credit cards for online payment. For more information about making payments online, or sending us a credit card to put on file, please see our payment portal at www.answeringinnovations.com/billpay. We also accept business checks but strongly recommend making your initial payment via credit card for a fast setup.  Most of our customers set up automatic recurring payments to avoid late fees.

You are charged for the time our operators are working on your behalf.  If you have an idea how many minutes you'll use or how many calls you'll receive each month, you can use the charts below as a guide for selecting a package. As a general guideline, it can be helpful to know that for most of our clients an average call lasts about 1-2 minutes.  Call 800-777-1564 or contact us using the form below if you need more assistance.  View our current rates on our Plans & Pricing page.

Minutes per month	Recommended Package
< 250	Gold
250-500	Platinum
500-750	Diamond
750-1000	Diamond Plus
1000+	Enterprise or Call 800-777-1564 for high volume rates

Calls per month	Recommended Package
< 100	Gold
100-250	Gold / Platinum
250-500	Platinum / Diamond
500-750	Diamond / Diamond Plus
750-1000	Enterprise
1000+	Enterprise or Call 800-777-1564 for high volume rates

If you exceed the minutes included in your package, you simply pay $0.95/minute for any overage minutes.  View our current rates and overage rate on our Plans & Pricing page.

Yes. Simply contact your account manager or email us to adjust your plan.

Use our free web on-call scheduling software to keep us updated about your on-call staff in real time. You can also tell us who is on-call when you forward your phone line.

We can dispatch messages to you in a variety of ways, including email, text message (without or with confirmation), secure message, phone call, or by holding them until you check in. Find out more about our message dispatching options.

Yes! Your dedicated account manager will set up your account to your specifications, ensure it is thoroughly tested, implement any special requests, and make desired changes over time.  He or she will work with you during account setup to ensure we meet your business' specific needs.

Absolutely! Answering Innovations can provide you a toll free number

No, at this time we do not support bilingual answering services.

There are many ways to forward your phone line depending on your phone carrier, service you subscribe to, and the telephone system that you use.
Telephone Carrier Call Forwarding:

1. For Standard Call Forwarding dial 72 and # (pound) and you will hear a dial tone. For Prestige Call Forwarding dial *72.
2. Enter in your assigned Answering Innovations phone number. ###-###-####

There are many ways to un-forward your phone depending on your phone courier, the service subscribe to, and the telephone system. Some suggestions:

• Standard: Dial 73 and # (pound) one time.
• Prestige: Dial * 73 one time.

Call forward your phone from anywhere; see your carrier for details.

Pre-arrange with your carrier to forward your phone after x number of rings; see your carrier for details.

Pre-arrange with your carrier to call forward your phone if your line is busy; see your carrier for details.

Pre-arrange to have your carrier transfer more than one call at the same time. (If you don't have multi path call forwarding, we may not be able to take more than one call at the same time; see your carrier for details.

When a call comes in that meets your protocol to be dispatched, an agent will gather the information you need, politely place the caller on hold, and call you on a separate line. The agent will introduce the call and, if you are available, live transfer (patch) the caller to your phone.

Absolutely! Answering Innovations has a full software development team. We have tremendous experience and systems to match simple to high end solutions.

Clients looking for answering service and inbound call center services have always faced myriad differing rate plans. Which is best for you? Answering Innovations offers per minute billing. Call time is rounded to the nearest second so if you receive a hang up or wrong number you aren’t charged full price, unlike with per call pricing.

“Per call” providers base their rates on the average time they expect calls to last. Once a call exceeds this average time, they start losing money and need to get the caller off the line as soon as possible to avoid losing their shirts. This leads to hurried call handling or a request to call back, which costs you more money. The result: unsatisfied customers.

Our philosophy is to keep things as simple as possible. This is the primary reason we offer time billing. You pay for what you use. What could be more fair?

All of our operators are located in the USA and all of your calls will be answered in the USA.  We do not outsource any calls.  Our corporate headquarters has been located in Madison, WI for over three decades.  We are local to the Midwest, but serve customers in every state and have Canadian clients too.  We also have other international clients in Europe and Australia who have a presence and receive phone calls in the States.