Business Idea Center:
Telephone Answering Service

Business Overview

The only talents needed to start a home based telephone answering service are a pleasant telephone manner and excellent communication skills. Business owners, professionals and sales consultants are all starting to realize that customers want the personalized service of talking to a live person when they call a business, not a prerecorded message. Many business owners are turning to forwarding their calls to a telephone answering service after normal business hours, on weekends, during lunch breaks and when no one is available to take incoming calls. Services provided by a telephone answering service include: answering incoming calls, answering basic customer questions, forwarding messages and often additional office services, such as sending and receiving faxes and e-mails. Rates are based on the number of services provided for clients, and standard nonbusiness-hour telephone answering rates start at about $200 per month. Securing 10 to 15 clients for the service could easily generate business revenues in the range of $3,000 to $5,000 per month.

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