When the phone rings and you can’t answer it, most new callers won’t leave a message. They’ll ring the next business on the list. A telephone answering service makes sure a real person picks up in your business’s name whenever you can’t: when you’re with a client, on a job, in a meeting or, just as important, on holiday.
I have relied on a telephone answering service since 2011. It answers Get Ahead’s own number, and in 15 years we have never missed a call. When clients started asking how we did it, offering them the same service was an easy decision. In this guide I’ll explain how a telephone answering service works, what it costs, how it compares with voicemail and AI, and how to tell whether your business needs one.
Perhaps one of these sounds familiar. “I can’t take calls when I’m on site, and by the time I ring back they’ve booked someone else.” Or: “I haven’t had a proper week off in years, because I’m the only one who answers the phone.”
What is a telephone answering service?
A telephone answering service is a team that answers your business calls for you, using your business name, and passes each message on. You divert your calls to them when you can’t answer, and they pick up as if they were part of your business.
You may also see it called a call handling or message taking service, or outsourced telephone answering. It sits between voicemail, which records a message and leaves the caller waiting, and a receptionist, whom you employ to sit in your office. It suits owner-led businesses that are too busy to answer every call but too small to employ someone to do it: sole traders, tradespeople, consultants, professional services firms and small practices.
How does a telephone answering service work?
You divert your line to the answering team, they answer with a greeting you have agreed, and they send you each message by email or text. Setting it up can often be done the same day. At Get Ahead it works like this.
1. Talk to your Regional Director
Tell them what you need cover for, when and for how long: every afternoon, evenings and weekends, a busy season, or a fortnight in August. We work with two specialist UK call answering partners, and your Regional Director will match you to the one that fits your hours and your callers.
2. Tell us about your business
We agree how calls are answered, your opening hours, the questions callers most often ask, what counts as urgent and whether you want messages by email, text or both.
3. Divert your calls
Most landlines, mobiles and internet phone systems have a call divert setting. You switch it on, and your calls come to us. If your mobile is your business number, as it is for many sole traders and tradespeople, a mobile phone answering service works in exactly the same way.
4. We answer in your name
A trained call handler answers in your business name, takes the caller’s name, number and reason for calling, reassures them that you’ll be in touch, and passes the message on.
5. Switch back when you’re ready
Turn the diversion off and your calls come straight back to you.
Why go through Get Ahead rather than straight to an answering company? Because you get one point of contact who knows your business, the right service chosen for you rather than a price list to work through, and support that can grow beyond the phone. I chose our partners precisely because they are specialists: answering calls is all they do. We were already using them for our own phones, so I knew exactly what our clients would get.
What happens to calls outside office hours?
They can still be answered. If your customers ring early, late or at weekends, or out-of-hours calls are your main concern, we use a partner that specialises in out-of-hours cover, available up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, depending on your specific needs. Callers reach a real person rather than a voicemail, and urgent calls can be passed on to you straight away if you want them to be.
If you only need daytime cover, calls outside your agreed hours can go to a personal message in your business name, and anything left is passed on first thing the next working day.
Whichever you choose, agree in advance what counts as urgent and who should be contacted, for example for a tradesperson’s emergency call-out.
What can a call handler do beyond taking a message?
More than most people expect. A good call handler doesn’t only write down a name and number. Depending on what you agree, they can:
- answer common questions about your opening hours, services or prices
- book appointments in your online booking system or calendar
- find out who is calling and put the call through to you when you are free
- pass urgent calls to you, or to someone you nominate, straight away
- take orders and capture the details of new enquiries
Because Get Ahead is a network of more than 90 Virtual Experts, phone cover can sit alongside other support. A virtual assistant can follow up the enquiries, keep your diary in order or deal with the emails that build up while you’re busy, so the calls become work rather than a list of people to ring back.
That is what happened for the Leeds office of Sanderson Weatherall, the national estate agents. We set up telephone answering to handle calls and pass on messages, and alongside it an administration Virtual Expert who booked property viewings and checked prospective tenants were suitable. Within eight months her role had grown from one hour a week to a full day, and that gave the office the business case to employ someone permanently. You can read the case study here.
Should you use a telephone answering service when you go on holiday?
Yes, if your phone is how customers and new enquiries reach you. A recorded message saying you’re away until the 14th tells a new customer to try someone else, and tells an existing one to wait. A person who answers, takes the details and says when you’ll be back in touch keeps both.
It’s also better for you. A proper holiday is one where you don’t take work calls. You need time to recharge and to reconnect with yourself and the people you care about, and you can’t do that while checking your phone by the pool.
Headline Design & Print, a Guildford design and print business, uses our service in just this way. When staff are on holiday or off sick, they divert their line, each call is written up and emailed to the right person, and they switch it off again when the office is fully staffed. Their managing director, Mark Warner, puts it like this: “The service Get Ahead deliver allows me, as the director and sales front end, to take time out of the business safe in the knowledge my clients are able to communicate with us and are not going elsewhere.” You can read the case study here.
Holiday cover works in the same way as everyday cover, for a set period. Give your Regional Director your dates and tell them what counts as urgent, set your diversion before you leave, and come back to a clear list of who called and why rather than a full voicemail box. It’s worth doing for bank holidays and the Christmas closedown too, when many owner-led businesses close but their customers still call. Our [link: bank holiday guide] covers what else to think about when you close.
Telephone answering service, voicemail or AI: which should you choose?
It depends on how many calls you get and what your callers need. Voicemail costs nothing but loses callers. An AI answering tool is cheap and always on, but struggles when a call doesn’t fit its script. A person can deal with the unexpected.
| Voicemail | AI call answering | Telephone answering service | Employed receptionist | |
| Who answers | A recording | Software | A trained person, in your business name | Your employee |
| Handles the unexpected | No | Partly | Yes | Yes |
| Typical cost | Free | Low monthly fee | A monthly fee plus a charge per call | A salary plus employer costs |
| Holiday and sickness cover | Not needed | Always on | Yes | Needs cover of its own |
| Suits | Very few calls | High volumes of simple calls | Owner-led businesses that can’t afford to miss a call | Busy offices with constant calls |
AI answering tools are improving quickly, and for some businesses they will be enough. For most of our clients, though, the calls that matter most are the ones that don’t fit a script: a worried customer, a complaint, an urgent job or a new client deciding whether to trust you.
How much does a telephone answering service cost in the UK?
Most UK services charge per call answered, per minute, or a monthly bundle that includes a set number of calls. Published 2026 price guides from UK providers put per-call charges at roughly 60p to £2.50 and monthly bundles from about £25 to several hundred pounds, with set-up fees of up to around £150. Out-of-hours cover usually costs more.
At Get Ahead we have a couple of models depending on your specific needs – you either pay a small monthly service fee plus a charge for each call answered, or block buy a number of minutes per month. There is no long-term contract, so you can use it for a few weeks over a holiday and stop when you are back. Your Regional Director will agree the cost with you before anything starts.
When you compare quotes, look at the whole cost: what counts as a call, any monthly fee, minimum term or set-up charge, and what your mobile network charges for diverted calls. Then set that against the work you lose when a new enquiry rings someone else.
How do you choose a telephone answering service for a small business?
Ask these six questions before you sign up. Good answers to all of them are a sign the service will work for a small business, not just a large one:
- Who will answer my calls, and will it be the same people each time?
- What hours do you cover, and what happens to calls outside them?
- How quickly will I get each message, and how?
- How do you handle urgent calls?
- Is there a contract, minimum term, monthly fee or set-up charge?
- Where are messages stored, and how do you look after my callers’ personal data?
The last question matters more than it used to. Every message holds a caller’s personal details, so your provider should handle them in line with UK data protection law; the Information Commissioner’s Office has more information on what that means. The call handlers we work with are trained, based in the UK and handle your callers’ details under UK data protection law.
Never miss the call that matters
A telephone answering service is a small cost that protects two valuable things: the first impression a caller gets of your business, and your own time away from the phone.
If you’d like your phones covered, for a holiday, the Christmas closedown or every day, talk to your local Regional Director, or ring us on 0330 223 7580. You’ll hear the service for yourself: it has answered that number for 15 years. We can often have your calls covered the same day.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Many businesses use it only for holidays, bank holidays or the Christmas closedown. At Get Ahead you can use it just for holiday cover and switch it off when you’re back.
Calls are answered in your business name, with a greeting you agree. To most callers, your business has simply answered the phone.
Most landlines, mobiles and internet phone systems have a call divert setting you can switch on and off. Your phone provider may charge for diverted calls, so it is worth checking. Your Regional Director will talk you through it.
Yes. We work with a partner that specialises in out-of-hours cover, so evening and weekend calls can be answered by a real person, up to 24 hours a day if you need it. Your Regional Director will match you to the right service.
Yes. Mobiles have a call divert setting, usually under Phone or Call settings, and you can choose to divert every call or only those you do not answer. Check with your network whether diverted calls are charged.