A general voicemail greeting may seem friendly enough (“Hi! Thanks for calling ABC company…”), but a lot of customers will hang up when they hear the same generic message they’ve heard a hundred times before.
An answering service could help you handle high call volume and avoid missed calls — but you might not want to make that big of an investment. So how can you give customers a positive experience without straining your resources?
In this guide, you’ll learn the difference between voicemail vs answering service and the pros and cons of each. You’ll also learn about a third option that may be a better fit for small businesses.
What is a business voicemail system?
A business voicemail system lets callers leave you a message when you miss their calls. It offers a few basic features for managing incoming calls:
- Message recording and playback. This dates back to the days of answering machines, which relied on tape for recording and playing back messages. Familiar digital options like multiple inboxes and remote message retrieval came later.
- Transcriptions. Modern smartphone voicemail gives you message transcripts, making prioritization and callback easier.
- Notifications. Features like voicemail to email and voicemail to text send messages directly to you as they come in so you can quickly spot and return urgent calls.
Voicemail treats all messages with the same level of urgency. It’s up to you to decide what to prioritize, which could take a long time if you have a backlog to work through.
What is a business answering service?
A small business answering service is a company that provides live operators to answer phone calls for you. These service providers can:
- Take and relay messages
- Schedule appointments
- Update basic customer information in your CRM
- Resolve common customer questions using scripted responses
- Transfer urgent calls for immediate service
Providing your customers with a real person to talk to gives them quick answers and a more human experience without long wait times.
What’s the difference between voicemail vs a live answering service?
Voicemail is always available (even after hours), quick to set up, and always under your control. But most callers would rather call the next business on their list than leave a voicemail and wait for you to get back to them.
An answering service has real people answering calls so your customers get answers quickly. But that personal experience costs more and gives you less oversight. You’re also responsible for the extra work of training the service and manually forwarding calls.
Here’s how the pros and cons of these solutions stack up:
💡 Further reading: Virtual receptionist vs automated answering service
Voicemail: When it works and where it falls short
Pros
- Cost effective
- Available 24/7
- One-time setup with a simple greeting
- Consistent experience for every caller
- Integration with existing call flow; no need to manually configure extra steps
Cons
- Impersonal experience
- Urgent service needs aren’t met
- Low speed to lead, as callers might hang up before leaving a message
- Delayed responses as you go through missed calls
Answering services: When they work and where they fall short
Pros
- Human connection
- Ability to capture urgent requests and address common problems
- Real-time appointment scheduling
- Answer basic customer questions with scripted responses
Cons
- High cost of $300 to $2,000+ per month*
- Inconsistent service quality from a lack of business knowledge
- Lack of specialized operators for unique industries
- Potential miscommunication with your team
- Complex setup and management
It can be difficult to choose between the two. Is affordability more important than customer experience? Or is a human-powered call answering worth the higher answering service cost?
Luckily, advances in call handling technology mean you don’t have to compromise. There is an option that combines the best of voicemail services and answering services at prices that small business owners can afford.
The best of both worlds: Sona AI
Sona is an AI voice agent from Quo, formerly OpenPhone, that can answer FAQs, capture leads, and take messages. It integrates with your call flow and can be customized to your call management strategy.
Train Sona with your internal knowledge base and basic information like business hours. You can upload internal documents or share your website URL. Sona learns about your business in minutes.
Let customers talk directly to Sona instead of a rep, or configure Sona to pick up when a rep is unavailable.
You can create custom jobs for Sona depending on your caller intent. Give Sona specific instructions on handling different types of calls. For example, you can give Sona a custom script to handle new customer intake. But you can create a separate job for Sona to transfer callers to your team in case of emergencies.
As one of the best AI phone answering services, Sona brings powerful features to your call flow:
- Always on: Sona is a virtual receptionist that’s always available to help customers. That includes both during your business hours and after hours.
- Consistent brand voice and customer experience: The customer’s experience doesn’t depend on who’s picking up the phone or how senior they are. Sona gives every customer quick service, accurate answers, and a positive experience.
- Seamless hand-off to your team for follow-ups: Every call Sona handles is automatically logged and summarized in your Quo workspace. Reps can jump in and have full context. No waiting on end-of-day emails from an answering service or chasing down missing info.
- AI + human support working together: Sona can handle the most routine customer requests on its own. It saves your team time to focus on more complex situations. If a customer wants to speak to a supervisor or has an emergency, Sona can always transfer the call to your team.
📚 Want to know more? Call (888) 297-7662 to chat with Sona yourself! Ask Sona about its capabilities, setup, and how it can fit into your workflow.
Never miss another call with Quo
Voicemail is reliable, recognizable — and the bane of most customers’ existence. Messages sit in your inbox waiting to be handled, sometimes for days. Answering services engage customers with actual people and can provide faster customer support. The problem isn’t every small business can afford one.
Quo’s AI agent, Sona, gives you the best of both. It provides a personalized experience for your customers. Plus, you get seamless call flow integration for your business. Sona provides fast customer service 24/7.
And when you use Quo, you get access to a range of other features to make call handling easier:
- Shared numbers: Teams can manage texts and calls from a single business number.
- Call views: Reps can quickly review call details, including messages, summaries, transcripts, and internal notes. They can apply filters to prioritize missed calls or unanswered messages.
- Automatic call recording and logs: Review Quo’s full recordings and transcripts for quality control and training.
- Interactive voice response (IVR) options: Custom phone menus route callers to the right department without needing a receptionist.
- AI transcripts and summaries: Full transcripts and bullet-point summaries make personalized follow-ups quick and easy.
Try a seven-day free trial of Quo to run a test call with Sona and see how it can support your business.
FAQs
An answering machine is an automated device that handles calls by playing the same greeting to every customer. (But everyone knows that Gru isn’t hiding behind that pre-recorded message. Beeeeeeep.) An answering service involves a real person answering calls on your behalf, often following a script, taking messages, or booking appointments.
A voicemail is the modern, cloud-based version of an answering machine. It offers more options than an answering machine, like transcripts and voicemail-to-email or voicemail-to-text forwarding for quick notification and review.
Answering machines are old-school hardware that simply capture and store messages and play them back.
Answering services are still available, but they can be cost-prohibitive for small and growing businesses. AI agents are a more affordable way to provide the same positive experience.
