How long is a minute?
For Calls On Call, a minute is 60 seconds. But for some other call answering services, a minute can be as little as one second.
What?!? That is crazy math, right?
Not all call answering services measure a minute the same. For example, some charge a minimum amount of time for any interaction.
Take that telemarketer that called you recently. It took you about two seconds to realize it was a junk call, right?
Some of our competitors will charge you 30 seconds, some even a full minute or two as a minimum for each call, regardless of length!
That means that one of the ways to compare apples to apples when researching call answering services used to be by checking minutes of time in a package and comparing the price for that package. Now a minute to Calls On Call is actually a minute, but to another company that minute could really be a few seconds of actual usage.
Told another way, you can receive 30 or so two second calls and Calls On Call would charge you for one minute of usage. Another call answering service would charge you for 450 minutes for the same exact calls!
How does that play out in the real world? The stats that Calls On Call keeps on telemarketers gives some clues. Since those annoying calls are going to be the shortest and occur the most. Our data shows that approximately 60-70% of all calls coming into a business are from telemarketers or robo-dialers. The majority of these calls last less than two seconds.
That means that if you typically receive ten calls a day for your business and half of them are telemarketers, you would be paying 10X what you needed to if you used another call answering service.