Live Answering Service FAQ

We have been in business since 1932. We'd love to tell you more about our story! 

We are a family-owned and operated company. We take your success personally. It's important we provide you and your customers with excellent telephone answering services. 

We never stop learning and improving for our customers. We always look to learn from our successes and failures. What it comes down to is doing the right things for the right reasons and taking care of you, the customer.

We encourage you to read more about how Ambs Call Center is different. 

We serve over 2,000 clients. Most have been with us an average of over 6 years.

Answering your phones quickly is job one for us. We answer 80% or great of calls in 3 rings or less. And for the very small percentage of calls that go on hold, we want that wait time to be less than 60 seconds.

We have roughly 85 on our team and growing.

No. We do not offer free answering service trials.

Yes! This is the most common way our customers send their telephone calls to us. This is accomplished using call forwarding features from your phone company. 

Yes. We can provide you with a local or toll-free number to advertise that is answered by Ambs Call Center. Toll-free numbers are available at 5 cents per minute. Please read this before advertising the number we provide you. 

Ambs Call Center has plans starting at $175 per month. We bill by the amount of time that we work for you and have plans to match your specaific needs. You can see our rates on our answering service pricing page or call our solutions team at 800.968.1181. 

No. Along with historical call data, our answering service also uses the number of subscribed minutes as a component in scheduling. Having enough people ready to answer your phones is crucial to providing you with excellent service.

Good news. You won't need a law degree to understand our common sense terms and conditions of service. We're upfront and honest in all that we do. 

Yes. Ambs Call Center provides 24/7 telephone answering service 365 days per year, holidays included. 

No. We don't nickel and dime you based on the time of day that you need us to answer your phones. Our service plans all provide 24/7/365 telephone answering coverage. 

No! We want you to enjoy spending time with friends and family knowing that we would never charge you extra to do so.

Yes! We have 2 call centers. Our call center locations are in Jackson, Michigan, and Tampa, Florida. We love visitors! If you would like to schedule a tour to meet our team in person, please let us know.

Yes, all of Ambs Call Center’s staff is proudly based in the United States. We believe in supporting American workers and businesses, so you get all the benefits of a true American Call Center.

It depends. We do work within our clients' software. One of the determining factors is the amount of phone calls that you receive per month. See if we're a good fit for you here.

Standard set-up includes the programming, testing, and training of standard accounts using our proven process. As part of our proven process for setting up answering service accounts, we have developed industry and service line-specific set-up forms. If you use these forms in setting up your account, it qualifies as a standard setup. 

Yes. Compliance is something we take very seriously. and we are a HIPAA-compliant answering service. 

When your phone line rings into Ambs Call Center, our screens immediately display information about your company. This includes the answer phrase we greet the caller with and the call handling instructions for routine and urgent calls you provided during our proven process setup. Pertinent information about your business, guidelines on what information to collect, and details on how to handle each call are all programmed into our system, and quickly accessible by our agents. 

• Text Messaging
• Standard and Encrypted Email
• Secure Text Messaging
• Telephone
• Direct-Connect Call Patching
• Web Portal
• Listen to calls online
• Pager
• Fax
• Web Post to your CRM
• SFTP Data Exchange

Yes and No. Let us explain.

All call centers in existence will put calls on hold. How they do so varies and while some claim they "never put calls on hold", it is really just semantics and not really true.

Here is what we call a 'hold': For the very small percentage of calls that we answer which ring over 24 seconds, the caller will hear a customized greeting letting them know someone will be with them momentarily. 

We never interrupt your callers to ask them to "please hold". We see this as rude and off-putting and doesn't lend itself to a great caller experience.

We stay focused on each one of your callers from the beginning to the end of the telephone call.

No. We do not charge for hold time. We also do not charge for ring time. We charge for our work time. You can learn more about work time here.

You can have our appointment scheduling software alert you of a new appointment via text or email. If your calendar is syncing with our software (via Google, iCloud, or Office365) the appointment instantly appears. Your device can also notify you based on your calendar app's settings.

1. Dial *72. Dial the Ambs call forwarding phone number (including area code) to forward your calls.
2. Wait for confirmation, you may hear a confirmation tone or message. If you hear ringing, wait until your Ambs phone number is answered.
3. Hang up, your calls are successfully forwarded. You can always check by calling your office number to verify it is ringing to us.

To turn OFF call forwarding:

1. Dial *73. 
2. Your phones are no longer call forwarded.

Yes. You can change your plan at any time. As a matter of fact, we will watch your usage for the first few months to make sure you are on the right plan. If you have questions about your plan or how to streamline call handling, Lori and Jennifer are here to help.

We're happy to let you know what your usage is at any time. Just call or email us and we'll run the numbers let you know if you're on the best answering service plan.

Currently, we do not have an automatic notification. It is something that our R & D team is currently working on. 

We send invoices monthly via email. Invoices are sent out at the beginning of the month. This means you will receive 12 invoices per year from Ambs Call Center. 

Most of our competitors send you a bill every 28 days. This means they will make you pay 13 invoices per year.

Yes. Anytime that we are working on your behalf it uses the minutes included in your plan. If you have a repeat caller or number that keeps calling, we can block that from coming in free of charge. We also offer Voicemail Prescreening which stops these types of calls from ever reaching an operator.

You can pay your answering service bill online by visiting our payment portal.

Work time minutes are calculated when our staff is working on your account. Taking incoming calls, dispatching calls, account changes, account maintenance, and on-call changes. Minutes are billed in 20 or 30-second increments.

The following tasks make up work time.

• Answering the phone, taking messages or information, and scheduling
• Making phone calls to your staff or customers
• Sending text and email messages
• Paging
• Making account changes or updates
• Responding to email or text responses
• Entering on-call information - Avoid this by using free web on-call scheduling
• Transferring calls

We go into more detail about time-based answering service here.

The D.I.D. telephone number is the telephone number we provide for you to call forward your phones to. In some cases, you may simply refer your customers to call this number directly.

You will only see this appear on your first invoice. This amount is the pro-ration of the amount of days of service that were provided to you in the previous month.

You will also see the full amount for your monthly plan appear on this invoice as well. This is because we bill for the upcoming month’s service base rate and the previous month’s usage.

Patch minutes are calculated when a call is transferred to another telephone number. The amount of time the call is connected is counted as patch time.  An example is when we connect a customer to you on your mobile phone. 

The invoice due date is the 25th of the month.

If the payment for an invoice isn’t received by the due date of the 25th a late fee is automatically applied.

The invoice will have a ‘PAID’ watermark in the middle of the invoice.

The recurring charges are for all services billed in advance. The service period dates are indicated on the invoice in the box located in the upper right-hand corner.

Usage charges are for any minutes used above and beyond what is included in your plan. These charges are billed after the fact or in arrears for the usage period located in the box in the upper right-hand corner.