Phone answering services for retail & ecommerce

Yes! OfficeHQ is a privately-owned Australian company. Our head office is on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, with about 90% of our entire Australian team – including our virtual receptionists – based in that region.

Our telecommunications network extends to 66 telephone exchanges, giving us the largest range of local numbers of any Australian virtual reception services provider.

Yes, our team of receptionists can answer calls you’d usually miss.  You may be on another call or simply unable to answer because you’re busy at the time. Our receptionists will take a detailed message and send to you instantly by email or SMS. Many clients who subscribe to our service are surprised when they learn how many calls they’d been missing prior to having their calls answered by OfficeHQ.

Transferring calls to OfficeHQ is easy. To have our team of virtual receptionists answer your calls, simply:

1. Decide whether you wish to forward calls immediately to OfficeHQ (the best solution for most businesses) or have calls forwarded after a delay.
2. Identify the call forwarding codes for your telecommunications provider. Most providers publish these codes on their websites.
3. Use the codes to enable your calls to be forwarded to the unique phone number that we’ve allocated to you.

For more information, check out our article Forwarding Your Business Phone to OfficeHQ’s Reception Team, which outlines:

• Immediate and delayed call forwarding options
• Setting up call forwarding for fixed-line telephones (with specific instructions for Telstra and Optus)
• Setting up call diversions for mobile phones (with specific instructions for Telstra, Optus and Vodafone)

Yes. This is referred to as “call overflow”.

A lot of companies require their phone calls to be answered only when they are unable to take the call themselves. For example, if you step out of the office for an hour or your in-house receptionist goes to lunch, is on leave or is busy on another call and you have multiple calls coming in at the one time.

You can set your business phone number to divert (to the unique local phone number we allocate your business during the Free Trial setup process) only when the phone rings for more than a specified period (such as after 5 rings) or if your line is busy/engaged.

In such instances our receptionists will then answer the phone as if we were in your office. You’re always in control and can relax knowing you will never miss another important call again! 

Yes.  Our receptionists are available 24/7 and you can opt-in to receive after hours live call answering on any OfficeHQ subscription.  Without after hours call answering turned on, our receptionists will answer your calls between 8:00am and 6:00pm on weekdays.  If you need after hours call answering, please let us know when you sign up or contact us.

Yes – if you’re on a MyAssistant or MyDiary plan.  For MessageExpress and MyReceptionist plans, the majority of calls are answered by our team in Australia, with overflow support available from our global offices, e.g. in NZ, the UK and the US, during unforeseen peaks in call volumes.  This enables us to ensure your calls are always answered as fast as possible, reducing the risk of call abandonment. We know Average Speed of Answer (ASA) is very important to our clients and one of our key differentiators is that we’re able to answer calls in under 10 seconds, on average.

Yes, you are able to use our service for an hour, a day, a week, whenever you need our assistance. Many clients use our live call answering for short-term needs, for example, when their own in-house receptionist is at lunch, sick or on annual leave.  Some clients use the service during their busy periods only, as call overflow or for campaigns.  Our live call answering service is like having a casual receptionist who is always available.  It’s reliable and risk-free, as you only pay for what you use.

If you prefer to use our service seasonally, you can take advantage of our pause package.

OfficeHQ offers a month-to-month agreement, which can be cancelled by giving us at least three days’ notice prior to your monthly renewal date.