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Affordable call answering services for small businesses

Struggling to always answer the phone? Feeling burnt out? Wish you had a receptionist but hiring is cost-prohibitive? OfficeHQ’s live answering services help thousands of Australian small businesses to thrive by preventing missed calls and lost opportunities, all for a fraction of the cost of a full-time employee.


Save precious time, get more done and never miss a lead with a PAYG virtual reception from just $19 a month

Australian receptionists

Our local virtual reception teams answer your calls, with overflow support to ensure a fast speed of answer.

24/7 availability

After-hours, weekends, public holidays … we can answer day or night, 365 days a year, so you never miss opportunities.

Custom call greetings

Calls are answered with your preferred greeting to ensure your callers enjoy a consistent experience.

Instant emails or texts

Receive email or SMS messages after each call, containing caller details and their reason for calling.

Screening & transfers

Call screening and transfer options for unlimited staff or departments, so you only take the most important calls.

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Short-term flexibility

With no lock-in contract, you can use our services temporarily to cope with staff shortages or seasonal demand.

How our virtual receptionist service works

What is a live call answering service?

New to the concept? Get our free explainer guide to discover what a call answering service entails, how it works and why it’s good for business.

What is a live call answering service?

New to the concept? Get our free explainer guide to discover what a call answering service entails, how it works and why it’s good for business.

What is live call answering?

New to the concept? Get our free explainer guide to discover what a call answering service entails, how it works and why it’s good for business.


Your tools are our tools

While we have a simple message-taking service available, our small business answering services have myriad inclusions, including assistance with quoting fees, taking payments and inputting data into CRMs on MyAssistant plans and scheduling appointments using your preferred online calendar or other software on MyDiary plans. There’s so much we can help with!

Reclaim the hours in your day

Small business owners have many hats to juggle, but trying to answer every call yourself can quickly result in burnout. 

OfficeHQ’s 24/7 virtual receptionists answer your calls as though they work for your business, leaving you free to focus on your business priorities or spend uninterrupted time with your family.

Best of all, with no lock-in contract, you can just as easily use our services long-term or short-term, to fill an urgent need.

  • No phone ringing at all hours
  • No pesky voicemail hangups
  • No stress over lost opportunities
  • No HR or training headaches
  • No massive wage cost
  • No-obligation free trial

We answer in less than 4 rings

We take great pride in answering calls in less than 10 seconds on average, which means you avoid losing frustrated callers to your competitors.

We answer in less than 4 rings

We take great pride in answering calls in less than 10 seconds on average, which means you avoid losing frustrated callers to your competitors.

We answer in less than 4 rings

We take great pride in answering calls in less than 10 seconds on average, which means you avoid losing frustrated callers to your competitors.

FAQs

Many callers hang up when their call goes to voicemail, so you can miss out on vital conversations or leads.  Ensuring your calls are answered by a real person, rather than voicemail or a robot, increases customer satisfaction, builds loyalty and improves your opportunity to create a rapport and obtain caller details. Live call answering also allows you to screen calls, as you can advise your receptionist to transfer or take messages for only those call types you wish to receive.  Once answered, you can see each message as it’s taken and prioritise who you will call back first. Live call answering increases revenue through better customer connections, reduces costs as you’re not paying for a full time receptionist and helps you to be more efficient with your time.

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. 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! 

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:

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.

Complementary small business solutions

Phone numbers

Set up virtual inbound numbers for different locations or, if you require a national presence, a 1300 number or free call 1800 number.

Automated messaging

Have voicemails instantly emailed to you both for convenience and to ensure no important communications are ever missed.

Virtual address

Choose a virtual business address to expand your presence geographically, without expensive overheads or the need to relocate.

What our customers love

OfficeHQ has helped my business for 16 years. They offer a great service with authentic receptionists answering our calls with respect and taking care with details.
Steve Bennett
OfficeHQ has been a game changer … the service was super easy to set up and costs a fraction of what it would to hire a receptionist.
Karl Graf, DreamWalk Apps
I highly recommend OfficeHQ to anyone! Especially tradies and start ups. Customers like it when their calls are answered, and OfficeHQ has answered every single one.
Liam Noble
I can’t tell you how great it’s been to work with OfficeHQ. I can now actually go on vacation without worrying about answering the phone. Two big thumbs up!
Christian Sculthorp
We use OfficeHQ for our small business, our after-hours calls get forwarded to their reception team and it has been nothing but a pleasure working with (them).
Dylan Ingram
Really great service for small businesses. Prompt, helpful and lots of ways to keep your business running without you needing to be in the room.
Ellen Baron
Great company … has been very handy for our small business especially with staff taking leave or when they are off sick. We switch it on and off as we require.
Paul Bowles

Trusted by thousands of small business owners across Australia


Find out more

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Try our small business call answering services for free!

Put Australia’s leading virtual receptionist solution to the test! We’re ready to answer your phone FREE for 7 days.

Try our small business call answering services for free!

Put Australia’s leading virtual receptionist solution to the test! We’re ready to answer your phone FREE for 7 days.

What does the free trial include?

Our free trial is based on our MyReceptionist service, with Australian-based receptionists able to take messages and transfer calls based on your availability settings.

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🖤 BLACK FRIDAY DEAL 🖤    Save 30% on virtual reception services for 3 months    Learn more

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