What do answering-service terms mean?
20 terms you will meet while comparing services, each in two or three sentences.
In short
An answering service answers your phone when you cannot; an AI answering service like Elavo Answer does it in software, 24/7, and also books appointments and routes emergencies. The terms below cover how calls are forwarded, metered, escalated, screened and recorded.
- What is a answering service?
- A service that answers a business's phone in its name when the business cannot, typically taking messages. Traditionally staffed by people and billed per minute; AI answering services do the same job in software.
- What is AI answering service?
- Software that answers calls in a natural voice, understands the caller, answers from the business's details, books appointments, takes structured messages and transfers urgent calls. Elavo Answer is one.
- What is a virtual receptionist?
- A remote human receptionist who answers your line, screens calls and sometimes schedules, usually from a staffing company and billed per minute or per call.
- What is AI receptionist?
- An AI that performs the receptionist role across phone, text, web chat and social messages: answering questions, booking and capturing leads.
- What is a after-hours answering?
- Answering calls outside business hours, overnight, on weekends and holidays, usually by forwarding the line to the service at close.
- What is a call forwarding?
- A carrier feature that sends incoming calls to another number. Unconditional forwarding sends every call; conditional forwarding sends calls only when busy, unanswered or unreachable.
- What is a conditional forwarding?
- Forwarding that triggers only in a condition: busy, no answer after a few rings, or phone unreachable. Lets the owner keep answering when they can.
- What is a on-call?
- The person designated to take urgent calls during a given window. On-call windows are set by day and time with a primary and a backup number.
- What is a escalation?
- What happens when the on-call person does not answer: the backup is paged, then the owner, each once, until the urgent call is acknowledged.
- What is a warm transfer?
- Handing a live call to a person while telling the caller what is happening, as opposed to a blind transfer that simply rings another phone.
- What is a urgency phrases?
- Plain-English phrases ("no heat", "locked out") that mark a call as urgent so it is transferred to the on-call person instead of becoming a message.
- What is a included minutes?
- The bucket of call minutes a plan includes each month. Typically resets monthly without rollover.
- What is a overage?
- The per-minute or per-call price charged once included minutes are used, usually billed in arrears. Elavo Answer has none; a flat recharge block is bought instead.
- What is a recharge block?
- A fixed bundle of extra minutes bought when a balance runs low — 300-minute block for $75 at Elavo Answer — by hand or automatically under a monthly cap. Purchased minutes do not expire.
- What is a spam screening?
- Turning away robocalls and blocked numbers before the AI answers so they never use minutes: block list, optional hidden-number block, repeat-hang-up detection.
- What is a call recording consent?
- The legal requirement that parties agree to being recorded; some US states require all parties. A disclosure at the start of the call is the standard way to obtain it.
- What is IVR?
- Interactive voice response: the "press 1 for sales" phone tree. An AI receptionist replaces it with a conversation.
- What is a caller id?
- The number presented by an incoming call. Withheld, anonymous or restricted caller ID is a common spam signal and can optionally be screened.
- What is a local number?
- A phone number in the area code of the business. Elavo Answer lets the owner pick one from live carrier inventory; callers recognise it as local.
- What is a keep your number?
- Using an answering service without changing the business's published number: the existing line is forwarded to the service's dedicated number.
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