After comparing the benefits you value most, like security certifications, customer support, bilingual agent access, etc., you have your list of potential call center partners whittled down to two or three choices. One is offering a much lower cost than the others, so you choose to partner with them.
Makes sense, right?
But when you actually get the agreement, there are suddenly a number of additional fees that you were unaware of. Turns out, even though it seemed like the cheapest, it’s actually the most expensive option.
Comparing apples to apples with pricing from different call centers is virtually impossible. But even when all of your options offer the same pricing style, there are still plenty of variables. Let’s go over some of the fees you need to look out for:
Base Charges: These are the standard rates for call processing
- Per-minute charge: A charge based on the total length of calls for the billing cycle. For example, the agents were on the phone with callers on your account for a total of 865 minutes this month, so your bill will reflect this amount. These days, you’ll find this type of billing structure in 99% of the providers you encounter. This is the best bang-for-your-buck form of pricing in the call center industry.
- Per-call charge: A fixed amount charged for each call answered. This is a very outdated form of charging for answering service. Very few still use it.
- Monthly charge: A flat rate charged per month for the service. It’s rare to find a provider that still offers this form of invoice, but you may come across it, especially if the provider is primarily an automated service vs. live answering.
Everything above is standard pricing, but the charges may be all over the map depending on what each company includes in that base amount. What you want to be wary of are the fees tacked on in addition to base amount. Here are fees that you may see depending on the type of service you require:
Additional Standard Fees
These fees are commonplace in the industry.
- Setup fee: A one-time charge to establish the account and configure the service. Almost every call center partner will have this fee on the agreement because it requires a large amount of people to onboard a new account. Everyone from the sales rep to client service reps, to programmers, to trainers…even IT personnel if integration is required. This fee is to be expected and only exists to recoup some of the losses the call center will suffer from the amount of man-hours used.
- Overage fees: Charges for exceeding a certain number of minutes or calls. In most cases, your bill will include a “package” of minutes based on the estimated call volume. If you go over the number of minutes, overages are often included for the amount of additional time. Think of it like the old cell phone plans we all used to have. It works similarly. This is a standard practice for modern day call center partners.
- Holiday fee: A premium charge for calls answered on holidays. The reason this fee exists is because agents who work holidays will be paid time-and-a-half for taking time out of their holiday schedule, away from their families to process calls for your business.
- Integration fee: A fee to integrate the answering service with your existing systems (CRM, email, etc.). In most cases, an API will need to be developed by the call center, which could result in additional time and costs. This fee is usually just a one-time expense and only exists to recoup some of the losses to create the perfect system for processing your calls.
- Call transfer (or “Patch”) fee: A fee for keeping the caller on the line and transferring the call to your phone or another number. Two phone lines are tied up for an undetermined amount of time when a patch is performed. This could potentially cause problems with service levels if too many patches are performed, and too many lines are used at the same time. So, the fee exists primarily to prevent overuse.
Red Flag Fees: If You See These Fees, Run!
The following fees are unusual and difficult to explain. They exist primarily to drive the cost of the account up to acceptable levels after hooking you with a low per-minute rate.
- Message delivery fee: A charge for sending messages (email, text, etc.) to you or your on-call. This is what an answering service does. It would be like a hamburger place charging you extra for the burger patty. It makes absolutely no sense to have this fee and should be considered a red flag.
- After-hours fee: An additional charge for calls received outside of regular business hours. While call centers are set up to function 24/7/365, the largest amount of call traffic occurs after regular business hours. So why would you charge a fee for this?
- Custom script fee: A charge for developing a custom script for your business. The problem is that every script should be a custom script. You wouldn’t want the same standard script for your medical practice that is used for HVAC repair businesses. In fairness, this could possibly exist as a replacement for the standard setup fee. But if both are on your agreement, you should question it.
- Cross ambulator fee: Ok, ok, we made this one up. But the point is that you should always question fees that you don’t understand on the agreement.
It’s essential to carefully review the contract and pricing structure of any answering service before signing up. Be sure to ask about all potential fees and charges to avoid surprises. Our advice is to ask what is included in the base price. The answer you receive to that question will almost always vary from provider to provider. Be careful when assuming that the “cheaper” option is the best way to go. It’s possible that the smaller the base price, the more fees you’ll see when the time comes to sign the agreement.
While it’s difficult to compare apples to apples with call centers, it’s not impossible with the proper amount of research.
Good luck out there!
