[dqv]

It's called a telephone answering service. Different companies have different billing methods, but the most common billing method is to bill for "work time" - you pay a monthly fee with a set amount of work time and then pay overage fees for any usage in excess of the monthly allotment. It's a good solution if you don't expect to be hammered with calls during your business hours (e.g. you expect to get at most 30 calls a day rather than 30 calls an hour), but it starts to get prohibitively expensive after you reach a certain volume. It's a good idea to keep track of the usage and consider "upgrading" to a full-time staff member once you get to a certain usage amount (then you just direct calls to the answering service when that staff member isn't available). It doesn't work very well if your call length is long. You also need to be realistic about what you want the agents to do. It's not like they can provide top tier support or resolve issues. Expect it to be exactly what it is, which is a telemessaging service. You'll usually get better luck with ones that specialize in specific industries. There are some that only answer for law practices, for example. Some only provide day-time support, while others run 24/7.