Answered Call (Billing)

Answering services bill in one of three units: minutes, calls or a flat monthly plan with an allowance. Per-call billing charges a set price for each call the service picks up, whether it lasts one minute or ten. Live receptionist services often sell it as a bundle of calls a month with a price for each extra call.

What usually counts as a call. A call the service picked up where a caller engaged: a homeowner reporting a loss, an adjuster asking for an update, a customer booking a visit. Many per-call plans leave out spam, robocalls, misdials and hang-ups before the caller speaks, but the rules differ by vendor, so read the definition in the contract before you compare prices.

Per call vs per minute. Per-call pricing works out cheaper when calls are long, because a ten-minute call costs the same as a two-minute one. Per-minute pricing costs less when many calls are short, as long as the minimum charge and the billing step are small. The step size matters as much as the headline rate: a plan that rounds every call up to a full minute bills a 10-second hang-up as a whole minute.

Why it matters for emergency lines. Restoration and home-services lines get bursts of calls on storm nights, and many of them are short. Ask each vendor how a burst is billed, what happens when the allowance runs out, and whether calls already in progress are cut off. Then price your busiest month, not an average one.

How Botcadence bills voice. Botcadence does not bill per call. The Voice AI plan is $299 a month, or $2,990 a year, with 1,500 voice minutes included, and extra minutes cost $35 per 200. Billing is in 30-second steps after a 15-second minimum, so hang-ups and short spam calls use seconds, not whole calls. Inbound and outbound calls both use minutes, including the calls that wake an on-call technician. When minutes run out, new calls go unanswered until more minutes are added; a call already in progress is never cut off. The Restoration 24/7 Answer Desk runs on the same Voice AI plan.

Comparing units. Convert every quote to a cost per real conversation at your own call length. A three-minute call on a $1.25-a-minute live service is $3.75. On Botcadence's Voice AI plan, inside the included minutes, a three-minute call is about $0.60 and a four-minute call about $0.80. See the AI answering service pricing guide and Botcadence voice agents.