Virtual Office Telephone Answering

A virtual office gives you a business address and presence without a physical front desk. The gap is the phone: when a customer calls, nobody is sitting at a reception to pick up. Telephone answering fills that gap. Your existing number is forwarded to a service that answers in your business's name, using details about your hours, services, and pricing.

AllDayDesk answers calls around the clock using the business information you save. The receptionist is AI, not a person in a call center. It answers common questions, takes messages when it does not know an answer, a price, or an opening, and books new appointments once you have set up your services and availability. Calls, transcripts, summaries, and bookings are visible in your dashboard, so you can see who called and why.

This is different from a voicemail box. A voicemail only records; an answering service responds, gathers details, and can complete a booking during the call.

• You keep your public phone number; forwarding happens behind the scenes
• Calls are answered using your saved business details
• New appointments go to the built-in AllDayDesk dashboard calendar by default
• An optional Google Calendar connection is available in Settings after you connect and authorize your account
• Changes to existing appointments are passed to you as requests, not confirmed changes
• When an answer, price, or opening is unknown, the caller is asked to leave a message

Setup starts by choosing your business or entering its website. AllDayDesk checks the details it finds, and you confirm they are correct. You then hear a personalized sample of how your calls would be answered. The sample is a preview only and creates no real booking.

After approving the sample, you choose your phone setup. Instructions depend on your phone service, because each carrier handles forwarding differently. In general, you activate call forwarding on your line and set the destination to the number AllDayDesk gives you. Callers dial your usual number and never see the difference.

Before you book new appointments through the service, configure your services and availability in the dashboard. If you use Google Calendar, you can optionally connect and authorize your account in Settings.

• Step 1: choose your business or enter its website
• Step 2: review and confirm the business details
• Step 3: listen to a personalized sample call
• Step 4: choose phone setup and follow your carrier's forwarding instructions
• Step 5: configure services and availability so new bookings land on the right calendar

Forwarding codes vary by provider and product, so identify your exact service before entering anything. These verified examples show how different the instructions can be.

Verizon mobile uses *72 plus the 10-digit destination to forward all calls, *71 for unanswered calls, and *73 to turn forwarding off; setup must be done from the phone while in Verizon coverage. Verizon business landline uses *72 to activate and *73 to deactivate from the same line. T-Mobile uses **21*1 followed by the destination and # for unconditional forwarding, with ##21# to disable and ##004# to reset to defaults.

Comcast Business forwarding is managed through My Account or the Comcast Business App, and features depend on which services you subscribe to, so identify Voice Mobility, Business Voice, or VoiceEdge first. Spectrum Business Voice is configured in the online portal: sign in, open Voice, choose your number, then Voice Settings or Forwarding Manager, and pick all calls or busy/no-answer forwarding. Vonage Business Communications lets you select Call Forwarding and enable forwarding to a phone number, and you should verify the destination with an outside test call.

Google Voice is a special case: Google explicitly says forwarding calls from a Google Voice number to an automated system is unsupported, so a Google Voice number cannot be forwarded to AllDayDesk. If your business line is a Google Voice number, you will need a different line to forward.

• Verizon mobile: *72 + destination (all calls), *71 + destination (unanswered), *73 to disable
• Verizon business landline: *72 to activate, *73 to deactivate
• T-Mobile: **21*1 + destination + # (all calls), ##21# to disable, ##004# to reset
• Comcast Business: managed in My Account or the app; identify your product first
• Spectrum Business Voice: portal-based, under Voice Settings or Forwarding Manager
• Vonage Business: enable Call Forwarding to a phone number in the dashboard
• Google Voice: forwarding to an automated system is unsupported by Google

When a forwarded call comes in, the receptionist greets the caller using your business name and answers questions from your saved information. If the caller wants an appointment, it checks your configured services and availability and books a new opening into the dashboard calendar, or into Google Calendar if you connected it.

The receptionist knows its limits. If a caller asks something it cannot answer, requests a price it does not have, or asks to change an existing appointment, it takes a message instead of guessing. Changes to existing appointments are requests for you to handle, not confirmed edits. You can also configure call transfers to a destination number with your own rules; transfers depend on that configuration, and neither pickup nor an immediate response is guaranteed.

After each call, you can review the transcript and summary in your dashboard, so nothing depends on remembering a voicemail.

• Questions are answered from your saved business information
• New appointments are booked into your configured calendar
• Unknown answers, prices, or openings become messages
• Existing appointment changes are requests, not confirmed changes
• Transfers require you to set a destination and rules in advance
• Transcripts and summaries are stored in the dashboard

Virtual office telephone answering is one of several ways to handle calls without a front desk. Human virtual receptionist services, such as Ruby and Smith.ai's live receptionist offering, staff calls with people; their pricing varies, with Ruby advertising plans starting at $245 per month as of October 2026, and Smith.ai using per-call pricing based on your needs. Always compare included minutes or calls, overage charges, hours, and contract terms on a current quote rather than the starting price alone.

An in-house receptionist covers greeting visitors and office tasks in addition to phones, so a phone service is not a full replacement for that role. AI answering, like AllDayDesk, offers around-the-clock availability with a flat monthly plan that includes a set of minutes plus per-minute overage pricing, though it is not a human voice.

AllDayDesk is this site's own product, and this comparison is based on documented features and published pricing pages rather than hands-on testing. AllDayDesk plan pricing is displayed separately on this page.

• Human virtual receptionists: real people, higher and usage-dependent pricing, hours may vary by plan
• AI answering: around-the-clock availability, flat monthly plans with included minutes, consistent handling from saved info
• In-house receptionist: full front-desk scope, salary and overhead, limited to working hours
• Compare included minutes, overage rates, and contract terms on any current quote

Virtual office telephone answering fits solo owners and small teams who use a virtual office address but handle everything themselves. If you are on jobsites, with clients, or simply closed, calls can still be answered after hours using your saved business details, instead of going to voicemail or ringing out.

It also works as a complement to a shared office or coworking membership where no one answers your specific line. Because you keep your existing number and forward it, you can turn the service on or off by changing forwarding at your carrier.

• Solo owners who answer their own phone and cannot during work
• Businesses using a virtual office address with no staffed desk
• Anyone wanting after-hours and weekend coverage without hiring
• Teams that want messages, transcripts, and bookings in one dashboard