# What Is an Answering Service? How It Works Source: https://insertchat.com/glossary/answering-service > An answering service picks up your calls when you can’t and passes on messages. See how live services work, how they bill, and where AI changes the model. An answering service is a company or system that answers a business’s phone calls when the business cannot, most often after hours or during busy periods. It greets callers in the business’s name, takes messages, handles simple requests from a script, and relays urgent calls to an on-call person by phone, text, or email. ## How an answering service works You forward calls to the service’s number, either all the time or only when your line is busy, unanswered, or closed. Agents at a call center answer using your script: a greeting, a few questions to ask, and rules for what counts as urgent. Messages arrive by email, text, or a portal, and urgent ones trigger a call to whoever is on duty. Because people answer, quality depends on staffing levels and how often agents switch between clients. Most services bill per minute or per call, so busy months cost more. An [AI answering service](https://insertchat.com/glossary/ai-answering-service) follows the same pattern but answers from your knowledge, so callers get answers instead of a promise that someone will call back. ## Example: an HVAC company’s overnight messages An HVAC company forwards its line to a call center at 6 p.m. Overnight, agents take nine messages, including two no-heat calls they relay to the on-call tech. In the morning, the office calls back the other seven, several of whom have already booked a competitor because nobody could give them a time. This scenario is illustrative. ## How InsertChat replaces message-taking InsertChat is an AI answering service that goes further than a message pad. It answers your [after-hours calls](https://insertchat.com/product/after-hours) from your own knowledge, books the visit on your connected calendar when you allow it, and saves the call with a transcript, summary, and contact details. Urgent calls get an alert and are marked for your team. It does not take voicemail and does not patch calls to an on-call phone mid-call. Read the side-by-side in [AI receptionist vs answering service](https://insertchat.com/blog/ai-receptionist-vs-answering-service), or see the [HVAC setup](https://insertchat.com/industries/hvac). ## What is the difference between an answering service and voicemail? Voicemail records a message and leaves the caller waiting. An answering service puts a live person or an AI on the line, so the caller can ask questions, describe the problem, and leave clear details. ## Do answering services work only after hours? No. Many businesses also use them for overflow during the day, when every line is busy or nobody can pick up. Your phone provider’s conditional forwarding decides which calls reach the service. ## Related terms - [AI answering service](https://insertchat.com/glossary/ai-answering-service): An AI answering service answers a business’s phone calls with voice AI instead of call center staff. - [After-hours answering service](https://insertchat.com/glossary/after-hours-answering-service): An after-hours answering service answers a business’s calls outside its opening hours, such as evenings, weekends, and holidays. - [Virtual receptionist](https://insertchat.com/glossary/virtual-receptionist): A virtual receptionist is a receptionist who answers your business calls remotely instead of sitting at your front desk. - [Overflow calls](https://insertchat.com/glossary/overflow-calls): Overflow calls are incoming calls that arrive when everyone who normally answers is busy or unavailable, so they would otherwise ring out, hit voicemail, or wait on hold. ## Related InsertChat pages - [After-hours answering with AI](https://insertchat.com/product/after-hours) - [AI receptionist vs answering service](https://insertchat.com/blog/ai-receptionist-vs-answering-service) - [AI receptionist for HVAC companies](https://insertchat.com/industries/hvac)