What are message services?

There are a few different services that can be described as message services. They range from a personal assistant who takes calls for you (which is not a cheap option) right through to voice-recognition systems that transcribe callers messages.

Who offers these services?

You can use agencies that offer secretarial and other business services, or specialist call-handling companies, but most people find the message services offered by the mobile phone networks to offer the best value. What is offered varies from network to network. Vodafone call their messaging service Respond Plus.

What Orange offers

Orange, for example, gives you a choice of three services:

Wildfire is more of an answerphone service provided by a virtual personal assistant. See the Wildfire page for more details.

Orange Messenger is a service where your caller is answered by an operator using a standard greeting, and the caller's message is passed on to you by text message. This costs 30p per message sent.

Orange Assistant is similar, except that you can specify the greeting used, and you don't pay a per-message charge, but there is a monthly charge. You also get a separate phone number that goes direct to your Orange Assistant service.

See also [ Using Answerphone ] : [ Answerphones By Network ] : [ Wildfire ]

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