FAQs

For receptionist service: Simply complete the online service agreement to get started. A friendly expert member of our team will contact you to get you up and running.  Or just give us a ring at 844-311-7829! 

For 24/7/365 live chat service: You can get started with our live website chat service by calling 844-311-7829 or emailing hello@ruby.com.

That team is available Monday to Friday, 5am to 5pm Pacific / 8am to 8pm Eastern.

All of our bright Virtual Receptionists and Chat Specialists work in our offices in Portland, Oregon and Kansas City, Missouri. (Due to COVID-19, our employees are all safely working from home, but will return to our offices when the pandemic has subsided.)

Ruby’s US based Receptionists and Chat Specialists are the best in the business. We hire exceptional service professionals who delight in making others happy, then give them training and technology tools to handle your calls and website chats with the perfect mix of friendliness and professionalism.

Anywhere in the United States, Canada, and the US Caribbean.

Yes!  Ruby is delighted to offer a money-back guarantee to first time users of both our virtual receptionist service and our chat service. Should you decide to cancel service and obtain a full refund for the cancelled service (less any multi-service discount), please notify us of the service you wish to cancel either within 21 days of your purchase of that service or before your usage exceeds 500 receptionist minutes/50 billable chats, as applicable, whichever occurs sooner.

Please see our Pricing page and Terms of Use.  Or just give us a call at 844-311-7829!  Our team would be delighted to answer all your questions.

Our Customer Happiness team is happy to adjust your billing plan for the current billing cycle — just give us a call or send us an email!

No way! At Ruby, we take pride in earning your business month after month by delivering exceptional service. To cancel, simply call 866-611-7829 or email us at staff@ruby.com. If you cancel during an introductory period during which we offer a money-back guarantee or a free trial, your cancellation is effective immediately. Otherwise, your cancellation is effective at the end of the then-current monthly billing period. 

Our virtual receptionists can transfer calls to any phone number you wish, whether it’s an office line, home line, or cell phone (other than the one forwarded to Ruby). Additional fees may apply for numbers outside of North America. Many customers give us multiple phone numbers so that we have a variety of ways to reach them. 

Yes! You may opt-in to our HIPAA compliant receptionist and chat services. See below for more details about this.

Answering services are often easily recognizable as a “service.” They typically perform only the simplest tasks, such as forwarding messages, and can be impersonal. Virtual receptionists, on the other hand, are real people who sound as if they’re right in your office, transferring calls to you live, and relaying vital information to callers.

Just give us a ring at 844-311-7829 or complete this online service agreement to connect with a friendly expert member of our team. That team is available Monday to Friday, 5am to 5pm Pacific / 8am to 8pm Eastern.

Ruby’s Virtual Receptionists are dedicated to creating real, meaningful connections with your callers. Your receptionist team at Ruby can answer and connect calls to you when and where you want, take messages, answer common caller questions, schedule appointments, delight callers in English and Spanish, return calls on your behalf, screen for solicitors, and more. It’s like having a full-time, onsite receptionist at a fraction of the cost. Our Receptionists are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year – and we look forward to connecting about which hours will suit you best!  (Ruby’s bilingual service and outgoing call assists are available Monday to Friday, 5am to 6pm Pacific / 8am to 9pm Eastern.)

Yes! Our team is available 24/7/365 and when you sign up, you let us know during which hours you want live answering. When we’re answering live, your callers will always be greeted by a cheerful, professional Receptionist – never by a recording! Outside of your live answering hours, we provide several options, at no additional charge!

Our Customer Happiness team would be delighted to expand the hours we answer for you!  Call 866-611-7829 or email staff@ruby.com.  Please note that bilingual service and outbound call assists are only available Monday to Friday, 5am to 6pm Pacific / 8am to 9pm Eastern.  Also, while there is no additional charge for 24/7/365 service per se, your usage of receptionist minutes will potentially increase and will count toward your receptionist minute usage. And of course, if you exceed the number of receptionist minutes included in your plan, you’ll be charged according to your plan’s per-minute rate for any additional minutes used.

Absolutely! You may simply forward your existing phone number to us all the time, part of the time, or on a delayed basis. Oftentimes you can even port your number to Ruby, and we can host it for you (saving you the expense of that phone line)!

For most businesses, it’s as simple as dialing a code from your office phone! Our Onboarding Specialists or Customer Happiness team will gladly walk you through the process.

Certainly! We assign each customer a number that you are free to publish and take with you at the end of service. You can select a number in the area code of your choice (depending on availability). Please refer to our Terms of Use for more details.

Yes! Below is a typical example of how our Virtual Receptionists handle calls:

• The call is answered live by a Virtual Receptionist with your custom greeting.
• After engaging the caller, the Receptionist briefly places the caller on hold.
• If you’ve indicated you’re not taking calls, the Receptionist will let the caller know whatever you’ve asked us to share and take a message.
• If you might be available, the Receptionist will place the caller on hold and contact you to ask if you’d like to take the call.
• If you accept, the caller is transferred immediately.
• If you don’t answer or decline, the Receptionist either connects the call to voicemail or takes a written message, either of which will appear in the Ruby App and my.ruby.com, and may be emailed or texted to you or both. (If you opt-in to HIPAA compliant receptionist service, messages will only be in the Ruby App and my.ruby.com, and notifications will be sent to alert you. See below for more information about HIPAA service.)

Please note: We are happy to adapt our call-handling to your unique business, including not screening the calls before transferring, only taking messages, collecting specific information from callers, trying multiple lines, and more. Give us a call to talk about what sounds best for you!

Yes!  Our Virtual Receptionists can transfer calls to any phone number you wish (other than the one forwarded to Ruby), whether it’s an office line, home line, or cell phone. (Additional fees may apply for numbers outside of North America.) Many customers give us multiple phone numbers so that we have a variety of ways to reach them. 

We encourage you to keep us updated as to your status. When you sign up, our expert Onboarding Specialists will talk through how you want your calls handled when you’re available and when you’re not (i.e., your “normal call handling instructions”). And then you can “update your status” whenever you’d like to make a temporary change – think of it as whatever you’d say when you tap your receptionist on the shoulder as you walk out the door or into a meeting. For example: “I’ll be in court until 2pm, so please hold my calls”, “I’m going to work from home, so try me on my cell”, or “Let callers know I’ll be on vacation this week and send my calls to Suzie”. Knowing your status helps us get your calls to you when you want them and provides peace of mind for your callers when you’re not available by letting them know when they might expect to hear from you.

When you’re unavailable, our Virtual Receptionists can take a message, transfer to voicemail, or offer the caller the choice between the two—whichever you prefer. They can even transfer the call to someone else if you’d like!

Your messages will be available both in the Ruby App and at my.ruby.com, and may be emailed and/or texted to you as well. (If you opt to have us use the voicemail at your office or on your mobile phone, those messages will be found there.) For HIPAA compliant receptionist service, please see HIPAA specific information below. 

We certainly do! Spanish bilingual service is included with every receptionist service account at no additional cost. Whether Spanish-speaking callers are common or occasional to your business, we provide customizable options to ensure exceptional experiences for your Spanish and English-speaking callers. Bilingual service is available Monday to Friday, 5am to 6pm Pacific / 8am to 9pm Eastern. (And if you’d rather not have Spanish service, we can set your account up that way too! Our service is always tailored to your needs.)

Receptionist minutes are billed in 30-second increments, and calls are rounded up to the nearest 30-second mark. As an example, if a call is ten seconds long, it will be billed as 30 seconds (or half of a receptionist minute).

For inbound calls, receptionist time is calculated starting from the time the Receptionist receives the call and ends when a Receptionist transfers the call through to someone or to voicemail, or otherwise disconnects because the call is over. We include hold time and exclude the talk time once a call is transferred to you or your voicemail box.

For outbound calls, receptionist minutes are calculated by counting the time the Outbound Call Specialist is on the call, as well as the time they spend sending a follow-up email to fill you in on the results of the call.

Additional minutes are simply prorated, and you’re welcome to change your plan at any time.  In the Ruby App, you will see an alert that indicates when you have used 85% of the minutes in your current plan, and another when you have used 100%. 

Absolutely! The Ruby App and my.ruby.com both feature an up-to-the-minute record of your monthly usage, so you can easily track your receptionist minutes.

We certainly can! Our Virtual Receptionists are happy to place calls to gather or relay information or confirm appointments on your behalf Monday to Friday, 5am to 6pm Pacific / 8am to 9pm Eastern.

Absolutely! Multiple companies can pool minutes.

The primary difference is that with HIPAA compliant service, messages and caller information will not be emailed and/or texted to you, but rather will be available via a secure method. More specifically: 

• Your messages, voicemails, and call details will be available in the Ruby App and on our online portal at my.ruby.com, both of which provide notifications.
• Outbound call assist requests will be placed through the Ruby App – and the confirmation messages from our outbound call team will be available in the Ruby App and on my.ruby.com.  
• While we have other options for helping schedule appointments for you, we are unable to do so with the third-party scheduling software Calendly, as it is not HIPAA compliant. We’d love to connect about how else we can help with your appointment scheduling!

Just give us a ring at 844-311-7829 or complete this online service agreement to get started.  When you connect with a friendly expert member of our team, let them know you’d like to opt-in to our HIPAA compliant service by signing a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).  That team is available Monday to Friday, 5am to 5pm Pacific / 8am to 8pm Eastern.

You can get started with our live 24/7/365 website chat service by calling 844-311-7829 or emailing hello@ruby.com.  That team is available Monday to Friday, 5am to 5pm Pacific / 8am to 8pm Eastern.

Ruby’s 24/7/365 live chat service is designed to help capture your website traffic and turn visitors into customers. Ruby’s Chat Specialists engage website visitors and gather contact information to help you convert them into customers, while also saving you time by responding to FAQs and employment inquiries. If your website visitor is motivated to connect to you right away, our Chat Specialists can also call the visitor and connect them live to someone in your office during the hours of Monday to Friday, 4am to 7pm Pacific / 7am to 10pm Eastern.

Yes, our friendly live Chat Specialists respond to your website visitors within a minute, typically more quickly. The chat box is customizable in terms of which pages you want it deployed on, the color and fonts, the messaging, and how it engages your website visitors (pops up after a customizable amount of time or just waits for them to click on it).

A chat is an online interaction that starts when a website visitor engages a Chat Specialist, and ends when (a) the Chat Specialist determines the chat is not company-related, (b) the visitor closes the chat window, or (c) the Chat Specialist closes the chat window. 

We measure usage of our chat services using the concept of engaged chats. All chats considered engaged chats are billed to our customers, including but not limited to those tagged as Leads, Actionable Support, Non-Actionable Support, and Recruitment. Chats that are not engaged are defined as those that are initiated by a bot, contain nonsensical verbiage, or are ended by the website visitor after the initial hello. 

All engaged chats, which include both actionable (e.g., ”you have a lead that you should follow up on”) and non-actionable (e.g., “the website visitor asked for your address or hours of operation”) will be in your Ruby dashboard. You will also receive an email that contains the transcript. For HIPAA-compliant chat service, the email will simply be a notification letting you know that you have a new chat in your dashboard.  

The email notification you receive and label within the chat dashboard will indicate whether there is action requested by your website visitor for you. If your website visitor is interested in being contacted promptly, our Chat Specialists can also call the visitor and connect them live to someone in your office during business hours.

Yes! If your website visitor is interested in being contacted promptly, our team can call the visitor and connect them live to someone in your office during the hours of Monday to Friday, 4am to 7pm Pacific / 7am to 10pm Eastern.

Additional chats are billed per chat according to the overage rate associated with your plan.

You are always welcome to reach out to our Customer Happiness team to ask. You can also see your all your billable chats in the dashboard. 

With our HIPAA compliant chat service, your chat transcripts will only be available on the online dashboard (which sends email notifications). To keep the sensitive information collected from your website visitors secure, it will not be emailed to you. 

Yes! You may opt-in to our HIPAA compliant receptionist and chat services. See below for more details about this.

HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that includes US laws providing privacy protections. For more information about HIPAA in general, click here. For details about HIPAA for Professionals, click here.

No way! There are no additional charges for customers who need HIPAA compliant service. Regular receptionist service and/or chat service charges apply.

The primary difference is that with HIPAA compliant service, messages and caller information will not be emailed and/or texted to you, but rather will be available via a secure method. More specifically: 

• Your messages, voicemails, and call details will be available in the Ruby App and on our online portal at my.ruby.com, both of which provide notifications.
• Outbound call assist requests will be placed through the Ruby App – and the confirmation messages from our outbound call team will be available in the Ruby App and on my.ruby.com.  
• While we have other options for helping schedule appointments for you, we are unable to do so with the third-party scheduling software Calendly, as it is not HIPAA compliant. We’d love to connect about how else we can help with your appointment scheduling!

You will access your messages, voicemails, and call details via our online portal at my.ruby.com and/or the Ruby App, both of which provide notifications. This allows the sensitive information collected from your callers to remain secure.

You may submit an outbound call assist request securely through the Ruby app. The confirmation messages from our team after the outbound call is complete are available in the call assist logs in the Ruby app and on my.ruby.com.

Ruby is currently only able to schedule appointments via a third-party scheduling platform called Calendly, which unfortunately does not offer HIPAA compliant service at this time. We do have some other options for scheduling that may work for you and we’re happy to discuss them to find a good solution!

With our HIPAA compliant chat service, your chat transcripts will only be available on the online dashboard (which sends email notifications). To keep the sensitive information collected from your website visitors secure, it will not be emailed to you.