Provide 24/7 customer support with the top ecommerce answering service
Say goodbye to missed calls with Sona, OpenPhone’s AI agent. Answer your most common questions, take down detailed messages, and provide round-the-clock support with the best phone system for growing businesses.
Trusted by over 60,000 businesses
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Get a more effective after-hours customer support solution
Voicemail is a customer support dead-end for your business. Sona offers interactive support that answers customer questions and records detailed messages your team can follow up on. Customize Sona to your business — train it on your products, shipping and refund policies, FAQs, and more.
Why Sona is a better virtual receptionist for your ecommerce business
Sona is a better choice as a call answering service compared to traditional live services. Here’s why:
1. Integrates directly in your business phone system
OpenPhone is a collaborative business phone platform designed to help ecommerce companies scale their customer support operations. Whether you're handling order inquiries, vendor shipments, or coordinating returns, OpenPhone keeps all your communications organized in one place.
Sona works seamlessly within OpenPhone. Every AI phone call Sona handles is logged into your workspace right after it ends. When a customer who has previously called gets in touch, Sona will automatically update their past conversation history with the new call information. That way, your team can see the complete context without missing a beat.
Traditional live answering services operate in isolation from your ecommerce ecosystem. Their conversations happen outside your business phone system, forcing your team to manually piece together context from multiple sources. This fragmentation leads to longer resolution times and frustrated customers who might leave negative feedback or choose a different retailer.
2. More cost-effective
Sona helps you save hundreds of dollars every month, especially during your peak shopping seasons. Traditional ecommerce answering services typically charge $200-$400 per month for basic packages. They have strict minute limits that you'll always go over during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or any busier period. Those per-minute overage charges can double or triple your monthly costs when you need support the most.
Sona offers transparent, scalable pricing at $49 per month for 50 calls, with additional calls at $0.99 each. This per-call pricing structure is perfect for ecommerce businesses with variable call volumes. When a customer has a quick question about sizing or accidentally ordered the wrong SKU and wants to change it, Sona costs the same for every customer interaction. Calls under 15 seconds don't count, protecting you from paying for abandoned calls or accidental dials.
3. Consistent service
Ecommerce moves fast. New products launch weekly, shipping policies change, promotional codes expire, and inventory levels fluctuate. Your answering service needs to keep pace with these rapid changes to provide accurate information to customers.
Train Sona on your online store's specific details in minutes. Upload your product information, return policy, shipping FAQs, and more to Sona's knowledge base. When you launch a flash sale or update your international shipping rates, simply update Sona's information, and it immediately reflects these changes in every conversation. You can even give Sona specific instructions and custom call scripts for handling common scenarios, like customers who can’t find their order confirmation email or want a refund.
Traditional answering services struggle with the dynamic nature of ecommerce. Training live agents on your entire product catalog takes weeks, and by the time they're comfortable, your inventory might have changed. High turnover rates mean you're constantly retraining new staff who confuse product variants or misquote shipping times. Sona delivers accurate, up-to-date information every time, whether it's handling a returns question at 3 a.m. or explaining your loyalty program benefits during the lunch rush.
Boost your customer satisfaction
Set up and customize Sona in minutes.
Add Sona to call flows effortlessly
Drag and drop Sona in your call flows with our call flow builder. See how Sona handles your calls during and after business hours with our visual canvas. It works with OpenPhone’s other call routing features, like phone menus, ring order, and call forwarding.
Teach Sona about your company
Give Sona an introduction to the ecommerce world. Share information about your products and services, shipping and refund policies, FAQ answers, and more. Sona quickly learns about your business so that it can share the right information with your callers.
Gather specific details in Sona calls
Sona asks follow-up questions based on specific keywords in its AI phone calls. Your team can get the information they need to address customer requests. For example, if a customer wants a refund, Sona can ask them to share their order ID and the last four digits of their credit card.
Feature comparison
See how Sona compares to traditional call answering services.
Features
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Sona
Traditional answering services
Starting price per month
$49 for 50 calls, $0.99 per call for additional calls
~5x-7x the cost of Sona
Setup time
Instant
2-4 weeks
Brand voice and tone
Consistent
Highly variable
Monitoring
100% in OpenPhone
Custom solution or daily email summary
Integrations
HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, Make, Jobber, and more
Limited integration options
How to set up Sona in four steps
It only takes four steps to get started with Sona:
- Start with a free trial.
- Try our free trial features, including calls and recordings.
- Configure your Sona settings and test Sona in OpenPhone’s call flow builder.
- Once you’ve confirmed it’s a good fit, activate your OpenPhone account and get the Sona add-on.
“Sona ensures that no calls go completely unanswered. Having someone available to take their information — even after hours — gives customers a better impression of Nutiliti. It reassures them that their concerns are being noted and will be addressed promptly.”
Why thousands of teams choose OpenPhone
See why ecommerce companies rate OpenPhone as the #1 business phone provider by customer satisfaction in G2.
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Get a phone number for every team
Scale your customer support with flexible phone number options. Choose local numbers to establish trust with your customers. Your Austin customers are more likely to answer a 512 number when you're following up about their abandoned cart. Set up a regionwide toll-free number for order support and returns to project an established brand presence.
Every OpenPhone plan includes a dedicated number for each team member. Create different numbers for different teams: one for customer support, another for working with vendors, and special lines for VIP customers or wholesale accounts. Your fulfillment team can have their own number for delivery coordination without mixing it with general support calls.
Need to expand for the holiday rush? Add seasonal support numbers instantly for just $5 per number per month.
Optimize team collaboration
Make sure your entire team is on the same page with OpenPhone's collaboration tools. Share responsibility for incoming calls and texts with multiple team members using shared numbers. No dedicated team member needs to be available to take calls; everyone who has access to your shared number will be dialed when customers call you. No more transferring customers between departments or asking them to explain their issue multiple times.
Track follow-up tasks for high-value orders and troubleshoot customer issues in real time with internal threads. Tag your warehouse manager when a customer reports missing items from their order or loop in your marketing team when influencers ask for new discount codes. Monitor who's viewed an ongoing thread with inbox viewers, eliminating the need to follow up with team members directly.
Handle incoming phone calls easily
Design professional call flows in minutes with OpenPhone's intuitive call flow builder. See how customer calls go through your system and make changes right away as your business needs change. With the builder’s drag-and-drop interface, you don’t need any technical expertise to set up your flows.
Set up ring groups so your whole support team gets notified of calls at the same time. Or make a sequence where calls ring in tiered ring batches based on level of experience. Give customers self-service options with phone menus that connect them to the right department immediately. Forward unanswered calls to a backup number when your team is swamped with holiday orders. Or let Sona step in to capture customer details and order issues for morning follow-up.
If you need to add a colleague to a live call, you can always add them with group calling. Or you can connect your caller with them directly and give them a quick heads-up with warm transfers.
Automated SMS and MMS messaging features
Keep customers informed at every step of the purchase and post-purchase experience with automated text messages. Set up triggered SMS workflows with Zapier or Make that automatically notify customers about their orders, from confirmation to delivery. You can also build a custom integration with your order tracking software using the OpenPhone API.
Get even more text automations to engage with customers. Send auto-replies to incoming messages when your team is busy or unavailable. If a potential customer wants more product images, send them over text with MMS messaging. Create pre-written text templates (snippets) to quickly respond to common questions about return procedures, size guides, or care instructions.
No more repetitive admin tasks
Let OpenPhone handle the busywork while your team focuses on driving sales. Every customer call is automatically recorded and transcribed so you know what your team members and customers have shared with each other. When a customer claims they were promised an additional free item even though they weren’t, you have the conversation on record.
AI call tags analyze your support calls to surface valuable insights about your business. Track which products generate the most questions and identify common shipping concerns. Sync everything with your ecommerce platform or CRM using our Zapier and Make integrations or build custom connections with your order management system using the OpenPhone API.
Make calls and send texts anywhere
OpenPhone works on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and web browsers. Your team can respond to customers with their preferred devices. Team members can switch between devices and continue conversations without missing a beat. All you need is an internet connection to get started.
Find out how much you’re investing in your business phone solution upfront on our pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
Can’t find the answer here? Check out our Resource Center.
An AI answering service is an intelligent voice agent that handles inbound calls for your ecommerce business when your team can't answer directly. Unlike basic voicemail or simple bots, AI answering services like Sona engage in natural conversations with customers about your products, policies, and promotions. They're an in-house solution that integrates with your existing phone system and captures essential customer data for your team to follow up on.
An ecommerce answering service improves your customer experience in three ways:
- 24/7 availability: If your business ships globally, you’re likely to receive customer calls outside your working hours. AI receptionists like Sona can handle these calls, answer customer inquiries, and take down messages so your team can follow up when they’re back online.
- Faster response during peak times: During flash sales or holiday seasons when your call volumes are at their peak, AI virtual receptionists ensure every customer receives help.
- Seamless information capture: Ecommerce answering services collect detailed call data, creating organized follow-ups for your team.
Call centers are full-time operations designed for high-volume call handling and complex support tasks like processing returns, technical troubleshooting, and managing multi-channel customer service. They're typically used by large retailers handling thousands of daily interactions.
Answering services focus on essential communication: capturing order inquiries, providing shipping updates, and ensuring lead qualification for follow-up. They're perfect for growing ecommerce businesses that need professional phone support without the overhead of a dedicated call center. While call centers might handle outbound calls for sales campaigns, answering services primarily manage incoming customer needs.
Yes, Sona can help your business with taking orders. It can collect specific SKUs that customers are looking for, including size and color variants. Your team can then follow up with your customers to let them know whether their requested SKUs are available and help them with processing their orders.
Not to toot our own horn here, but we truly believe Sona is the best answering service for ecommerce businesses because it's built specifically for modern online retailers. Unlike traditional services that require weeks of training on your product catalog, Sona learns your inventory, shipping policies, and return procedures in minutes. It provides 24/7 coverage, handles unlimited product questions at no additional cost, and integrates directly with your existing ecommerce tools. Whether you're a boutique small business or a growing retailer with hundreds of SKUs, Sona scales with your business while maintaining consistent, professional service.
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OpenPhone was issued a successful SOC 2 report and is actively monitored by Vanta.