An AI virtual receptionist in Newcastle, NSW: no call goes unanswered.

It is something that answers your calls in your business name when you cannot. It takes the details, answers what it has been briefed on, and passes everything else to you. It can be a person in a call centre, or it can be software.

The arrangement is straightforward either way. Calls divert to a service, somebody or something there answers as your business, and what they can handle depends entirely on how much they were told about you.

What the service usually covers

• Somebody answers in your business name.

  Live, in working hours, so a caller reaches somebody rather than a voicemail message they will not leave anything on.

• The caller's details get taken down.

  Name, number, suburb and what the job is, sent through to you as a message rather than a recording.

• The basic questions have answers ready.

  Hours, area, whether you do a particular job. Whatever was written into the brief they were given.

• The call goes through to the right person.

  Putting a caller straight through where it is somebody you would want to speak to yourself.

What it does not include is anybody who knows your business the way you do. The quality of the service tracks the quality of the brief, and that is the part a business owner controls.

Somebody else is taking your customers' details, so it is worth knowing how personal information has to be handled.

The phone rings while the work is happening. A business with nobody free between eight and five is choosing between missing calls, hiring somebody, or sending them somewhere else.

The problem is the same in every small business here. The phone rings when everybody is busy, and the caller is already looking at a map with two more businesses on it.

Hiring a receptionist solves it and it is a wage. A service solves the answering half for far less, and it never knows the business the way somebody on staff does. Software solves it in a third way again.

The thing worth deciding first is what a missed call is actually costing. That number decides which of the three is sensible, and most owners have never worked it out.

A hire is the only one that learns the business. A service answers in a human voice for far less. Software answers at any hour and never varies. Which one suits depends on the volume of calls and how much a caller needs to be understood.

People compare these three as though one of them is the right answer. They suit different businesses, and the honest version is that the volume and the complexity of the calls decide it.

What each one suits

• Somebody on staff answering the phone.

  A business with enough calls to keep a person busy, and enough complexity that the answers cannot be written down. It is a wage, and it buys somebody who learns.

• A virtual receptionist service taking them.

  A business with steady calls in working hours that mostly need taking rather than answering. A human voice, at a fraction of a wage.

• Software answering the line instead.

  A business missing calls outside working hours, or missing them because everybody is busy. It answers on the first ring at any hour, and hands over what it cannot do.

spareday builds the software version, runs one on its own line, and is therefore not neutral about it. That is worth saying on the page rather than leaving a reader to work it out.

Whoever answers, they answer from what they have been told. The written brief is what makes it sound like your business rather than a message service.

This is the part everybody rushes, and it is the part that decides whether callers like it. It is identical whether a person or software answers the phone.

What goes into it

• Your hours, your area and what you do.

  Including the jobs you do not do, which is the half almost everybody forgets to write down.

• The questions that come on most calls.

  With the answer you would give, written in the words you would actually use on the phone.

• Whatever is off limits to say.

  Prices and availability, unless whoever is answering can genuinely see them on a screen.

• Who a call goes to, and when.

  Including what happens where that person does not pick up the transfer either.

An hour spent writing this is the difference between a caller who feels looked after and one who worked out they were talking to a message service.

Count what is being missed, then put a value on it. Write the brief, try the cheapest option that could work, and read what was actually said on the calls before committing to anything.

Every step here produces a number or a document, which is why the decision at the end is a short one.

1. Count what is being missed

A week of call records is enough. Missed calls, and how many of those callers rang somebody else afterwards.

2. A call gets given a value

An average job, and how often an enquiry becomes one. This number decides everything after it, and most owners have never worked it out.

3. Write the brief

Hours, area, the jobs done and not done, the common questions with their answers, and whatever is off limits.

4. The cheapest thing that could work goes first

For most Newcastle businesses that means answering the missed calls, rather than diverting every call somewhere else from day one.

5. Read what was actually said

Whoever is answering, somebody reads a fortnight of it properly. That is where the brief actually improves.

6. Then the volume decides the rest

With real numbers on the table, the choice between a service, software and a hire turns into a straightforward one.

The counting and the brief are the real work. Whichever route gets taken, the answering starts quickly and the wording takes a fortnight of reading to settle down.

The order it happens in

• First somebody counts the calls.

  A week of records, and a rough value put against each missed call. Nothing has changed at this stage.

• Then the written brief comes together.

  Hours, area, the common questions, and the limits. Nothing is answering the phone at this stage.

• Then the answering starts, and somebody reads it.

  A fortnight of reading what was said, and correcting the brief wherever it turned out thin.

The businesses still happy with this a year later are the ones that kept the brief up to date. That takes about ten minutes whenever something changes.

Ask whose name the phone number stays in, whether you can read every call, how the brief is kept up to date, and what happens if you stop. The number question decides how easily you can change your mind.

These are worth asking of any provider, including this one, so the answers given here are underneath each question.

• Whose name is the phone number in?

  It stays in the business's own name. A number held in somebody else's account is the hardest thing of all to get back.

• Can I read every call?

  Yes, and easily enough. Being able to read what was actually said is the only way to tell whether it is working.

• How does the brief stay up to date?

  Something changes in a business most months. It is a written document here, and the owner can have it changed the same day.

• What happens to it if I stop?

  The number, the recordings and the customer details all stay yours. The only thing that stops is the answering.

Plenty of Newcastle businesses answer their own phone perfectly well and only want the after hours half covered. That is a much smaller job than any of this.