An AI virtual receptionist in Newcastle, NSW: calls answered and bookings taken.

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. Ours is software, on our own line.

The arrangement is straightforward. Your calls divert to a service, somebody there answers as your business, and what they can handle depends entirely on how much they have been told about you.

What the service usually covers

• Answering in your business name. Live, in working hours, so a caller reaches a person rather than a voicemail.
• Taking the details. Name, number, suburb and what the job is, sent to you as a message.
• Answering the basics. Hours, area, whether you do a particular job. Whatever is in the brief they were given.
• Transferring. Putting a caller through when it is somebody you would want to speak to.

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, which 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.

Because 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.

The problem is the same in every small business we work with in Newcastle. The phone rings when everybody is on a job, and the caller is 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 a person on staff does. Software solves it differently again, which is the comparison further down.

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

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

These three get compared as if one is the right answer. They suit different businesses, and the honest version is that the volume of calls and the complexity of them decide it.

What each one suits

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

We run the software version, on our own line and for the businesses we work with, so that is the one we can speak about from experience. It is also the reason we are not neutral, and it is worth saying on the page rather than leaving you to work out.

Whoever answers, they answer from what they have been told. The written brief is what separates a service that sounds like your business from one that sounds like a message service.

This is the part that gets rushed and it is the part that decides whether callers like it. It is also identical whether the answering is done by a person or by software.

What goes in it

• Hours, area and what you do. Including the jobs you do not do, which is the half people forget to write down.
• The questions you get on most calls. With the answer you would give, in the words you would use.
• What is off limits. Prices and availability, unless whoever is answering can genuinely see them.
• Who a call goes to, and when. Including what happens if that person does not pick up either.

An hour 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 you are missing, work out what those calls are worth, write the brief, try the cheapest option that could work, and read what actually got said before you commit to anything.

1. Count what you are missing

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

2. Work out what a call is worth

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

3. Write the brief

Hours, area, the jobs you do and do not, the common questions and their answers, and what is off limits.

4. Start with the cheapest thing that could work

For most Newcastle businesses that is answering the missed calls rather than diverting every call somewhere.

5. Read what got said

Whoever is answering, read a fortnight of it. This is where the brief actually gets fixed.

6. Then decide on the volume

With real numbers in front of you, the choice between a service, software and a hire is a straightforward one.

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

The order it happens in

• The calls get counted. A week of records, and what each missed call was likely worth.
• The brief gets written. Hours, area, the common questions, and the limits. Nothing is answering yet.
• The answering starts and gets read. A fortnight of reading what was said, and correcting the brief where it was thin.

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

Ask whose name the phone number stays in, whether you can read every call, how the brief gets updated, and what happens if you stop. The number question is the one that decides how easily you can change your mind.

We build the software version in Newcastle, so we are not neutral. These are the questions we would want asked of us.

• Whose name is the phone number in? The business's. Ours stay that way, because a number held in somebody else's account is the hardest thing to get back.
• Can I read every call? On ours, yes, and easily. Being able to read what was said is how you know whether it is working.
• How does the brief get updated? Something changes in a business most months. Ours is a written document the owner can have changed the same day.
• What happens if I stop? The number, the recordings and the customer details stay yours. What stops is the answering.
• Am I locked in? Ours runs month to month and always has. Any arrangement you cannot leave at the end of a month is worth a second look.

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