AI phone answering for UK small businesses. Both hands full? Carrie can.
The phone rings while both your hands are busy, halfway through somebody's job. Carrie picks it up on the first ring, in your business name, finds out what has gone wrong and where they are, and tells them you will ring back. We set the whole thing up. You keep the number you have always had and there is nothing for you to learn.
If the caller says it is an emergency, or asks for a person, she puts them through to you rather than keeping them talking to software.
What does she actually sound like?
Find out by talking to her. This is a real call, not a recording: press the button, let your browser use the microphone, and she picks up and answers you the way she would answer one of your customers. Ask her anything. Interrupt her. Give her a bad postcode and see whether she checks it. Two minutes, and it costs you nothing.
It rings, she picks up, and you talk to her the way a customer would. Two minutes, on us.
She is answering for a made-up heating firm, because she has not met your business yet. Set up properly she uses your name, your services and your area, and every price she gives is one you gave her. You can also hear her on a real phone line on 07415 300632.
How does AI phone answering work?
Your number rings as it always has. When you do not pick up, Carrie does, and the whole conversation is written up and sent to you. You do nothing except ring them back.
The call comes in when you cannot take it
On a job, driving, or half past eight at night. Nothing rings out and nothing goes to voicemail. Carrie answers with your business name, so the caller knows they have got the right firm.
Carrie has a proper conversation
What has gone wrong, where they are, how soon they need somebody, and their name and number. She asks the questions your trade actually needs asking, because we set her up with your services.
The whole lot lands on your phone
Name, number, address, what the job is and how urgent it is, written up in seconds. You ring back knowing what you are walking into instead of ringing back blind.
What it looks like
Twenty past seven on a Tuesday evening. You have finished in Sudbury, you are covered in dust and you are carrying your gear out when the phone goes. Both hands are on a toolbox. Normally that one rings out, they hang up, and they ring the next name on the list.
Instead Carrie picks up: “Good evening, thanks for calling. How can I help?” She gives your firm's name, not a call centre's. By the time everything is packed away, the job is on your phone.
A boiler with no hot water in Great Cornard, the woman's name and number, and she says tomorrow morning is fine. You ring her back before you have pulled off, and book it in.
It is the same twenty past seven whatever you do. A salon is halfway through a colour and cannot stop. A garage is under a car with both arms up. A practice has one person on the desk and four people in front of it. Every one of those is a call that rings out and a customer who tries the next name down.
What people ask about phone answering
Nineteen, and every one is about the phone rather than about us, right down to what happens when two people ring at once.
What exactly is AI phone answering?
It is somebody answering your business phone every time you cannot, at any hour, without you employing anybody. Carrie picks up on the first ring, says your business name, has a real conversation with the caller, and writes the job up for you within seconds of hanging up.
She is set up with your services and the words your trade uses, so a caller ringing a heating engineer is asked about the boiler and the pressure rather than being read a script that could belong to anybody.
How is this different from voicemail?
Voicemail asks somebody with a problem to do more work at the exact moment they have least patience for it. Listen to a greeting, decide whether it is even worth leaving a message, leave one, then sit there with no idea whether anybody heard it. So they hang up and dial the next number instead.
Carrie answers. There is a person on the other end of it as far as the caller is concerned, the questions get asked, and the caller puts the phone down knowing somebody has their details.
How is it different from a call answering service?
A traditional service charges per call and staffs it with people taking messages for other businesses at the same time. They do not know your trade, so what you get back is a name and “something about a leak”.
Carrie is set up for your business only. She asks about the job properly, she does not charge extra for a Sunday, and she does not put anybody in a queue when two people ring at once.
Is it good enough to put in front of my customers?
You judge that before it ever answers a real call. We set her up with your greeting, your services and the way you want her to speak, and you listen to her before she goes anywhere near your number. If she does not sound like your business, she does not go live.
She then has a proper conversation with the callers you cannot get to, in the words your trade uses. That is the part voicemail has never done.
Which trades and local services is it for?
Anybody whose hands are busy while the phone is ringing. Plumbers and heating engineers, electricians, roofers, builders, landscapers and gardeners, decorators and cleaning companies, and equally salons, dental practices, vets, opticians, physios, garages and driving instructors.
If you are on your own it is the nearest thing you have to somebody in an office. If you have two or three people it stops whoever is nearest the phone dropping everything every time it rings. If you have an office already it covers the evenings, the weekends and the fortnight somebody is away.
What happens when I can answer?
You answer, exactly as you do now, and Carrie never gets involved. You set how many rings you get before she steps in. She only picks up the calls you do not, which is the ones you were going to lose anyway.
Does it use my own number?
Yes. You keep the number that is on your cards, your signage and your Google listing, and nobody has to learn a new one, including you. Your number routes to her only when you have not answered.
Who gives the price?
You do, every time. She takes the details and tells the caller you will ring back. The quote stays yours, and it gets given by somebody who has seen the job.
Pricing a job you have not seen is how a trade loses money. She gets you the details that decide the price first, so the number you give is the right one.
Can she put somebody through to me?
Yes. If the caller asks for a person, or says it cannot wait, she can transfer the call to you or flag it as urgent straight away. Nobody is kept talking to software because software answered.
What about a real emergency?
You decide what counts as one for your trade, and she marks those calls as urgent so they sit at the top of your list rather than in the middle of it. Water coming through a ceiling and a dripping tap do not get treated the same way.
What if she is asked something she does not know?
She says she will make sure somebody comes back to them on it, and writes the question down with the rest of the job. She never invents a fact about your business. You then ring back already knowing what they wanted to ask, which is more than a voicemail ever gives you.
How quickly does she pick up?
On the first ring. There is no queue and no hold music. That matters more than it sounds, because a caller who gets nothing is already scrolling to the next name.
Can I hear what was said?
Yes. Every call is written up and kept, so you can read exactly what the caller said before you ring them back. That is also how you tune her: if she says something you would rather she did not, tell us once and she stops saying it. Nothing depends on somebody remembering a conversation correctly.
What hours does she work?
All of them. Evenings, weekends, bank holidays and the week between Christmas and New Year. A fair share of the calls a local business misses come outside working hours, and those are often the ones somebody wants sorting tonight.
What if two people ring at the same time?
Both get answered. She is not one person with one phone, so a busy Monday morning does not put anybody on hold or send the second caller to voicemail.
Does it work if I am somewhere with no signal?
Yes, because it is not running on your phone. When you come back into signal the calls are already answered and the jobs are waiting in one list.
What about sales calls and abuse?
A sales call gets a polite no and never reaches your list, so you are not sifting through them to find the real jobs. Somebody being abusive gets nothing back and the call ends.
What does it cost to run?
The setup and the monthly are on the price list, in the open, like everything else we sell. The phone minutes she uses are itemised on your bill, so you can see exactly what they were. Past your included minutes it is 15p, and you only pay for the ones you really use.
Every minute past your 150 minutes of call time is on its own line on the bill. So if a month is busy you can see exactly why.
Is my data safe and is it GDPR compliant?
Your customers' details are yours. They are held in your own database on your own project, not pooled with anybody else's, they are never sold, and they are never used to sell anything to anybody. If you leave, you take the lot with you and we delete our copy.
Everything is encrypted on the way and at rest, and the full detail of what is collected and why is in the privacy notice, in plain words rather than in a wall of legal text.
Who does an assistant name when somebody asks for a number?
People are starting to ask an assistant instead of searching. They say what has happened and ask who can help, and one answer comes back with a name in it rather than a page of choices. Google writes that kind of answer above the blue links now, so it reaches people who have never opened an assistant at all.
- An assistant matches stated facts, not clever phrases. The hours you take calls, the places you cover and the number itself have to be on the page as text.
- A telephone number inside a picture is invisible to it, and so is one drawn by a script after the page has loaded. Both look perfectly normal to a person and read as nothing at all.
- None of it is a fourth service. Google's own guide says the best practices for search still apply, because its AI answers are built on its ordinary ranking systems.
Where else does she answer?
The phone is one of seven. She answers on every one of them, in the same voice, and everything lands in the same place. Take the phone on its own or take the lot.
Text messages
The ones that come in at nine at night asking if you do this.
Where they send you a photograph or a video of the problem.
The enquiry that arrives at midnight with three pictures on it.
Website live chat
Somebody stood on your website deciding whether to ring.
Facebook Messenger
Messages off your Facebook page, answered like the rest.
Instagram messages
The DM that follows somebody seeing a job you posted.
Your Google listing
It sends you calls, not messages. Google switched that button off in 2024.
All seven together
What the AI receptionist is, and what the whole thing covers.
How many calls rang out last week?
Your phone already knows, and it is the only number that matters here. Show me it and I will tell you straight whether this is worth your money.
Twenty minutes with Chad. Nothing to pay and nothing to sign. The whole receptionist, and all seven channels, are on the AI receptionist page.