What you already priced

Hiring a receptionist

About £27,000 a year once salary, employer National Insurance and pension are counted, and before recruitment, equipment or a desk. That buys roughly a quarter of the week: take out lunch, breaks, holiday, sick days and training and it is less. Evening, weekend and lunchtime calls still go unanswered, and those are exactly when a homeowner rings a tradesperson.

Reception is also a high-churn role. When they leave, the recruitment cost, the ramp-up and the lost knowledge all repeat, and the phone goes unanswered in between.

An answering service

£150 to £400 a month, billed per minute. A ten-minute call from a serious buyer costs more than five wrong numbers, which is precisely backwards. The agent handles dozens of businesses and knows none of them well: they take a message, they rarely qualify, and they almost never book. Changing the script means emailing them.

Voicemail

Free, and better than nothing by a small margin. The caller gets a promise that somebody will be in touch. It does not answer a question, does not qualify, does not book, and does not stop the caller ringing the next number while they wait. The call is not missed so much as lost.

DeskCaller

Free for 25 calls in your first month, and Pro from £96 a month, priced per call rather than per minute. It answers every hour of the week, asks what you would have asked, and books the job.

The argument is not that it is cheaper than a person. A receptionist is roughly £2,250 a month for partial cover; an answering service is £150 to £400 for a generic one. Pro is £96 to £321, at or under the price of the generic service, and the case is that it is always on, never idle, and it actually qualifies.

When we are the wrong answer

If your calls need a person who knows the customer by name, or the work is bespoke enough that no set of questions covers it, a receptionist is worth the money and we are not a substitute. If it is close, the full price list is published so you can do the arithmetic yourself. If two people ring you at once regularly, note that one number carries one call at a time and the second caller does not get through.