For small businesses
Two to twenty people, and nobody whose job is the phone.
Whatever is not running by the end of the first day never gets switched on.
The company line stops being the owner’s cell. Someone else can answer it on a Saturday.
No queues, no agent seats, no scripted greeting for a company of six.
The cost
Answer and you lose your place in the work. Let it ring and you lose a customer.
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people here whose job is to answer the phone
The product
At this size the call and the job compete for the same pair of hands, with no front desk between them.
Rings everyone free first, so a person answers whenever a person can
When nobody can, the assistant answers rather than the voicemail greeting
No queue and no hold music — a caller with a question does not wait through either
A missed call today gives you a number and a time, which is another job rather than an answer.
A written summary the moment the call ends, not a voicemail to replay
The callback comes out as a task with a name and a date on it
You return the call knowing what it is about before you dial
Small companies get texted, and today it lands on whichever cell the customer happened to be given once.
Texts and calls in one thread under the customer, on the company’s number
Whoever is working can pick the conversation up mid-way
When someone leaves, what they knew about the customer stays
Your week
On a ladder, under a sink, mid-quote. It is waiting as text when you finish.
It is the number on the van, the invoice and every email since 2019.
So did the customer history, because it was in their phone and their head.
Half the features are still off, because setting them up needed an afternoon nobody had.
Any size
The product is the same in all three. What changes is how many phones the line rings, and who is expected to pick up.
Neither of you can stop, and there is nobody else. The assistant is the third person.
Everyone answers, nobody owns it. One line rings whoever is free; the record is the company’s.
You are about to hire someone to answer the phone. See if you still need to.
The fine print
A small company has nobody to check these, so here they are, unfavorable parts included.
Switching
Porting is free and the line keeps working, so the number on the van stays.
No minimum seats and no contract term. Four people who all stop what they are doing when the phone rings is the case this was built for, not a smaller version of it.
That is the design constraint. You pick a number or port yours, install the app on the phones you already have, and tell the assistant your hours. There is no wiring, no handsets and no onboarding call you have to book.
Port the cell number in. It keeps working for customers on the company line, and your personal number goes back to being yours — same handset, two numbers, one of which stops ringing at dinner.
You remove their access. Every call, text and note stays under the customer, because it was never on their personal phone in the first place.
No. There is one number and it rings whoever is available. You can route by what the call is about if that helps, but a company of six does not need a directory.
It answers in your words, with your hours and what you do, and it does not pretend to be a person. The alternative it is competing with is a voicemail greeting, or nobody.
Waitlist
The phone answered, what was said written down, and the company number no longer yours.
From Google Voice
From RingCentral
From Vonage