Tools
Three tools that work when you cannot.
An AI receptionist for the phone at £99 a month, a chat assistant for the website at £49 a month, and calendar booking as a £149 one-off with nothing monthly. All three bolt onto a site you already have.
01 · Voice
AI receptionist
The calls you miss are the ones that cost most. A missed call is rarely a caller who waits; it is usually a caller who rings the next firm on the list.
What it does
Answers the phone when you do not: out of hours, on a job, or when the line is already busy. It takes the caller’s name, number and what they want, then sends it to you as an email within seconds of the call ending.
What it knows
Your services, your hours, your areas covered, and your prices if you want callers to hear them. It answers from what you give it, and when it does not know, it says so and takes a message rather than guessing.
What it will not do
It is not a person and it does not pretend to be one. It will not negotiate, quote outside what you have set, or handle a complaint. Those get taken as a message and passed to you.
02 · Web
Chat assistant
Most website questions are the same eight questions. A chat assistant answers them at 11pm on a Sunday, which is when a good proportion of them get asked.
What it does
Sits on your site and answers from your own content: your services, prices, delivery areas, opening times, policies. When someone is ready to act, it hands them to your contact form or booking link rather than talking in circles.
Where the answers come from
Your published pages, and anything else you hand over. It is grounded in your material, so it is not inventing an answer about your business from the open internet. If your site does not say it, the assistant does not claim it.
What it will not do
It will not take payment, access your systems, or promise a date. It answers questions and passes on the ones it cannot.
03 · Booking
Calendar booking
Six emails to find a slot that suited neither of you is the worst way to start a working relationship. This is the alternative.
What it does
Puts your real availability on your website so someone can pick a time and book it themselves. It reads the calendar you already use, so a slot you have filled elsewhere is never offered twice.
What it handles
Confirmations, reminders before the appointment, and reschedules or cancellations without either of you writing an email. Different appointment types with different lengths, if you need them.
What it will not do
It will not take a deposit or payment, and it will not chase a no-show beyond the reminder. It gets the booking into your calendar and stops there.
What it costs.
Voice
AI receptionist — £99 a month
£297 to set up, then £99 a month. It costs more than the chat assistant because it handles live calls: there is a phone number to run, and a spoken conversation has to be right first time with nobody able to scroll back.
Web
Chat assistant — £49 a month
£297 to set up, then £49 a month. It answers from pages you have already written, so there is less to build and less to keep straight.
Booking
Calendar booking — £149 once
£149, paid once, with nothing monthly. It runs on the calendar you already pay for and there is no conversation for us to host or keep straight, so there is nothing honest to charge you a subscription for.
All three
What the money buys
The setup is the part that matters: working out what it should say, what it must never say, and where it hands over. On the two monthly tools that fee covers running them, hosting them and changing what they say when your business changes. No minimum term — if one is not earning its keep, turn it off.
Honestly
When not to bother.
If you answer your phone reliably and your website gets a handful of visitors a week, the two monthly tools will not pay for themselves. The receptionist earns its keep when you are genuinely missing calls; the assistant earns its keep when enough people are asking. If that is not you yet, spend the money on the site or the ads instead, and come back when the volume is there. Calendar booking is the exception: at £149 once it pays for itself the first time it saves you a run of emails.