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The Funnelsmiths
An empty front desk with the phone ringing, out of hours.

Part two of four

An AI receptionist that answers every call, day or night

It picks up when your team cannot: evenings, weekends, lunch, and while they are already on another call. It answers the question, captures why the person rang, and books them in where your diary can be reached. You get a record of every call, including the ones you never knew about.

The outcome

The calls you miss leave no trace, which is why nothing looks wrong

A missed call does not appear anywhere. There is no enquiry in the system, no name in the diary and nothing for anyone to follow up, so the business carries on believing it handled everything that came in. It did handle everything it saw. The problem is the part it never saw. The first thing this changes is not the answering, it is that the calls become visible at all.

What happens when nobody can pick up

The call gets answered, not recorded
Not a voicemail and not a promise that somebody will ring back. The caller gets a real answer at ten past six on a Friday as readily as at eleven on a Tuesday. It says plainly that it is not a member of staff, because trying to pass for one is dishonest and, with this audience, obvious within a sentence.
It works out what they want
What they were asking about, whether they are already a client or patient, and how urgent it is. That is the difference between a message somebody has to action tomorrow and an enquiry that has already moved.
It books them in
Where your diary or practice management system can be reached, the appointment goes in during the call. That depends on what you run, so we check it before quoting rather than promising it and finding out later.
The right calls still reach a person
Urgent calls escalate by rules you set: to an on-call number, to a named person, or with a clear instruction to the caller. It never attempts a clinical or professional judgement. That is a deliberate limit, not a missing feature.
Every enquiry lands in one place
Phone, web form, email, SMS, WhatsApp, missed calls and voicemail, all answered and all arriving in the same inbox. Most people find the log more useful in the first month than the answering, because it is the first time they have seen their real enquiry volume.
White-hot steel held in tongs over the anvil.

An enquiry is only workable while it is hot.

What it’s worth

The arithmetic here is unusually simple

Count the calls that reached nobody last month. Multiply by what a new client is worth to you. Both numbers are yours, so we do not need an industry average and would not trust one anyway.

Ten missed calls a month at £800 a job is £8,000, walking to whoever did answer. Invented numbers, put your own in. Ring back the next morning and most have already gone elsewhere: the enquiry was real, the window was hours.

How it’s built

Your phone number stays your phone number

We do not move your main line onto a platform you would later have to buy back. The number stays registered to your business, the call records are yours, and if we part company the number and the log stay exactly where they are. The answering runs on our shared platform, which is what keeps it a monthly fee; if you want that part in-house we will hand it over and quote the setup. Nobody should have to risk their main line to change supplier.

  1. Registered to your businessThe phone numbers, the ad accounts and the spend that runs through them, the website, and every client and call record. All in your organisation's name, and all of it stays with you.
  2. The automation runs on our platformThe workflows themselves sit on a shared platform we run and maintain, which is what keeps it a monthly fee rather than a build cost. Our route into your accounts is a permission you grant and can withdraw.
  3. If we stop working togetherYour accounts, numbers and data stay exactly where they are, and you can export the lot at any time at no charge. If you want to take the automation in-house too, we can hand it over: that one is a migration with a setup cost, and we will quote it honestly rather than pretend it is a switch.

What it takes

We will tell you your own miss rate before you decide anything

The free Leak Check rings you the way a customer would, at the times customers ring, and reports what happened with dates and timestamps. It does the same to the competitor ranking above you, on the identical test. The report is yours to keep whatever you decide to do next.

Prices from £495 a month, ex VAT. See what is included

What owners ask first

Is this just an answering service?

No, and the difference is whether anything has moved by the time your team reads it. An answering service takes a message for somebody to action tomorrow. This answers the question, captures why they rang, works out whether it needs a person now, and books the appointment where it can. A message is admin. An enquiry that has already been dealt with is not.

Will it replace our receptionist?

No. It covers the hours a person cannot: lunch, evenings, weekends, holidays, and the times they are already on another call. A full-time receptionist covers roughly 1,700 hours a year and people try to reach you across far more than that. The gap is what we close, not the person.

Will callers know they are not talking to a human?

Yes, and it tells them. What it replaces is not a person, it is a voicemail nobody was going to return until Monday.

What happens with an urgent call?

It escalates to a human by rules you set, with the details already captured. It never tries to answer a clinical or professional question. A system that guesses at judgement it does not have is worse than one that hands over quickly.

Can we take this without the marketing?

Yes, and it is the most common place people start. If you are already busy and suspect enquiries are going missing, this is the part that pays for itself first. The Leak Check will tell you whether that suspicion is right before you spend anything.

What does it cost to find out how many calls we miss?

Nothing. The Leak Check is free, needs no card, no access to your systems and no obligation, and you keep the report either way.

Free · No install · No obligation

Find out what's recoverable in your business

We contact you the way a new client would, by search, phone and web form, then show you the work you could be winning. Scored on three things: are you found, is the enquiry answered, does anyone chase it.