Answering service for small business
A small-business answering service for calls you cannot take.
When the phone rings during a job, a customer meeting, lunch, or the middle of the night, the caller still needs an answer. Keep your existing number and give Reece a defined job: answer, gather, route, capture appointment requests, and document what happened.
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7 days free · 60 minutes · No credit card required
Current Reece product assurances
- Keep your business number: Use your provider's forwarding instructions for all calls or missed calls only.
- Cover configured calls 24/7: Answers configured business calls 24/7, including after-hours and overflow calls.
- Review call results: The web dashboard keeps call recordings, transcripts, AI summaries, caller details, and outcomes together.
- Test without a card: 7 days and 60 call minutes are included.
Choose the calls Reece should cover
Forward every call, after-hours calls, or only calls your team does not answer. Your public number can stay in place. The forwarding rule lives with your carrier or phone system, so test the ring delay and fallback before launch.
- Full-time answering
- Nights and weekends
- Busy-line and no-answer overflow
- A separate line for a location or campaign
Give each call an owned outcome
Reece can answer approved FAQs, capture a lead, filter spam, take a structured message, attempt a configured transfer, or handle an appointment workflow. The recording, transcript, summary, and outcome stay together in the web dashboard.
Book against real availability when configured
Reece captures the requested service, preferred timing, caller details, and approved intake answers for staff follow-up. Customer calendar connection and direct provider-backed booking are not currently exposed in production, so staff confirm the appointment through their normal workflow.
Set a clear line for human judgment
Sensitive, adversarial, regulated, or unusual calls may need a person. Reece fits best when the allowed answers, intake questions, transfer destinations, and booking rules can be described clearly and tested.
Train from the business you actually run
Import your website, review the proposed knowledge, edit greetings and FAQs, add pronunciation, and test common and difficult calls. The setup is guided; the time required depends on the complexity of your rules and phone forwarding.
Run a six-call acceptance protocol
Use the same reproducible test set for answering service for small business: one routine request, one qualified but less common request, one caller who corrects an earlier answer, one interruption or silence, one unsupported question, and one next step whose destination or provider does not complete. Write the expected state before dialing. After each call, compare audio with transcript, summary, captured fields, timing, attempted action, fallback, and the employee's interpretation. A conversationally pleasant call fails acceptance when the record is misleading or ownership is unclear. A bounded call can pass even when it stops early, provided the caller hears the limit and the approved handoff evidence is accurate.
- Expected words and fields match the approved source
- Corrections replace earlier values in the final record
- Unsupported requests stop without invented guidance
- Failed destinations produce the configured fallback and owner
Inspect the failure path before expanding coverage
Reece captures the requested service, preferred timing, caller details, and approved intake answers for staff follow-up. Customer calendar connection and direct provider-backed booking are. Add tests for background noise, an unclear business name, a repeated caller, stale hours, a forwarding loop, a destination that rings without answer, and a calendar response that does not confirm an event. Decide whether each failure should retry, capture a message, offer an approved fallback, route elsewhere, or stop. Put a maximum on retries and make the final state visible. Do not use urgency words as a substitute for a qualified person's judgment, and do not imply emergency response, dispatch, availability, delivery, or provider confirmation when the evidence only shows an attempt.
Assign the human work that remains
Automation changes the shape of reception work; it does not remove ownership. Name who reviews new-call records, who returns incomplete requests, who maintains knowledge, who changes routing, who reconnects a provider, and who approves higher-risk exceptions. Set an initial review cadence before each material routing change and a slower steady-state cadence only after evidence is consistent. Give the reviewer a short checklist and a place to record changes. Calls involving sensitive facts, adversarial behavior, professional judgment, negotiation, eligibility, safety, or a commitment outside the configured evidence should remain with a qualified person regardless of how natural the conversation sounds.
Release narrowly and keep a rollback path
Start answering service for small business with a bounded schedule, call type, or forwarding condition rather than changing every inbound path at once. Record the previous carrier rule, greeting, destinations, calendar configuration, and knowledge version before activation. Define the signals that trigger rollback: incorrect approved facts, loops, missing records, misleading outcomes, repeated provider errors, or a fallback that leaves callers without an owner. A rollback restores a known call path while the team investigates; it is not a failure to be hidden. Expand only after both happy-path and exception evidence pass and the receiving employees agree the records are actionable.
How Reece handles the call
- Forward the calls you choose. Keep the number customers already know, then use your phone provider's instructions to forward all calls or missed calls only to Reece.
- Reece answers with approved knowledge. Reece answers the configured call and uses business knowledge the owner has reviewed before it becomes active.
- The caller explains what they need. Reece answers approved FAQs and gathers the caller, request, and intake details needed for a clear next step.
- A supported handoff happens. Eligible Scale and Growth setups can use configured direct or warm transfers. Otherwise, Reece records details or an appointment request for staff follow-up.
- Your team reviews the result. The recording, transcript, summary, caller details, and outcome stay together in the responsive web dashboard.
Your team stays in control. Reece handles approved call intake and configured routing. Your team still owns diagnosis, safety decisions, pricing, dispatch, appointment confirmation, and any follow-up that needs a person.
Know the handoff before you forward a call
Can I keep my current number?
Plans include 1, 3, or 10 Reece phone numbers. Businesses can keep an existing number and forward selected calls to Reece.
Can Reece take missed calls only?
Yes. Choose missed-call forwarding when staff should have the first chance to answer, or forward all calls when Reece should answer first. Your provider controls forwarding behavior.
What if the caller needs a person?
Scale and Growth support owner-configured direct and warm transfers. Reece does not include a staffed human fallback, so the team must define the follow-up path for calls that are not transferred.
Does an appointment request mean booked?
Reece can capture appointment requests, preferred times, caller details, and approved intake answers for staff follow-up. The current production UI does not offer customer-configurable calendar connections or direct provider-backed booking, so Reece does not report an appointment as confirmed.
Setup is guided, but completion time varies with business rules, transfer routing, testing, and carrier forwarding. Call results are available in the web dashboard. Production email delivery and SMS notifications are not currently offered.
Privacy and sensitive calls. Review the current Privacy Policy and Terms before forwarding calls that may include sensitive information. Reece does not claim HIPAA compliance; medical, legal, emergency, financial, and other consequential calls may require a qualified person. Privacy Policy · Terms
Questions, answered
Is Reece a human virtual receptionist?
No. Reece is an AI receptionist. If your workflow requires human discretion on every call, a human service such as Ruby or Smith.ai's human offering may fit better.
Is there a mobile app?
Reece currently uses a responsive web dashboard and does not offer native iOS or Android apps.
Can Reece answer only missed calls?
Yes. Configure no-answer or busy-call forwarding with your carrier or phone system so your team gets the first chance and Reece handles the overflow.
What happens after the free trial?
The automatic trial lasts 7 days and includes 60 call minutes. It does not require a credit card. If Reece fits, choose a paid plan; otherwise the trial ends without an automatic paid charge.
Can I keep my existing business number?
Yes. Keep your published number and use your carrier's forwarding settings to send all calls, after-hours calls, or missed-call overflow to Reece.
Can Reece book appointments on a calendar?
Reece captures appointment requests, preferred times, caller details, and approved intake answers for staff follow-up. Direct calendar booking and customer calendar setup are not currently exposed in the production UI, so Reece does not report the request as confirmed.