Guide · 5 min read
Telephone answering service: human, virtual or AI?
What a telephone answering service costs a UK small business in 2026, what voicemail, a human answering service and an AI receptionist each do well, and how to choose when most of your calls are people trying to book.
Voicemail is where calls get lost
Someone ringing to book wants an answer, not a beep. They hear ‘please leave a message after the tone’, hang up and ring the next business on the list. You would do the same.
The ones who do leave a message make you call them back, often when they can’t answer or don’t pick up an unknown number. Voicemail turns one missed call into two, and it feels as if the call was dealt with. If you want to count what that costs, the text message that saves a missed call shows how to measure your own missed calls in a week.
Something will always answer when you can’t. What you choose is what the caller hears and what they can do next.
Three kinds of answering service
1. Your network’s voicemail
It comes with the line. On a BT Business landline, BT Answer 1571 is free; BT says you may need to register, and activation takes two to ten days. The common mistake is keeping the generic greeting. Record your own, with the business name, so callers know they have the right place.
2. A human answering service
A team of receptionists answers in your business name, usually to take a message, sometimes to transfer the call or book an appointment. You send them all your calls or only the ones you don’t pick up, with a divert. On a mobile, Vodafone UK’s help page lists the standard codes, each followed by the call key:
**61*number#diverts calls you don’t answer.**67*number#diverts calls when you’re busy.**62*number#diverts calls when the phone is off.##002#cancels every divert.
Vodafone asks for the number with +44 in place of the first 0, and notes that Pay as you go customers can only divert to voicemail. On a landline, ask your provider.
3. An AI receptionist
Software answers, works out what the caller wants, and books, takes a message or transfers the call. Some are sold on sounding human. The better question is whether it tells callers it is an AI, and whether it can see your real diary.
What it costs in the UK
Prices as each provider published them on 23 September 2026. We picked providers that publish prices; many don’t (Moneypenny, for its human service, quotes case by case).
| Provider | What it does | Published price |
|---|---|---|
| BT Answer 1571 | Network voicemail | Free on BT Business lines |
| ReceptionHQ MessageExpress | UK receptionists take messages | £15 a month plus £1.10 a call, or £49 for 50 calls, plus VAT |
| ReceptionHQ MyDiary | Appointment booking | £30 a month plus £1.10 a minute, plus VAT, set-up from £20 |
| AnswerConnect | Live answering, 24/7 | £45 a month for 25 minutes, then £1.85 a minute, rounded up |
| Face For Business | UK PAs take messages | From £49 a month, Message Only from £99 |
| Moneypenny AI Receptionist | AI answering | From £25 a month |
Read the small print on each page: what counts as a call, whether minutes are rounded up (AnswerConnect rounds up, Face For Business charges by the second), set-up fees and VAT. ReceptionHQ quotes its prices plus VAT; the other pages don’t say.
A worked example, by our own arithmetic from those pages: 50 calls a month of about two minutes each. On ReceptionHQ that is £49 plus VAT to take messages, or £99 plus VAT for its 100-minute booking plan. On AnswerConnect, its 75-minute plan at £125 plus 25 extra minutes at £1.75 comes to £168.75.
What a human service does well, and what it doesn’t
People are good at the unusual: the upset caller, the question nobody wrote a script for, the judgement call. That is worth paying for.
What they can’t do is work from your diary unless you give them access to it, and on a message-only plan you still ring everyone back. Costs grow with every minute. And another company is answering in your name, so it only sounds like you if you brief it well.
What changes when an AI answers
A voicemail, however well recorded, leaves the work for later. A voice assistant picks up in the same situations as the divert and deals with the call there and then:
- It says it is an AI and that the call is recorded, in the first sentence. The first part is required under EU law (AI Act, art. 50).
- It books into your real diary, with your staff and your free slots, instead of ‘we’ll call you back’.
- It offers ‘person’. Anyone who doesn’t want to talk to a machine says so and is put through or leaves a message.
- It takes messages when the call isn’t a booking, and sends them to you in writing with the caller’s number.
The first thing a caller hears sounds like this, for a fictional clinic:
Hi, this is the voice assistant for Fisio Centro, an artificial-intelligence system. This call is recorded so we can book you in correctly. I can find you a time with a physio, and if you’d rather speak to a person, say ‘person’.
What it doesn’t do: triage medical emergencies, or promise prices you haven’t given it. And with fewer than ten or fifteen calls a day, it doesn’t pay. A good voicemail greeting that sends callers to WhatsApp is enough.
Where to start
Today, record a greeting that says who you are, what the caller can do now (message you on WhatsApp on this number, for example) and only promises you keep. This week, count missed calls and note when they happen.
Fewer than ten a day: that greeting and a WhatsApp you answer promptly will do. More, or bunched at times nobody can pick up: then it pays to have every call answered. If most of them are bookings, that is what Conserjía’s voice assistant does, on a conditional divert from your existing number, without changing provider. The voice assistant page explains when it answers, what it says and what it doesn’t do.