The phone
A phone that gets answered, and a call that becomes work
A number of your own, answered by your staff, who can also ring people for you. Plenty of services will take a message. What none of them does is the part after the call, which is the only reason to use this one.
Answering
When somebody rings you
Your staff pick up on a number that belongs to the business.
It knows who is calling
A customer who rang last week is greeted as that customer and asked whether it is about the same thing. It never reads out anything private, because a phone number proves nothing about who is holding it, but nobody has to explain themselves twice.
It says what it is
Every call opens by saying it is an automated assistant, and that the call may be recorded. Recording follows the settings you choose on your phone line.
Nothing is promised on the line
It cannot commit you to a price or a date, and it says so out loud: taken down provisionally, a person will confirm. It can send a booking link while the caller is still on the line, offering only times that are genuinely free.
The call becomes the work
A note in the same memory the rest of your staff read, a task on your list, a reply drafted, and the caller added to your people. Every call is on the Calls screen with what was said and the follow-up it raised, or the reason there was none.
Robocalls and the real thing
Warranty scams and automated pitches are ended before they use your minutes. When it matters, it can put a real caller through to your mobile, inside hours you set.
Ringing out
When your staff ring somebody for you
Chase a quote, ask a supplier when the parts land, confirm a detail. The same line places calls as well as taking them.
Only people you already deal with
It rings people the business has already dealt with, and only inside their working hours. It does not cold-call.
It says it is automated, first sentence
Whoever picks up is told straight away that this is an automated assistant calling on your behalf.
It agrees to nothing
It is given, in advance, the list of things it may state out loud. Anything else it is asked, it says it will check and come back, because a detail invented on a phone call cannot be withdrawn.
You hear it first
Before it speaks to anybody real you can have it ring you and play the person on the other end, so you know how it sounds.
Prices from several businesses, by phone
Coming soonAsk for prices from two to five businesses. Once you approve, your staff ring them one at a time inside their working hours and ask the price, what it includes, the earliest date and who said it. They agree to nothing. You get one comparison in your thread, and no winner is picked for you.
What is missing: Works through the same dialling as briefing calls and has never run against a live handset. It needs your own phone number and phone minutes, United States and Canada only, and the comparison is what each business said, not a checked price.
Your number
Choose it yourself, in a minute
Pick an area code, see which numbers are genuinely free, choose one, and it is bought, bound to your staff and answering within about twenty seconds. Nobody at Operenda touches it.
- United States and Canada only for now. Elsewhere the phone network wants proof-of-address paperwork for each number, which cannot be done while you wait, and we would rather say so than take the money and explain afterwards.
- An add-on to your plan, not a product of its own: what makes an answered call worth anything is the note, the task and the drafted reply that follow it, and those are the plan.
- Changing or releasing the number needs your authenticator code, because a phone line is a way into the business.
What it costs
A monthly line with minutes included
45
minutes a month
$19 / month
A few calls a week. Cheaper than missing them.
80
minutes a month
$30 / month
A call or two most days.
145
minutes a month
$49 / month
Trades and services where the phone is the business.
If a month runs long, 30 more minutes are $9. A line that stops being answered halfway through the month is the worst thing this could do to you.
Where this stands
What works today, and what is still to prove
Answering the phone
Working nowRinging somebody for you
Coming soonWorking, and never run against a live handset. The dialling, the script and the rehearsal are built on the same mechanism that already places briefing calls; what no test can tell you is how it sounds, which is exactly what the rehearsal is for.
The phone line is working today. Ringing out is built too, and it is marked because it has not yet been run against a live handset, which is exactly what the rehearsal is for.