It's 9:40 on a Tuesday and you're under a sink in a rental unit, both hands wet, slip nut half off. The phone buzzes somewhere. Back pocket, truck seat, who knows. One employee, no front desk, nobody in a polo shirt saying "one moment, let me check his schedule." So the call does what every call has done for three years. Voicemail. Then nothing.

The 411 Locals study of 85 businesses found that 62 percent of calls to small businesses go unanswered. The Numa Small Business Phone Report puts the share of callers who hit voicemail and never call back at 85 percent. Read that second number again. Not "call back later." Never.

So here's the setup, in the order I'd do it with one pair of hands and no desk. It takes an afternoon, and most of that afternoon is you thinking rather than clicking.

First, write down what you actually say all day

Before you sign up for anything, open the notes app on your phone and list the questions people ask you. Real ones, in the words they use. Say you groom dogs out of a van in Fresno: do you come to the house, do you do doodles, what's it cost for a 60 pound lab, can you do Saturday, do you take cards, how far out are you.

Now write the answers. Actual numbers. "Doodle full groom is 145 dollars, add 20 if he's matted." Never "pricing varies." If you can't write the answer down, you can't hand the phone to anybody, human or otherwise, because you're the only place that information lives. Twenty minutes of this is the whole foundation. People skip it, then wonder why the voice on their phone line sounds like a brochure.

Sort your calls into three piles

Every call you get is one of these:

  • Somebody who wants a price and a slot. Most of them, and the entire reason your phone matters.
  • A customer you already have, asking about today. Where are you, can you come earlier, did you get my gate code.
  • Everyone else. The Google listing scam, the merchant services guy, a wrong number for a dentist on the same exchange.

Pile one should never touch you while you're working. Pile two sometimes should. Pile three should never reach you at all, and if your phone lets it through at 2pm on a Wednesday, that's a bug you've been living with for years.

Decide what happens on ring three

This is the actual setup step, and it's a routing question first. Software second. When you don't pick up in three rings, the call has to land somewhere that can answer what the caller asked. Somewhere that takes dictation only delays the same conversation until 8pm.

With Rocketship you point your own business number at the AI receptionist and it answers from that number, so the digits on your van, on your Google listing and on the magnet stuck to the fridge in unit 4B all stay exactly as they are. It knows your hours, your services and the prices you just wrote down. Somebody calls at 7:12 on a Sunday evening and gets a straight answer about a 145 dollar groom.

I'll be blunt about the alternative. A greeting that says "leave your name and number and I'll get back to you as soon as I can" is a small insult to a woman standing next to a dog that smells. Answering services do a version of the same thing with people: they take the message and pass it along, and they can't quote your prices or put anything in your calendar, because they hold neither. That trade used to run on carbon paper message pads and now it runs on a web portal, same message either way. Anyway.

The whole game is whether it can book

Connect Google Calendar and give it real rules. Ninety minute grooms. Thirty minutes of drive time between stops, because Fresno is not small. No bookings before 8 or after 6, and Sundays off unless you say otherwise. Then your 7:12 Sunday caller hangs up with a confirmed Thursday at 10, you find out when you check your phone Monday morning, and there is nothing left for you to do about it.

Anything that only captures a name and a number is voicemail with a pulse. You'll still be calling 11 people back at 8pm from the truck with the heater running. Which is the job you were trying to get rid of.

Say out loud when you want to be interrupted

You're one person, so a transfer is expensive. It costs you a slip nut and a wet floor. Write the rule down: water coming through a ceiling right now gets me on the phone, everything else gets booked or gets a text. Then set the receptionist to follow it, and to say something honest when it doesn't transfer. "He's on a job until three. I can have him call you at 3:15, or I can put you down for tomorrow at 9."

Callers take that fine. What they don't take is a beep.

Now call yourself and be a difficult customer

Do this before you trust it with one real call. Ring your own number from a phone the system has never seen and try to break it. Mumble. Ask for a Saturday you don't work. Ask a price you never wrote down. If you're a locksmith, ask what it costs to cut a key for a 2019 F-150 and watch whether it invents a number or says it'll have you confirm.

Two failures to listen for: making things up, and dead ends where the caller has nowhere left to go. Both get fixed in the same screen where you put the prices. Fix them, call again, be worse the second time.

Five minutes on Friday

Read the week's transcripts. You'll find three questions you never thought to answer, because customers are strange and specific and one of them will ask whether you do cats too. Add the answers. Do it again the next Friday, and by week four you'll be adding almost nothing.

The free tier covers a one person shop, and paid plans start at 12 dollars a month, which is less than the gas you burn driving back out to a no-show.

Then the phone rings while you're under the sink, and you keep working.