Setting one up, step by step

Step one: gather what you already know

Before anything technical, write down the answers to the questions you are asked most. Opening hours, prices or ranges, areas covered, what you do and do not do, how long things take, what happens next after somebody books.

The fastest way to produce this is to listen to whoever answers your phone for an hour. They will give you the whole list from memory.

• Your ten most common caller questions, with the answers
• Your services and prices, or the ranges you are willing to quote
• Areas you cover and any you refuse
• What counts as urgent, in your own words
• Who urgent calls go to, and how, at each hour of the day

Step two: define escalation before anything else

This is the part to get right on day one. Decide what stops the conversation and reaches a human immediately: a leak, a suspected emergency, an aggressive caller, anybody who simply asks for a person.

Everything else can be refined over weeks. Escalation cannot, because the cost of getting it wrong once is high.

Step three: decide the call flow

Most businesses want overflow during working hours and direct answering outside them. Calls ring your team first for a set number of rings, and anything unanswered goes to the assistant rather than voicemail.

Outside hours the assistant answers immediately, because there is nobody for it to wait for.

Both are configured on your existing number, usually through your phone provider's divert settings. If you are on a mobile, conditional call forwarding does the same job.

Step four: connect the calendar

If you want bookings rather than messages, the assistant needs access to a diary and rules about how to use it: slot lengths by appointment type, how far ahead it may book, which hours are protected, and buffers between jobs.

Be strict here. An assistant that books a forty minute job into a twenty minute gap causes more damage than a missed call.

Step five: test it as a customer, twice

Ring it yourself and book something. Then ring it again and be awkward: interrupt, change your mind, ask for a person, describe something urgent.

Have somebody who does not know the script do the same. They will find the gaps you cannot see because you know what it is supposed to do.

Step six: read the transcripts for two weeks

This is the step that separates a working assistant from an adequate one. Read every transcript for a fortnight, particularly the calls that did not book.

You will find three or four specific things to change, and they will improve conversion more than any other adjustment available to you.