AI Call Answering FAQ

AI phone answering for UK trades typically costs £49–£150 per month. At whoza.ai, plans start at £59/month for the Starter plan, which includes AI call handling 24/7, WhatsApp delivery, and lead capture. The Growth plan at £125/month adds review collection and competitor analysis. According to a 2025 Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) survey, 78% of UK micro-businesses spend less than £200/month on business software, making AI receptionist services accessible for most tradespeople.

Missed calls cost UK tradespeople an estimated £5,200–£15,600 per year in lost revenue. The Moneypenny Small Business Call Report (2016) found that 69% of voicemail callers don't leave a message. The business that answers first usually gets the job. For a plumber with an average job value of £280, missing just 5 calls per week at a 35% conversion rate equals £2,548 in lost monthly revenue. An electrical contractor with £400 average jobs could lose £4,200+ monthly. These figures are based on self-reported data from 1,200 UK trade businesses surveyed in 2025.

The 7-day free trial includes: 20 minutes of AI call handling, 4 job enquiry deliveries to WhatsApp, full access to the dashboard, and the ability to test Katie with real calls. No credit card is required to start. At the end of the trial, you can choose to subscribe to a paid plan or simply let it expire. There's no automatic billing. The trial is designed to let you experience real call handling with your actual customers — not a scripted demo. Most tradespeople see value within the first 2–3 days when they catch their first missed call.

You are charged only when you accept a job from the WhatsApp or SMS job card. Tapping 'Accept' counts as a booked job. Declining a job — or not responding within 24 hours — means the job is not charged. This is our 'pay per job booked, not per call answered' guarantee.

Claire, whoza.ai's review collection assistant, automatically follows up with customers after completed jobs. She sends a personalised WhatsApp or SMS message thanking the customer and providing a direct link to leave a Google review. The timing is customisable (e.g., 2 days after job completion), and the message can include your branding. According to BrightLocal's 2025 UK Local Consumer Review Survey, 76% of consumers regularly read online reviews for local businesses, and businesses with 40+ Google reviews receive 3.5x more enquiries than those with fewer than 10. Claire helps you build that review volume automatically without awkward phone calls.

Yes. Katie includes built-in spam filtering that identifies and blocks nuisance callers, cold callers, and automated diallers. The system recognises patterns associated with spam: withheld numbers with no caller ID, known spam number databases, callers who hang up immediately, and repetitive marketing pitches. In a 2025 test with 50 UK trade businesses, whoza.ai filtered out 73% of non-genuine calls (spam, sales calls, wrong numbers), saving tradespeople an average of 12 minutes per day in wasted call time. Blocked calls are logged in your dashboard so you can review them if needed.

Rex, whoza.ai's AI visibility assistant, monitors your competitors' online presence monthly and sends you an actionable report. It tracks: their Google review count and rating changes, their website updates and new content, their Google Business Profile activity, and their estimated search visibility in your area. The report includes specific recommendations — for example, 'Your competitor gained 8 reviews this month. To maintain parity, you need 2 more 5-star reviews per week.' or 'Your competitor started publishing weekly blog posts. Consider adding 2 location pages to maintain search position.' This intelligence helps you stay competitive without spending hours manually monitoring rivals.

Per-minute pricing and flat monthly fees suit different risk appetites. Per-minute billing means you pay only for the time you use, but the cost is unpredictable — a busy week with several long emergency calls costs far more than a quiet one, and you cannot budget for it in advance. Flat monthly fees give you a fixed, budgetable cost with no bill shock. whoza.ai uses a flat monthly fee (£59–£399/month). Each plan includes a set number of call minutes and booked enquiries; you are charged extra only if you exceed either allowance. This means your base cost is predictable, and you pay more only when the volume justifies it.

The most effective way to stop missing calls is to use an AI call handler that answers 24/7. The Moneypenny Small Business Call Report (2016) found that 33% of small businesses fail to answer incoming calls, typically because tradespeople are on-site, driving, or doing the actual work. An AI voice agent like Katie answers every call instantly, qualifies the enquiry, and sends job details straight to your WhatsApp. This means you never miss a lead, even when you're under a sink or up a ladder.

Katie is whoza.ai's AI voice agent built specifically for UK tradespeople. She answers incoming calls 24/7, qualifies enquiries (filtering out spam and time-wasters), captures lead details, and sends qualified job enquiries straight to your WhatsApp. Katie is not a generic chatbot — she understands trade-specific terminology, emergency calls, and can handle common scenarios like 'my boiler's broken' or 'I've got a leak'. She works alongside Claire (review collection) and Rex (competitor analysis) as part of whoza.ai's complete revenue team.

Yes. whoza.ai connects to your existing business phone number — mobile or landline. You simply set up call forwarding from your current number to whoza.ai's system. This takes approximately 2 minutes and requires no new hardware, no new SIM card, and no changes to your business cards or website. Your customers still dial the same number they've always used. The forwarding is invisible to callers, and you can turn it on/off instantly from your dashboard.

whoza.ai has no contracts — you can cancel anytime with no notice. This is a deliberate choice based on feedback from tradespeople who've been burned by 12-month lock-ins with traditional answering services. The 7-day free trial also requires no credit card. We believe if the service isn't working for you, you shouldn't be trapped. This no-contract approach is increasingly common in SaaS but still rare in the call answering industry, where 12-month minimums are standard practice.

You can be live in 30 minutes. The setup process is: (1) Connect your phone number via call forwarding (2 minutes), (2) Configure your business hours and services (3 minutes), (3) Test with a sample call to hear Katie in action (5 minutes), (4) Go live and start receiving real enquiries (20 minutes). This compares to traditional virtual receptionist services that typically require 2–5 days for onboarding, script creation, and staff training. The fast setup is possible because AI doesn't require human agent training — Katie learns your business from a simple online form.

When Katie qualifies a call as a genuine job enquiry, she sends the details directly to your WhatsApp. The message includes: the caller's name and number, the service they need, their location, urgency level, and a one-tap button to accept, call back, or decline. This arrives as a standard WhatsApp message — no separate app to download, no dashboard to check, no password to remember. According to Ofcom, Online Nation 2025, 90% of UK adults use WhatsApp regularly, making it the most reliable delivery method for tradespeople who are constantly on the move and may not check email for hours.

Most callers don't realise they're speaking to AI. whoza.ai uses natural-sounding UK voices (both male and female options) with natural pauses, filler words, and conversational flow. Katie says things like 'Let me just grab those details for you' and handles interruptions gracefully. In testing, 94% of callers in a blind survey believed they were speaking to a human receptionist. However, we believe in transparency: if asked directly, Katie will confirm she's an AI assistant. The priority is a helpful, professional call experience — not deception.

A booked job is an enquiry that you have accepted via the WhatsApp or SMS job card. When you tap Accept, it is billed as a job. Declined enquiries are not billed. If you do not respond to a job card within 24 hours, the system automatically declines it — and an auto-declined enquiry is not billed. Spam calls, wrong numbers, supplier calls and duplicate enquiries never count towards your limit.

whoza.ai is built for all UK trades and home services. Currently active trades include: plumbers, electricians, roofers, locksmiths, drainage specialists, landscapers, pest control, cleaners, heating engineers, builders, joiners, plasterers, tilers, carpenters, and handymen. The AI is trained on trade-specific terminology and common enquiry types for each profession. For example, Katie understands that a 'combi boiler pressure drop' is urgent for heating engineers, or that a 'lockout' requires immediate response for locksmiths. New trades are added based on user demand.

Yes. whoza.ai is ICO registered (registration number ZC077271), GDPR compliant, and stores all UK customer data in UK-based data centres. Call transcripts are encrypted at rest and in transit. No audio recordings are stored. We don't sell data to third parties, and you can request deletion of all your data at any time. The platform uses enterprise-grade security: AES-256 encryption, SOC 2 Type II certified infrastructure, and regular penetration testing. For tradespeople handling sensitive customer information (addresses, property details, financial information), this level of security exceeds what's typically available with consumer-grade answering services.

Each job card starts a 24-hour timer from delivery. If you do not respond within 24 hours, the system automatically declines the enquiry and it is not billed. You will receive a reminder before the deadline. For urgent (RED-flagged) leads, we escalate via the standard escalation ladder so genuine emergencies are never silently auto-declined.

The ROI of AI call answering is typically 10x–35x for UK tradespeople. Here's the maths: whoza.ai Starter plan costs £59/month. If you miss 5 calls per week, and each missed call represents a potential £280 job (UK average for plumbing/electrical), at a 35% conversion rate that's £2,548 in lost monthly revenue. Recovering just 2 of those 20 monthly missed calls generates £560 in revenue — a 9.5x return on the £59 investment. Most customers recover their full monthly cost in the first week. The Growth plan at £125/month includes review collection and competitor analysis, which compound the return by increasing your enquiry volume over time through better online visibility.

If Katie encounters a situation she can't handle — such as a complex commercial tender, a complaint requiring empathy, or a highly technical question — she politely takes a detailed message and immediately transfers the call to your voicemail or designated backup number. You receive the full call transcript in your dashboard, so you can follow up personally. The system also learns from these scenarios: unusual call types are flagged for review, and Katie's knowledge base is updated regularly. In practice, Katie successfully handles approximately 92% of calls without human intervention.

No. Calls answered by our AI agents are not recorded. A written transcript is generated for quality and service delivery purposes. Audio is never stored anywhere in the stack. Callers are notified at the beginning of each call that they are speaking with an AI assistant. For the full retention schedule, see whoza.ai/call-recording.

Missed calls cost UK tradespeople an estimated £5,200–£15,600 per year in lost revenue. The Moneypenny Small Business Call Report (2016) found that 69% of voicemail callers don't leave a message. The business that answers first usually gets the job. For a plumber with an average job value of £280, missing just 5 calls per week at a 35% conversion rate equals £2,548 in lost monthly revenue. An electrical contractor with £400 average jobs could lose £4,200+ monthly. These figures are based on self-reported data from 1,200 UK trade businesses surveyed in 2025.

Claire, whoza.ai's review collection assistant, automatically follows up with customers after completed jobs. She sends a personalised WhatsApp or SMS message thanking the customer and providing a direct link to leave a Google review. The timing is customisable (e.g., 2 days after job completion), and the message can include your branding. According to BrightLocal's 2025 UK Local Consumer Review Survey, 76% of consumers regularly read online reviews for local businesses, and businesses with 40+ Google reviews receive 3.5x more enquiries than those with fewer than 10. Claire helps you build that review volume automatically without awkward phone calls.

Yes, and this is one of the most valuable use cases. Katie is trained to recognise emergency keywords ('burst pipe', 'no heating', 'locked out', 'electrical fault', 'gas leak') and immediately flags these as high-priority. She asks safety questions to determine severity — whether there is immediate danger, vulnerable residents, or active flooding — and delivers the details to your WhatsApp with a red urgent flag within 3 seconds of the call ending. The message includes the caller's name, phone number, address, emergency description, severity level, and recommended action. The customer also receives an automatic confirmation text. Emergency enquiries bypass standard qualification and are sent to your WhatsApp with an 'URGENT' label and a loud notification. You can also set up escalation rules — for example, if an emergency call comes in at 2 AM, it can simultaneously notify you and a backup contact. For a detailed discussion of how AI voice agents handle trade emergencies, including the safeguards we think matter most, see our research paper at whoza.ai/research/emergency-triage-safety-ai-voice-agents-2026.

For most UK tradespeople, AI call answering offers better value than a human receptionist. A full-time receptionist costs £20,000–£25,000 per year (ONS 2024 average wages data), plus holiday cover, sick days, and training. AI call handlers cost £59–£399/month and work 24/7 without breaks. However, human receptionists excel at complex relationship management and high-value commercial enquiries. The best choice depends on your call volume: if you receive 5–30 calls per day, AI is more cost-effective. For 50+ calls with complex tender processes, a hybrid approach may work better.

Moneypenny is a well-established UK answering service using human receptionists, starting from approximately £150/month. whoza.ai uses AI and starts at £59/month. The key differences: (1) Price — whoza.ai is roughly 60% cheaper, (2) Availability — AI answers 24/7; human services have shift limits, (3) Setup — whoza.ai is live in 30 minutes vs 2–5 days, (4) Delivery — whoza.ai uses WhatsApp; Moneypenny uses email + portal. Moneypenny's advantage is human relationship building for high-value commercial clients. For most sole traders and small trade businesses, the cost savings and instant setup of AI make more sense. See our detailed comparison at /vs-trade-receptionist.