Research brief
Two questions from the user on 15 August 2026: should we add phone agents to the menu, and which channels suit our clients and their customers. Facts checked on the day; prices in the currency the provider quotes.
Verdict
Yes to a phone agent, in this order: missed-call text-back first (a day's work, the highest return), then answering after hours and during the rush and booking straight into our own bookings app, then outbound service calls only — reminders, "your van is running late", "your order is ready". Inbound answering is legal without conditions; outbound is fine for service and existing customers, and cold calling is not something we do. It costs a client roughly A$20–45 a month at typical volumes, so it fits inside "everything is included" for most, and we should know which businesses are phone-heavy before promising it.
On channels: the phone is still where tradies and practices win or lose work; SMS is the channel Australians actually read (94–98% open, most within five minutes, 86% opted in) and it is what our Regulars agent should send from, using a dedicated mobile number per client; email is for the longer, slower message; WhatsApp is worth having when a client's customers ask for it; Messenger and Instagram are inbound only; RCS is not on Australian iPhones yet, so we build nothing on it.
of calls to small businesses go unanswered; only 37.8% are picked up.
of callers who reach voicemail don't call back; 62% ring a competitor instead.
of calls to restaurants are missed at peak; service businesses miss about a quarter in hours and nearly all after hours.
of missed callers come back when a text goes out within a minute of the missed call.
These are industry figures, mostly US, and vendors quote them to sell phone answering, so treat the exact numbers as soft. The shape is right and matches what Osias hears at the counter: the phone rings during the rush and nobody can get to it. For a hair studio a missed call is a booking that goes elsewhere; for a plumber it is a job that goes to whoever answers first; for an accountant it is a new client who wanted a person.
An Australian phone number that our software answers. It listens (speech to text), thinks (a language model with our instructions and tools), and speaks back (text to speech), all in about a second. It can look at the bookings app, offer real times, hold one, take a message, and text the owner. When it should not handle something — a gas smell, an upset customer — it hands over: puts the call through to a mobile, or takes the details and texts them straight away.
| Piece | Price | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Voice platform (Vapi, Retell, Bland, Synthflow, ElevenLabs Agents) | US$0.05–0.15 a minute all-in | Advertised rates are US$0.05–0.09; with speech, model and voice included a real deployment lands at US$0.08–0.15 a minute. |
| Australian number | US$1–3 a month | Telnyx AU local US$1/mo, inbound US$0.0075/min, Sydney point of presence. Twilio AU local US$3/mo, inbound US$0.01/min, outbound US$0.0252/min to landlines and US$0.075/min to mobiles. |
| Australian AI receptionist services (for comparison) | A$49–699 a month | Hey Jodie A$99/mo flat, Leva Relay A$199/mo, ReplyMate A$49/mo; guides say most small businesses should pay under A$300. |
Per client, at typical volume: a tradie or salon that has the agent answer 100 calls a month at two minutes each is 200 minutes — about A$30–45 in platform time plus a couple of dollars for the number. A café that only wants after-hours and rush cover is less. That sits inside the A$99 a month for most clients, and we should look at each one's call volume before promising it, because a business taking 40 calls a day is a different sum.
| Client | Fit | What it does for them |
|---|---|---|
| Tradies | HIGHEST | They are on the tools when the phone rings. Missed-call text-back on day one; the agent triages urgent from routine, offers an arrival window, books it, texts the van. Emergencies go straight through. |
| Hair studios | HIGH | A big share of bookings still come by phone, and stylists can't answer mid-colour. The agent books into the same calendar the desk shows and reads the same free times. |
| Practices (accountants, dentists) | HIGH | After-hours enquiries, first-chat bookings, "what do I bring", and a message taken properly. Never advice — it books the person who gives advice. |
| Cafés and restaurants | USEFUL | Restaurants miss the most calls at peak; the agent takes the table booking and answers "are you open". Cafés get less from it — most of their orders come through the app already. |
Ranked for our clients and their customers in Adelaide, with what each costs and the rule that governs it.
| Channel | Fit | Why, and the numbers | Cost and rules |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phone | CORE | Where tradies and practices win or lose work; where 62% of calls go unanswered. Answered by a person first, by the agent when they can't. | Number US$1–3/mo; minutes as above. Inbound unregulated; outbound per the Do Not Call rules. |
| SMS | CORE | The channel Australians read: 94–98% open, 82% within five minutes, 53% say it is their preferred way to hear from a business, 86% opted in (up from 62% in 2021). Reminders, confirmations, review asks, win-backs, missed-call text-back. | 3–7c a message, 1.6–4c in volume. From 1 July 2026 an alphanumeric sender name must be on ACMA's SMS Sender ID Register or it shows as "Unverified" (registration opened 15 May 2026). Our plan: send from a dedicated Australian mobile number per client — two-way, so replies work, and outside the register — or register a name through the provider if the client wants one. Spam Act: consent, identify the sender, working unsubscribe. |
| CORE | The long, slow message: the new menu, the newsletter, the invoice, the documents to bring. Open rates 20–34%. Cheap and it keeps. | Near free. Needs the client's own domain and warmed sending — same open item as the studio's own gmail. | |
| WhatsApp Business | WHEN ASKED | Growing for support and bookings, and Google's listing now points customers to WhatsApp or SMS since Business Profile chat closed on 31 July 2024. Strong with some communities; not yet where most Adelaide café customers live. | Per-message pricing since 1 July 2025 through a business provider: replies inside 24 hours are free, template messages cost cents (utility a third to half of marketing), plus the provider's markup. Turn on per client, not by default. |
| Messenger and Instagram DMs | INBOUND | Where cafés and salons already are; enquiries arrive here whether we like it or not. Worth reading from one place — the desk — and answering fast. Not a channel to market on: it is theirs, not the client's. | Free. Meta's rules for automated replies; keep a person answering. |
| Web enquiry and chat | CORE | Already built: the enquiry form on the client's own site, into the desk. A chat box run by the same agent as the phone is the natural next step — one brain, two mouths. | Ours. No third party. |
| RCS | NOT YET | Rich messaging that would replace SMS one day. Telstra, Optus and Vodafone are all "working on it" for iPhone; nothing confirmed, mid-to-late 2026 at the earliest. | Build nothing on it. When it arrives, our SMS provider carries it. |
Internal. Read with How far can agents run this business? — the two-lane rule and the Spam Act findings there still hold; this brief adds the phone and the channel choices on top.