Answermate answers the calls you can't get to. An AI receptionist that knows your business, works the hours you don't, and never puts anyone on hold. You keep your number, your phone and your mobile. Set up in an afternoon.
Ringing while you're up a ladder
Nobody misses calls because they are lazy. They miss them because they are working. Here is where they actually go.
No form, no email address, no sales call. Pick a business like yours and talk to the AI receptionist we'd build for it. Interrupt it, argue with it, ask it something it shouldn't know. That last one is the interesting bit.
Product enquiries, opening hours, and patience with older callers.
You'll be asked to allow your microphone. Best with headphones.
Have a proper go at catching them out, that is genuinely what they are here for. Worth knowing a real person reads these transcripts, so keep it the way you would talk to someone’s receptionist.
Published 2026 missed call research, not our own data. We will swap these for our own numbers once we have enough calls to be honest about them.
This is the plumber demo handling the call everyone worries about: someone stressed, at night, asking a question it is not allowed to answer.
Yeah g’day, um, I’ve got water coming out from under the hot water thing. It’s going everywhere.
Right, let’s sort that. Is the water still running now?
Yeah, it’s still going.
Okay. If you can get to the mains tap at the meter out the front, turn that off. That’ll stop it while we get someone to you.
Hang on. Yep, done. What’s this going to cost me?
I’m not going to guess at that, because it depends what’s failed. The plumber will give you a real figure before anything starts. Can I grab your name?
Sandra. Whitfield.
Thanks Sandra. Best number for you?
0412 908 331.
Let me read that back. Oh four one two, nine oh eight, three three one. That right?
That’s it.
Beauty. And what suburb are you in?
Norwood.
Got it. Someone’ll ring you straight back. You’ve done the right thing turning the water off.
Illustrative, not a recorded customer. Note the three things it does: triages before anything else, refuses the price question rather than guessing, and reads the number back in pairs. Those are the difference between a lead and a wasted callback.
Move the sliders. These are your numbers, not ours.
Rough by design. If you're not sure what you miss, check your mobile for unanswered calls over the last fortnight and halve it.
Walking out the door, every month
$4,128
10 jobs a month you never heard about
No forms to fill in. You tell our onboarding assistant about your business by talking to it, the same way your customers will talk to yours.
Talk to Charlie, or send an enquiry. We work out whether this suits you, what your phone setup is, and what it would cost. If it is not a fit we will say so.
You get a quote and a payment link for the build. Nothing recurring starts yet. The monthly does not begin until you are live.
You ring our onboarding assistant and just talk. Your hours, your services, your prices, the five questions you are sick of answering, and the things it must never guess at. No forms, no spreadsheet, no homework.
We write it, test it, and send you a link. You ring it as many times as you like and try to catch it out. We tune until you are happy. Nothing goes live except on your word.
You turn your voicemail off and dial one code on your own handset. Unanswered calls start diverting. We stay on the line and ring your number to prove it works.
**61*NUMBER**20#
Most automation gets sold as set and forget, and then quietly stops working. Here is what happens instead.
Not a notification telling you that you missed a call. The whole conversation, sorted.
| Name | Sandra Whitfield |
| Phone | 0412 908 331 |
| Wants | Hot water system leaking in the laundry, water on the floor |
| Urgency | Same day if possible |
| Suburb | Norwood |
| How they sounded | Stressed but fine, happy to wait for a call back |
Summary. Sandra rang about a leaking hot water system. Water is pooling but she has turned the mains off. She is ringing around and has been quoted elsewhere. Asked about after hours rates, which we did not quote. Wants a call first thing.
▶ Listen to the call · Read the full transcript
Illustrative example of the email format. Not a real customer.
Every AI receptionist can answer a phone. The ones that cause problems are the ones that answer confidently when they shouldn't. A wrong price quoted to a customer costs you more than the call you missed.
A plumber's phone and a hairdresser's phone are nothing alike. One is triaging an emergency, the other is filling a Thursday afternoon.
"I was losing jobs to whoever picked up first. Now I ring people back that evening and they're still waiting for me."
Illustrative example. Real testimonials go here once we've got them.The setup fee is the real work: writing what it knows and testing it until it's right. We'd rather charge for it properly than rush it.
A talk-to-us button on your website. No phone line involved.
$199 /month
plus $990 once, for the build
Up to 100 conversations a month, which suits most sites.
Answers the calls you don't get to. Your number stays yours. Includes the Website Assistant.
$399 /month
plus $1,990 once, for the build
Up to 150 calls a month. That covers the overwhelming majority of businesses.
For businesses whose phone genuinely runs hot. Trades after a storm, clinics, agencies, anyone with more than one team to route to.
$699+ /month
quoted on scope
No practical call limit. Priced on your actual volume, once we have seen it.
Add these to either plan. Each one is real integration work, so each carries a one-off build fee and a small monthly to keep it running.
| Bolt-on | What it does | Setup | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live booking | Books straight into your calendar mid-call. Checks real availability, no double bookings. Google Calendar or Cal.com. | $490 | +$49 |
| Straight into your system | Pushes every enquiry into your job management or CRM instead of your inbox. ServiceM8, Tradify, HubSpot and similar. | $490 | +$49 |
| Text me every call | An SMS to you the moment a call ends, with the name, the number and what they wanted. For people who live on their phone and never open email on a job. | $290 | +$29 |
| Text the caller back | An SMS to them, confirming you have their details and will be in touch, before you have even rung. | $290 | +$29 |
| Put me through | Transfers to a real person during your hours, takes a message outside them. | $290 | — |
| Voicemail | Answering service | Receptionist | Answermate | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answers at 9pm Sunday | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Knows your prices and services | No | Reads a script | Yes | Yes |
| Handles four calls at once | No | No | No | Yes |
| Never has a bad day | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Callers actually use it | 3 in 10 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Roughly what it costs | Free | $$ | $5,000+/mo | $399/mo |
Receptionist figure is a loaded cost including super and cover. Answering service pricing varies too widely to put a number on honestly.
We would rather tell you now than take your setup fee and disappoint you in a month. If any of these are you, spend the money somewhere else.
Some will. Those ones get told in the first sentence that they are talking to an AI receptionist, and the moment they ask for a person it stops selling and takes a message. Nobody gets trapped in a phone tree.
Worth weighing against the alternative though. The thing customers hate more than an AI is a phone that rings out, or a voicemail nobody returns.
So would we. The problem is not intent, it is that by the time you are off the roof the caller has already rung two other businesses. Around three quarters of people who hit voicemail ring a competitor rather than wait.
This does not stop you ringing back. It means they are still waiting for you when you do.
Fair concern, and it depends entirely on how good it sounds. That is why every demo on this site is a live call rather than a recording. Ring one, decide for yourself, and if it is not good enough for your brand then do not buy it.
Most people have, usually by something sold as set and forget that quietly stopped working. That is why there is a monthly tune-up and why you get the transcript of every call. If it starts getting things wrong you will see it happen, rather than wondering why the phone went quiet.
Any time, from your own handset, in about ten seconds. Cancel the divert and your phone behaves exactly as it did before. There is no contract and nothing to unwind.
It says so and takes a message. It will not guess a price, invent a timeframe, or claim you have something in stock. You get told what it could not answer, so the next caller gets a better answer.
No sales call to sit through, no discovery session, no proposal deck. Tell us you are in and we will send you everything in writing.
Ring our own AI receptionist and say you would like to get started. Charlie takes your details, works out which plan fits, and passes it straight to us. It is also the fastest way to hear what you would be buying.
Speak to CharlieSix fields, most of them obvious. The only one that really matters is what sort of phone you have, because that decides whether switching on takes thirty seconds or needs your phone provider involved.
Go to the form ↓Every step is written down, so you always know what you have agreed to and what it costs.
Either by talking to Charlie or by sending the form. That is the whole commitment at this stage. Nothing is charged and nothing starts.
Exactly what is included, what it costs, the agreement to read, and a payment link for the build. No surprises buried anywhere, because you will read it before you pay it.
The monthly does not start here. It starts the day your receptionist actually goes live and begins answering.
A second email arrives with a link. You ring our onboarding assistant and just talk about your business: hours, services, prices, the questions you are sick of answering, and the things it must never guess at. No forms, no spreadsheet, no homework.
You get a link and try to catch it out before a single customer hears it. When you are happy, you dial one code on your handset and it starts picking up.
We read every one of these ourselves. You will hear back the same day with the agreement, the pricing and a payment link.
Would rather talk? Charlie can take all of this over the phone instead.
No. You keep the number you've always had. You dial one short code on your handset that sends unanswered calls through. Your signage, your van, your website and your Google listing all stay exactly as they are.
Yes, because it tells them. It says it's an AI receptionist when it answers, and again any time someone asks. Pretending is what makes people feel tricked, and it's the fastest way to a bad review. Being upfront and genuinely useful is what works.
It's built to refuse rather than guess. It won't quote a price you haven't given it, won't claim something's in stock, and won't promise a delivery date. When it doesn't know, it takes a message and tells you what it couldn't answer.
Fair, and it's the thing we design hardest for. It speaks slower than a standard voice assistant, waits longer before talking so people aren't cut off mid-sentence, and the moment anyone sounds frustrated or asks for a human it stops, takes their details and lets them go.
Yes, and you should. You pick the name and the voice, male or female, and we'll match it to the people who ring you. Most businesses name theirs, and customers take to it far better than "the automated system".
About a week, most of which is us writing and testing what it knows about your business. The switch-on itself takes about thirty seconds.
No. Month to month. Turn the divert off and your phone goes back to exactly how it was.
Yes, recorded and transcribed, so you can hear exactly what was said. You'll need to let callers know, and it does that as part of its greeting. We'll walk you through what you need on your website.
Answermate is built by a digital marketing agency in Adelaide. For years our job was getting businesses more enquiries. Google Ads, Meta ads, SEO, landing pages, the lot. We got good at it.
Then we noticed something uncomfortable. We would spend a client's budget getting the phone to ring, and it would ring while they were under a sink, up a ladder, halfway through a haircut or driving between jobs. The enquiry we had just been paid to generate went to whoever picked up first.
You cannot fix that with a better ad. So we built the missing half ourselves, first for our own clients, and it worked well enough that businesses who had never bought a single ad from us started asking for it on its own.
That is what this is. The other end of every lead you have ever paid for, sold on its own.
Hear it for yourself →