Questions
Questions people ask before they hand over their phone line
Handing your phone number to software is a bigger decision than most software decisions, because the phone is how the work arrives. These are the questions we actually get asked, answered straight, including the ones where the answer is no.
What it is
The short version, including the parts people assume and get wrong.
What does DeskCaller actually do?↓
It answers your business phone line. It picks up on the first ring at any hour, works out what the caller wants, asks the questions you would ask, books the appointment into your diary, and writes the call up for you. When it cannot deal with something, it takes a message or puts the caller through to a person, depending on the rules you set.
Does it make outbound calls or send marketing texts?↓
No. DeskCaller answers your line and does not ring people, chase leads, run recall campaigns or send review requests. That is a deliberate limit rather than a missing feature. Outbound marketing to people who have not agreed to it is regulated separately under PECR, and it is the kind of thing that quietly turns into a fine rather than a growth channel.
Will callers know they are speaking to an AI?↓
Yes. The agent says so at the start of the call and whenever anyone asks. We do not build agents that pretend to be a named human, and we think any vendor offering that is selling you a problem rather than a feature.
What happens when it cannot answer something?↓
It stops guessing. Depending on the rules you set, it either transfers to a person or takes a message and alerts you, and it tells the caller which of those is happening. An agent that invents an answer to avoid an awkward pause is worse than one that admits the limit, so the guardrails are written to make refusing the safe default.
Can it deal with an emergency call?↓
It can recognise one and route it, and for trades and clinics that routing is the most carefully written part of the prompt. What it cannot do is be your emergency cover. Keep a working mobile or a second line, and never let an AI-answered number be the only way somebody in your building can reach 999.
Cost
Published figures, and what happens at the edges of a plan.
What does it cost?↓
Three plans. Starter is £48 a month for 120 minutes, Growth is £105 for 300, and Pro is £225 for 750. Paying annually costs nine months instead of twelve. There is also pay-as-you-go if your volume is unpredictable.
What happens if I use more minutes than my plan includes?↓
You are not charged a penalty rate. Each plan carries a grace allowance, 10% on Starter up to 20% on Pro, which is borrowed from the following month and repaid from it. If you are regularly over, the right answer is a bigger plan, and we would rather tell you that than bill you for the overage.
Is it cheaper than a human answering service?↓
It depends on your call pattern, and anyone who answers that question without asking about your volume is guessing. Human services usually bill per call with rounding rules that matter more than the headline rate. We built a calculator that prices a real quote properly rather than taking the advertised number at face value.
Your data and your number
Where things are stored, how long for, and what happens if you leave.
Where is my call data stored?↓
The application database and file storage, which is where recordings, transcripts and logs live, is Amazon Web Services in the London region. Some processing happens outside the UK: speech recognition and synthesis, and the model that generates the agent’s replies. Those transfers run under the UK Addendum to the IDTA. Every subprocessor we use is named on one page, with what it receives and where it sits.
How long are call recordings kept?↓
Our default is 90 days, and you can set a different period, because for this data you are the controller and we are the processor. If you leave or ask us to delete, we return or delete within 30 days.
Do I need to tell callers the call is recorded?↓
Yes, and the agent says it early in the call. The obligation is yours as the controller rather than ours, so the wording is something you sign off rather than something we decide for you.
If I leave, do I keep my phone number?↓
You should, and it is worth checking that in writing before you sign anything with any vendor, including us. The right to move a number sits with whoever is the contracting customer of the underlying provider, which is not always the business whose name is on the invoice. It is the single question most people forget to ask.
Setting it up
What it takes to go live, and what it needs from you.
How long does setup take?↓
Usually a few hours, and it can be live the same day. The slow part is rarely technical. It is deciding what the agent should say when it cannot help, what counts as urgent for your business, and who it puts through to.
Can it book into my calendar and update my CRM?↓
Booking into a diary and writing the call into your system is the core of what it does. Which systems specifically depends on what you run, so tell us what you use and we will tell you straight whether it connects properly or needs a workaround. Getting a booking to actually land is harder than vendors make it sound, and we have written about the ways it fails silently.
Will it cope with names, postcodes and a bad line?↓
Better than a voicemail, and not perfectly. UK surnames, postcodes and place names are where phone agents genuinely struggle, partly because a phone line is narrowband audio. The design question is what it does when it is unsure, which should be reading the detail back rather than guessing, and handing over when the line is too poor to continue.
What should I test before I trust it?↓
Place the calls yourself, from a mobile, on the real number, before you point your business line at it. We publish the battery we use, including the awkward ones most demos avoid, and it works just as well for testing a competitor as for testing us.
Which industries do you support?↓
Mostly service businesses where a missed call is a lost job: trades, clinics, salons, lettings, professional services and similar. There is a page per industry with the call types and the specifics for that trade.
The honest limits
Things we would rather you heard from us than found out later.
What is it bad at?↓
Anything requiring judgement it has no basis to make. It will not price work it cannot see, diagnose a fault down a phone line, or tell a caller whether something is serious. On a clinical or trade line those refusals are the point rather than a shortcoming, and a vendor demoing an agent that confidently does all three is showing you the failure mode, not the feature.
Should it be the only way customers can reach me?↓
No, and our own terms say so. Any phone system can fail, ours included, and a business whose single route in depends on one supplier has built a problem for itself. Keep a second way through.
Can I see it working before I commit?↓
Book a discovery call and we will walk through your actual call types rather than a scripted demo. If you would rather not talk to anyone first, the prompt generator builds the configuration for your trade in the browser, free, with no email required.
Who are you, legally?↓
DeskCaller is a product of Conovo Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, company number 12703009, registered at 268 Bath Road, Slough, SL1 4DX, United Kingdom. You can reach a person at contact@deskcaller.com or +44 (0) 208 163 2142.
Not answered here?
Ask us the awkward version of the question. We would rather lose a sale explaining a limit than win one and have you find it in week three.