How do you stay reachable as a freelancer?
There are five ways freelancers solve this: calling everyone back in a fixed slot, voicemail with a tidy greeting, having someone else answer, an answering service with human operators, or an AI receptionist. Which one suits you depends on one question — does a missed call mean a missed job for you?
If the answer is no, calling back is enough and you can skip the rest of this page. If the answer is yes, someone has to answer there and then: anyone who calls with a real job and gets nobody calls the next name on the list. Below are the five options with their real downside, ours included.
The five options, and their drawbacks
1.Calling back in a fixed slot
You don't answer during the day and call everyone back between five and six. It costs nothing and your work isn't interrupted.
Downside: Anyone calling urgently will have looked elsewhere by then. And you won't reach half of them either, because at six your customer is sitting down to dinner.
2.Voicemail with a tidy greeting
Free, and anyone who leaves a message gives you a callback request with a name and number.
Downside: The caller has to do something. Anyone who doesn't leave a message stays a number in your call log, and you don't know why they called.
3.Having your partner or someone in the office answer
A person who knows your business, and callers hear that straight away.
Downside: It has to fit into someone's day. Evenings, weekends and holidays fall through, and costs rise quickly if you arrange it properly.
4.An answering service with human operators
The phone really gets answered, even when you're up on a roof. It's been around for decades and it works.
Downside: You pay per answered call, because every call takes up someone's time. With lots of calls that adds up fast, and the operator doesn't know your trade.
5.An AI receptionistthis is us
Always answers, even at night and with three callers at once, and the calls are included in a monthly fee rather than charged one by one.
Downside: It isn't a person, and some callers notice. For a call that needs empathy or negotiation, you'll want to be there yourself.
You don't have to choose between always answering and never answering
That's the assumption most people make, and it's wrong. You can simply let your phone ring and answer yourself when it suits you, with something behind it that takes over when you don't. Nothing changes on your side — except that nobody talks to a beep any more.
Would you rather have it the other way round, for example on a landline office number that always has to be answered straight away? That works just as well. The point is that it's a choice you can change from day to day, not a setting you're stuck with.
Further reading
- Voicemail or telephone service — the difference between the two, without the sales talk.
- What a telephone answering service costs — the amounts side by side, per call volume.
- Telephone answering by trade — what comes in for your line of work and what it's worth.
Or skip the reading and call +31202140808. Pretend to be a customer; within twenty seconds you'll know enough.