The service
Answering service
A company or program that answers a business's phone when the business cannot: after hours, when the line is busy, or always. Live services put a person on the line; an AI receptionist is software that talks.
AI receptionist
Software that answers a call, talks with the caller, writes down what they need and acts on rules the business set. Pickwick is one, and says so in its first sentence.
Virtual receptionist
A person who answers your calls from somewhere other than your office, usually through an answering service. The phrase is also used loosely for software.
After hours
The time your office is closed. Forwarding your line to an answering service only after hours is the most common way to start.
Overflow
Calls that ring in while your line is busy or while nobody picks up in time. Busy and no-answer forwarding send only those calls to the service.
The call
Call forwarding
Sending calls from your number to another line. Always sends each incoming call to the other line; busy forwards when you are on the line; no answer forwards after a set number of rings. The codes are on the forwarding guide.
Recording notice
The sentence that tells a caller the call is recorded. Pickwick says "I'm an automated assistant, and this call is recorded" before anything else, in the caller's language.
Triage
Sorting a call by urgency before anything else is done: a named hazard, an urgent job, or a routine one.
Named hazard
A gas smell, carbon monoxide, smoke, flames or sparking. A caller who names one hears a fixed line that sends them to 911 before any booking.
Read-back
Repeating the number and address to the caller before the call ends, because caller ID is wrong often enough to matter.
Penciled in
A booking that is proposed but not confirmed. By default Pickwick pencils a job in and waits for the shop's approval.
Approval
The shop's yes on a penciled-in booking, given with one tap in the dashboard app. A shop can choose to let routine jobs, or all jobs, book themselves.
Transfer
Putting the caller through to a person the shop named, when the caller asks for one or the agent is not sure. If nobody answers, a message is taken and a callback opened.
On-call
The person who takes urgent calls outside hours. With an after-hours number set, the agent can say someone will call back; without one it does not promise a time.
Barge-in
The caller talking over the agent. The agent stops and listens; the recording notice is owed again if it was talked over.
Billing
Minute
The unit most answering services bill by, from the moment the call is answered to the moment it ends. Ask whether each call is rounded up to the next minute.
Overage
The price of each minute or call beyond the ones your plan includes. On Pickwick it is a stated rate per minute on the pricing page.
Per call
Billing by the number of calls rather than minutes. A wrong number and a long call cost the same.
Diagnostic fee
What a shop charges to send a technician and look. Pickwick quotes it only in the shop's own words; left blank, it says it cannot quote and takes a number.
The law and the carriers
One-party consent
A state rule under which a call may be recorded if one party to it agrees; the business is a party. The safe practice is to tell the caller anyway, first.
All-party consent
A state rule under which everyone on the call must agree to recording, which in practice means the caller is told and carries on. The states are listed on the recording guide.
A2P 10DLC
The carriers' registration for businesses that send texts from ordinary ten-digit numbers. Pickwick's text approvals and missed-call text-back switch on once that registration completes.
IVR
A phone menu: press 1 for this, 2 for that. An AI receptionist is not one; the caller speaks and is answered.
The legal terms describe how the software behaves, not legal advice; the recording rules by state are on the call recording guide, the billing terms with worked numbers on what an answering service costs, and the forwarding codes on forward your line.