The call that rings while you are working
A small business misses calls for one reason: the person who would answer is doing the work. The owner is on a ladder, the one office person is at lunch, the line is busy with the last caller. An answering service for small business exists to take that call, take the details, and hand it back so the work can carry on. The old kind is people reading your script; Pickwick is software that does the same job, says so, and costs the same per minute at night as during the day.
How Pickwick fits a small business
- Your number stays yours. Forward it after hours, when busy, on no answer, or always, with one code; switch back with another. No new phone system.
- Ten minutes of setup, in your words. Your hours, your service area, your fee as you say it on the phone, and who approves. Leave the fee blank and it says it cannot quote and takes a number.
- Nothing booked without you, by default. A job is penciled in and waits for one tap in the dashboard app. Choose per shop to let routine jobs book themselves.
- Every answered call, in one place. Recording, transcript, what was written down, who approved what and when.
- English or Spanish, chosen by the caller in the first seconds, with no surcharge.
- A person when a caller asks for one, put through to someone you name; a message and a callback if nobody answers.
Which small businesses
Home-service shops sign up on the site and are live on a forwarded line the same day: HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Garage doors, Roofing, Appliance repair. Property managers have a page of their own. Insurance agencies, law firms, salons and other businesses go live through a guided setup, where we write the questions, the emergency routing and the approvers with you before your number points at it: book a demo to ask about yours. Not for healthcare practices for now, because Pickwick does not sign HIPAA Business Associate Agreements.
What it costs
Three plans, by the minute: $149 a month for 600 minutes (about 200 three-minute calls), then $0.49 a minute; $349 for 1,000 minutes; $749 for 2,500. No setup fee, month to month, Spanish included, and the first 14 days on your own number are free with no card. The numbers are on the pricing page, and the billing models of the market are compared in what an answering service costs.
Whether it pays depends on one number: what the calls you miss now are worth. The missed-call calculator works it out from your own call count and average ticket, every step shown, and says plainly when the answer is "not yet".
What it will not do
- No pretending. It says it is automated in its first sentence and never claims to be a person.
- No invented prices or times. Your fee in your words, or a callback; an arrival window only from your hours and bookings.
- No repair advice beyond checking a thermostat or resetting a tripped breaker.
- No selling past a hazard. A caller who names gas, carbon monoxide, smoke or sparking hears a fixed 911 line before anything else.
Software or people: pick with your eyes open
A live service wins when callers refuse to talk to a program, when the calls are long sales conversations, and when you want someone else to write the script. Software wins at 2 am, on consistency of the words that must not vary, on Spanish, on the record, and on price per minute. The full comparison is AI receptionist vs answering service; two live services' published prices are beside Pickwick's on the Smith.ai and Ruby pages.