What “remote reception” means once you strip the jargon
Outsourced reception, remote reception, offsite answering, front desk as a service — the labels multiply but the arrangement underneath is always the same. Your number forwards somewhere else. Something answers it in your business name. What that thing learns about you, and what it is allowed to do, is the entire product.
That is the useful frame when comparing providers, because it turns a vague brochure comparison into three concrete questions. How does it learn your business? What is it permitted to tell a caller? And what happens to the call it cannot resolve?
How each model learns your business
A human bureau learns from a briefing document. You fill in a form or sit through an onboarding call, they build a script and a set of notes, and the receptionists work from that. It is accurate on the day it is written. It ages from then on — new service, changed prices, moved premises, and the brief is stale until somebody remembers to update it. Most of the complaints about outsourced reception trace back to this: the caller was told something that used to be true.
Odette reads your website instead, and re-reads it nightly. Change a price on your own site and the answer changes with it, without anybody filing a request. That is a genuine structural advantage, and it has an obvious limit worth stating: it only knows what your website says. If your site does not mention that you no longer cover a postcode, neither will your receptionist. You can add FAQs directly on the Business plan for the things that live in your head rather than on your site.
What it is allowed to say
This is the decision most providers do not make explicit, and it matters more than the price. There are two defensible postures and Odette lets you pick either.
True Receptionist is the classic bureau posture. The caller is greeted, acknowledged and either connected to you or has a message taken. No product detail, no prices, no opinions. This is what most people picture when they imagine an answering service, and it is the right choice if your pricing is bespoke, your services are complicated, or a half-answer would cost you the job.
Informed Assistant answers from your own published information — services, hours, prices, policies — and still transfers and takes messages. This resolves far more calls without you, which is the point, but it means your website copy is now being read aloud to customers. Worth a proofread before you switch it on.
You can change between them whenever you like, and the change applies to the next call. Most businesses start on True Receptionist and move across once they trust it.
What happens to the call it cannot resolve
Every reception arrangement lives or dies here, because the easy calls were never the problem. Odette does three things and no fourth. If something is outside its knowledge it says so rather than guessing — no invented prices, no guessed opening hours. It takes a structured message with the caller’s name, number, email, company, reason and urgency, and emails it to you with the transcript. And where the call is genuinely urgent and your plan includes transfer, it rings you and announces who is calling and why, so you press 1 to take it, 2 to have a message taken, or 3 to promise a call back in five minutes.
It also captures the caller’s number from the network rather than relying on what they say out loud, which quietly solves the most common failure of any message-taking service: the mumbled mobile that turns a lead into a mystery.
The cost shape
Outsourced human reception bills for staff time, so a monthly minimum plus per-call or per-minute charges is the norm and the total tracks your volume. Check the overage rate rather than the headline, and check whether 24/7 is included or an add-on — it is frequently an add-on.
Odette is a flat licence: £19 Solo, £49 Pro, £99 Business, 24/7 on every plan. Telephony and voice are paid directly to Twilio and ElevenLabs at their own rates — around £2.80 a month for a number, roughly 1p a minute of call, about 8p a minute of voice, which on a busy line comes to something near £30 a month. There is an optional one-off concierge setup at £99 if you would rather we wired it up for you, and a 14-day free trial if you would rather test it first.
Before you commit
Ring your own main number at half past six this evening and listen to what your callers currently get. Then ring 0330 912 3400, which is our own line answered by this product, and ask it something difficult. Ten seconds each, and you will have compared the two things that actually matter.