Straight answers, including the awkward ones.

If your average job is $3,000 or more and enquiries come by phone, probably yes. We're aimed at landscaping, pools, solar, roofing, bathroom and kitchen renovation, HVAC installation, arborist work, fencing, concreting and joinery.

If your work is emergency call-outs (burst pipes, dead switchboards, a few hundred dollars a job and the customer wants a human there in twenty minutes) this costs more than it saves you. We'll say so on the call rather than take the money and watch you cancel in month three.

If they ask, yes. She tells them straight away, and she will never deny it. She doesn't open with it, the way a human receptionist doesn't open with their employment status. What she does disclose at the start of every call is that the call is recorded. We don't run the version that denies being automated, and you shouldn't want us to.

In practice the disclosure costs very little. Somebody ringing about a re-roof at 9pm wants their question answered and a time booked. They mind a machine that does that far less than a human who never picks up.

It books them. The calendar is wired to your real availability, so Jessica can put a job in it without double-booking you.

Where she can't book, because the caller wants a price she hasn't been given or the job is outside what you do, she takes the details, tells them a person will ring back, and flags it. You get the transcript with the job already written down.

She says she doesn't know and takes the details. She won't guess at a price, invent an answer, or agree to a job you don't do. That boundary is set when we configure her and it's in the service agreement, not just a promise on this page.

Anything you've told us counts as urgent gets escalated straight away rather than sitting in the morning list.

Yes, when the call needs one. The whole front desk is the agent. It answers, qualifies and books, and where a caller needs a human it puts them through on the path you nominate.

Most calls don't need it. For those she takes the job down, flags it, and you ring back with the notes already in front of you. A better call than the one you would have taken from a roof.

Because the thing you're buying runs every day. It answers calls at 9pm on a Sunday, on a number we maintain, trained on prices that change, logging into a CRM we keep running. There's no version of that which is a file we hand over.

We don't sell a website on its own any more. We used to, with automation bolted on afterwards, and it didn't work for an honest reason: the website collected enquiries and the enquiries still rang out. If a website is all you want, there are people who do it well and cheaply and we'll point you at one.

It isn't, once you count the hours that matter. A part-time receptionist covers the hours you were already half-covering and goes home at five. The calls that cost you a $20,000 job arrive at 8pm on a Saturday and at 7am before anyone's on site.

If you already have someone on the phones full-time and they're catching everything, you don't need this. Tell us on the call and we'll agree with you.

Your domain name, about $20 to $40 a year, paid direct to the registrar in your name. Paid advertising spend if you want it, which we don't buy or manage, though the agent does handle enquiries arriving from Google Ads lead forms and Google Business Profile quote requests. Professional photography and logo design if you want either, quoted separately before we start.

Voice minutes are included, and the rate after them is published: 500 inbound a month on Front Desk at $0.60/min after, 900 on Pro at $0.55, and 1,500 inbound plus 300 outbound on Operations at $0.50 and $0.90. You're told before you go over, not after. Outbound SMS is included at normal trade volumes, and if your volume climbs far enough to matter we talk to you first and agree what happens next. Nothing changes without your say-so. The pricing page lists all of this.

You can, and an annual prepayment is not refundable. If you leave in month four you don't get months five to twelve back. Pay monthly if that matters to you.

We'll walk you through which one suits you on the call rather than pushing the one that suits us.

The website and the number go live inside two weeks of you handing over your details. Configuring Jessica properly, which means your services, your prices, your service area and your rules for what's urgent, is the part that takes the time, and rushing it is how you end up with an agent that quotes the wrong price.

We confirm your call forwarding is working before we switch her on, not after.

Your service list and prices, the suburbs you cover, your rules about what counts as urgent, and photos from real jobs. An hour on the phone and a folder of photos is most of it.

Two things are not optional once you're live: your business calls have to forward through the number we install, and somebody has to check the inbox during business hours. A call that bypasses the number can't be answered or recovered, and Jessica starting a conversation only helps if a person finishes the ones she flags.

Not necessarily. If you've got one you like, we wire the front desk into it rather than rebuild it. Same build fee, and we'll tell you on the call which parts you don't need.

If you haven't got one, or haven't got one worth keeping, the build covers it.

The tracking number is provisioned by us through our provider, so while you're a client it sits on our account. If you leave and want to keep it, we port it to you at cost.

Your own existing business number is yours and always was. The front desk works by forwarding it, not by replacing it. Keep advertising the number your customers already know.

Thirty days' notice in writing, either way. No exit fee and no minimum term. We'd rather find out in month two that this isn't earning its keep than argue about it in month eleven.

You keep the domain, the website files, your customer records and your call records. Jessica and the automation run on our systems, so they stop. We tell you exactly what goes quiet before you go, not after. An annual prepayment isn't refunded.

The domain is registered in your name from the start. On full payment of the build fee we transfer you every right we hold in the design and content we made for you.

One honest caveat: we build with AI-assisted tooling and reusable frameworks, so parts of any site built that way may not attract copyright protection in anyone's hands, ours or yours, and we won't pretend otherwise. We keep reusing our own underlying templates and code on other projects. We never reuse your branding, copy, photos or business information.

Calls to the number are recorded and transcribed so the notes reach your CRM, and Jessica says so at the start of every call. The records sit in your CRM and you can read any of them.

What we collect, how long we keep it and who can see it is in our privacy policy. If you want a shorter retention period than the default, ask on the call. It's a setting, not an argument.

We set your pages up properly and get your Google Business Profile right, because for a local trade the map pack and reviews are most of it. We don't sell a monthly SEO retainer with a rankings report attached.

If you want someone running content and link building, that's a real service and we'll refer you rather than pretend we do it.

Offsider Agency Pty Ltd is an Australian company, ABN 62 701 384 714, registered in Victoria, and it is two people in Scoresby, in Melbourne's south-east. When you ring about your account you get Jordan or Sebastian, not a ticket queue in another time zone.

The software underneath is a fair question and the honest answer is less tidy: the telephony, the CRM and the language models Jessica runs on are supplied by overseas vendors, and some call data is processed outside Australia. Every supplier and where it sits is listed in our Privacy Policy. We'd rather you read that than assume.

The phone gets answered from day one, so the first recovered call can happen the first week. That part isn't a ranking exercise.

Search visibility is slower. Google Business Profile changes usually show within weeks; ranking for suburb searches builds over months. We're not going to give you a number for either. Anyone who does is guessing.

We won't take two businesses in the same trade competing for the same suburbs. If you sign, you can ask us who else we work with in your trade and you'll get a straight answer.

If someone in your area is already with us we'll tell you that on the first call rather than after you've paid.