The Three Real Options for Answering Calls
Every letting agent with more than a handful of managed properties has to make a decision about how calls get answered when the front desk is busy, on lunch, or closed. In 2026, there are three realistic options: hire a human, pay a traditional answering service, or deploy an AI receptionist. A fourth option — voicemail plus hope — continues to exist but is rarely a conscious choice; it is usually what happens when none of the first three are in place.
This article is an honest comparison of the three, written for the owner or operations manager of a UK letting agency who is trying to make a sensible decision. We will cover cost, coverage, integration, brand experience, and where each option wins or falls short.
Option 1: A Full or Part-Time Human Receptionist
What it is: An employee (or pooled receptionist across multiple branches) whose job is to answer the phone, greet walk-ins, and handle routine enquiries.
What it costs: For a full-time UK receptionist, budget £18,000 to £25,000 per year in salary, plus national insurance, holiday, sickness cover, and ongoing training. A part-timer is proportionally cheaper but often introduces coverage gaps.
Where it wins:
- Nuanced judgement calls. A seasoned receptionist can read a difficult caller, de-escalate an angry tenant, or pick up on a subtle sales signal in a way no other option can.
- Walk-in traffic. If your high-street office sees genuine walk-in traffic, an on-site human adds value beyond the phone.
- Integration with your agency culture. A good receptionist knows your landlords, your properties, and your team personally.
Where it falls short:
- Coverage. A single full-timer covers roughly 40 hours per week out of the 168 hours per week your phone could ring. Evenings, weekends, and bank holidays are uncovered.
- Overflow. On a busy Monday morning, one receptionist cannot cover three incoming lines.
- Cost. For a small agency, a full-time receptionist is often the single largest overhead after rent and the principal's salary.
- Turnover and training. Front desk is a high-turnover role. Every departure costs time and money.
Best for: Agencies with a high-street office, significant walk-in traffic, or a client base that strongly values personal relationships with a named receptionist.
Option 2: A Traditional Answering Service
What it is: A third-party call centre, usually UK-based, that answers calls in your agency's brand name. They typically take a message, log basic details, and email or SMS the details to you for follow-up.
What it costs: Typical UK answering services charge £150 to £600 per month depending on call volume and coverage (24/7 costs more than business-hours only). Per-call pricing exists but tends to be expensive for agencies with variable volume.
Where it wins:
- Coverage. Most answering services offer 24/7 cover at a price point well below hiring a full-time human.
- Human voice. For callers who strongly prefer speaking to a person rather than an AI, this delivers that experience.
- No infrastructure on your end. Set up is quick and most providers integrate with VoIP systems easily.
Where it falls short:
- Integration. The vast majority of answering services produce an email or an SMS. Almost none integrate with your letting agent software, so maintenance reports don't become tickets, viewing requests don't become bookings, and every message requires manual double-entry by your team.
- Generic scripts. Unless you invest significant time in training the answering service on your portfolio, properties, and policies, the experience is scripted and impersonal.
- Limited action capability. An answering service can take a message but cannot book a viewing into your calendar, check availability in real time, or recognise a returning tenant.
- Variable quality. Outsourced call centres have high turnover. The person who handled your call on Tuesday may not be the one handling it on Friday.
Best for: Agencies that specifically want a human voice for their brand, have simple call flows (mostly message-taking), and do not need deep integration with their operational software.
Option 3: An AI Receptionist
What it is: A voice AI agent, built specifically for property management use cases, that answers your calls. It holds a natural conversation with the caller, executes tasks directly in your software (booking viewings, logging maintenance tickets), and warm-transfers to a human when required.
What it costs: Entry-level plans typically start around £79 per month for 100 minutes of AI conversation time, with overage at 30p to 50p per minute. A typical letting agency spends £100 to £250 per month at scale.
Where it wins:
- Coverage. 24/7, always available, no sickness, no holidays, no turnover. Instantly scales with call volume.
- Integration. The best AI receptionists (including LettingGuru's Nita) sit inside your letting agent software, so they can check real-time availability, book straight into your calendar, recognise returning tenants, and log tickets in the correct format.
- Cost per interaction. A typical viewing booking costs under 50 pence of AI time. Even heavy use rarely exceeds the cost of a human hour.
- Consistency. The AI handles every call with the same level of competence, every time. No bad days.
- Analytics. Every call is transcribed, classified, and reviewable. You can spot patterns (when do calls peak, which properties get asked about most often, what reasons drive the most enquiries) that are invisible with any other option.
Where it falls short:
- Very complex or emotionally charged calls. For a tenant in genuine distress, or a commercial negotiation, a human is better — which is why warm transfer matters.
- Perception. A small minority of callers will actively dislike talking to an AI. Most are fine once told.
- Voice quality at the edges. Regional UK accents are handled well by the best providers, but rare or very thick accents can still cause misunderstandings.
- New technology risk. The category is new. Providers vary wildly in quality. Choose one with a strong integration story and transparent pricing.
Best for: Agencies of any size that want reliable 24/7 coverage, care about operational integration, and are comfortable with a front-door experience that is AI-led with escalation to humans when needed.
Side-by-Side: The Honest Numbers
For a mid-sized letting agency handling about 1,000 inbound calls per month, the rough annual costs look like this:
- Full-time receptionist (9 AM to 5 PM only): £22,000 all-in. No evening or weekend cover. Coverage gaps remain.
- Shift-based human coverage (24/7): Realistically £45,000 to £60,000 per year for a small rota. Impractical for most agencies.
- Traditional answering service (24/7): £3,600 to £6,000 per year. No integration. Every message needs manual follow-up.
- AI receptionist (24/7, 1,000 minutes/month): £1,500 to £2,500 per year. Full integration, transcript on every call, bookings and tickets created automatically.
The cost ordering is clear. The trade-off is the extent to which you value human judgement on the front desk. For most letting agencies, the honest answer is that the front desk is 90% routine tasks (booking, message-taking, triage) that AI handles at least as well as a human, and 10% complex situations that benefit from a human — which warm transfer delivers anyway.
The Blended Approach
In practice, most well-run letting agencies end up using a blend.
A typical configuration looks like:
- During office hours: A human receptionist (or a designated team member) answers first. Overflow after three rings, or when everyone is on another line, routes to the AI.
- After hours and weekends: The AI takes everything. Emergencies are warm-transferred to the on-call number.
- For specific caller types: Returning tenants recognised by phone number might get a more personalised AI experience; very high-value landlord relationships might get routed directly to the principal's mobile.
This blend delivers the best of both worlds. During the times when a human is available and adding judgement, humans handle the call. The rest of the time — which is the majority of the week — the AI captures what would otherwise be lost.
How to Decide for Your Agency
Here is a short decision guide:
- If you have a busy high-street office with walk-ins and a strong relationship-based client base: Keep the human receptionist for office hours. Add an AI receptionist for overflow, evenings, and weekends.
- If you are a small agency with no receptionist today: Start with an AI receptionist. It is the fastest and cheapest way to stop losing calls. Add human staff later if and when the volume justifies it.
- If you are currently using voicemail or a traditional answering service: Move to an AI receptionist with integration. You will likely save money and dramatically improve capture rates.
- If you are a large multi-branch agency: The blend is almost certainly correct. AI for after-hours and overflow; humans during peak hours; warm transfer for the hard cases.
Whichever option you choose, the one thing to stop doing today is letting high-intent calls reach voicemail. The economics of modern AI receptionists mean that even a small agency can afford genuine 24/7 coverage for less than the cost of a single missed tenancy per month.
Next Steps
If you want to see an AI receptionist handle a real call, book a twenty-minute demo of LettingGuru's Nita. We will place a test call to your phone so you can experience the conversation directly, and walk you through how bookings, maintenance tickets, and warm transfers appear in the dashboard.
For more on the topic, see our complete 2026 guide to AI receptionists for letting agents and our breakdown of the true cost of missed calls in UK letting agencies.