Before you post that job again, spend one week counting your calls. You might need a whole person. You might just need someone on the phones at lunch and after 5. Those are very different problems.
I'm not knocking the hire. A great front desk person is gold. But it's a tough seat to keep filled. The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects about 105,100 receptionist openings a year nationally through 2035, and every one of them comes from people leaving the job, not from growth. That's the whole country, not Tampa, so call it a ballpark. Still, it tells you this isn't a one-time headache.
So get the facts on your own phones first.
The one-week count
Your phone provider can usually pull a call log. For seven days, write down:
- Calls you missed while you were open
- Calls that came in after close or on the weekend
- How many of those left a voicemail
- Which ones were real customers, and which were vendors and spam
- What the real ones wanted: a price, an appointment, a status update
It's not much work. And now you know something most job posts are guessing at.
What your count is telling you
- Lots of daytime calls, walk-ins, and paperwork too? Hire the person. Nothing else does all three.
- Mostly after hours? Try an answering service or an AI that picks up. You're shopping for coverage, not an employee.
- The same five questions over and over? Put the answers on your site and in your voicemail. Then let an assistant handle those and send the rest to a person.
- Hardly any real customers missed? You don't have a phone problem. Keep your money and go find the actual bottleneck.
Two things to get right if you go the AI route
Have it say what it is right away. Something like "Hi, this is the AI assistant for {your shop}." Nobody likes finding out later.
And watch recording. Florida generally wants everyone on the call to agree before you record it, so if the tool records, the caller needs to hear that up front.
Then give it a real test on your busiest day. Call it yourself. Be annoying. If it can't get you to a human when you ask, it's not ready.
That's it. Count first, spend second.