Questions
The things people ask before they trust it.
Straight answers, including where the answer is “not yet”. If yours is not here, email support@callahanddigital.com and a person will reply.
Getting started
Your number, your calls
Do I have to change my phone number?
No. You keep the number your customers already have. Calls reach Callahand when nobody picks up or when you are outside the hours you set, and they reach you the rest of the time.
How long does setup take?
Setup is a guided sequence — your services, hours, service area, emergency rules, appointment settings, calendar and notifications. You can leave it and come back; each section is saved the moment it is accepted. Nothing goes live until you publish it.
Can I hear what it will sound like before it answers a real call?
Yes. The greeting and what it says when it cannot help are yours to review and change before you publish, and we walk through a real call flow with you during onboarding.
On the call
What it will and will not do
Will callers know they are talking to an AI?
Yes, and that is not configurable. The receptionist identifies itself as an AI assistant at the start of every call. It is built into the product rather than left to a setting, because a setting is something that can be switched off.
What happens if somebody has an emergency?
You define what counts as an emergency for your trade — gas, smoke, carbon monoxide, flooding, no heat in winter, whatever applies. When a caller describes one, that handling takes over the call and ordinary intake stops.
It is written as fixed rules with their own tests rather than as an instruction to a model, and once raised on a call it cannot be talked back down.
What if it does not understand somebody?
It asks again. A receptionist that guesses is worse than one that asks twice, so an unclear answer produces a question rather than an assumption. When a call genuinely needs a person, it says so plainly and tells you what it could not do.
Can a caller talk it into something it should not do?
Claiming to be the owner, a developer or an administrator gets a caller no more authority than anybody else — there is no phrase that unlocks a setting. The receptionist will not reveal its configuration or its instructions, and the decisions that matter are made by code that does not read the conversation as a command.
Booking
Appointments and your calendar
How does it know when I am free?
From the calendar you connect during setup, filtered by the hours you work, the notice you need, how long each kind of job takes and any buffer you want between them. It offers two or three times rather than a list nobody can hold in their head.
Could it book something that is not really available?
An appointment is only ever reported as booked once your calendar has accepted it. If that write fails — the calendar is unreachable, the slot was taken in the meantime — the caller is told a person will follow up, and you are told the same thing. A booking is never claimed because the conversation went well.
What if the caller is outside my service area?
The address is checked against the areas you cover before a time is offered. Somebody outside them is told honestly, which is better for both of you than an appointment you would have to cancel.
Your data
What is kept, and what is not
Is the call recorded?
Callahand does not store call recordings or transcripts. What it keeps is the structured outcome — who rang, what they needed, what was booked, what still needs you. The telephony and voice providers that carry the call have their own terms; our privacy policy names them.
Does anything the caller says leave your systems?
Understanding a caller’s words is done by an external language-model service: the most recent thing they said is sent, classified, and discarded. No accumulating transcript, no phone number, no address and no business identifier goes with it, and none of it is used to train any model. There is more detail on the security and privacy page.
Is my data separate from other businesses’?
Yes. Every record carries the business it belongs to, and every read and write is authorised on the server against the account asking. An identifier sent by a browser is never trusted to decide what somebody can see.
Are you certified or compliant?
No, and we will not say otherwise. Callahand holds no security or privacy certification and has not completed a third-party audit. We can tell you accurately how the system behaves; whether that satisfies an obligation specific to your business is a question for your own advisers.
Plans
What it costs and how it ends
What happens if I use more minutes than my plan includes?
Your receptionist keeps answering after your included minutes are used. Calls are never cut off. What happens to the additional minutes depends on the plan. Ask us and we will tell you for yours.
Can I get my data out?
Yes. Your configuration and your call records are yours. If you leave, ask us and you get them; ask us to delete them and we will.
Will it call my customers?
No. Callahand answers calls. It does not make them — no cold calling, no automated solicitation, no outbound campaigns. That is a deliberate boundary in the product, not a feature we have not got round to.
Not here?
Ask the specific one. We would rather tell you something is unfinished than have you find out after you have gone live.
Ask us on a call instead.
Twenty minutes, your actual calls, and an honest answer about whether this fits your business.