The need has a name. Cantya answers it.
A phone reception service is someone who picks up in your place, answers the caller and notes what needs doing next. The service goes by five names depending on the trade: switchboard, call answering, telephone secretary, answerphone, outsourced reception. Cantya replaces all five, and takes on whole calls once it has learned your business.
What it looks like, shown rather than described
The pick-up, setting up your answers, and the screen where the calls land. With the sound off, the video still makes sense.
Five names for one service
Nobody searches for « AI phone reception ». People search for the name they know, and that name depends on the trade of whoever is searching. A practice talks about a telephone secretary, a company about a switchboard, a tradesman about call answering, a shop about an answerphone.
Those words are not interchangeable, though, and knowing which one is yours changes the page you are better off coming in through.
| The word you use | What it actually means | What Cantya does with it |
|---|---|---|
| Switchboard | Routing: pick up, then point the call at the right handset. | Picks up, works out the request, transfers under your rules or deals with the call itself. |
| Call answering | Hours: the ones you do not cover, evenings, weekends, on-call duty. | Covers every hour without distinction, and applies your urgency criteria on the ones that matter. |
| Telephone secretary | A person who takes the messages and books the appointments. | Answers in your words, writes the appointment into your calendar, hands the call back summarised. |
| Answerphone | What the caller reaches when none of the above exists. | Holds a conversation instead of recording a monologue nobody rings back. |
| Outsourced reception | A trade-off: handing over the function rather than staffing it. | Takes the phone half of the job, and says plainly that it leaves you the rest. |
Every row leads to its own page. Come in through the word you use.
What is lost between two rings
A missed call does not put itself on hold. The caller has a list in front of them, or a page of results, and they move on to the next one. They leave no message, they do not ring back later, and you never learn that they called at all.
That is what makes the cost of reception so hard to see: what is missing appears on no statement, because there is nothing to record. Half of those calls ask for almost nothing, though, an opening time, an address, a lead time, a confirmation. They are what makes the volume, and what interrupts you.
The other half deserves your voice, and the trouble is that you cannot tell which is which until you have picked up. A reception that sorts is therefore more useful than a reception that filters: you have to take every call in order to hand you back the ones that are yours.
- M
- T
- W
- T
- F
- S
- S
- 45
- hours open
- 168
- hours in the week
- You are open
- Cantya picks up
Example of a business open from nine to six, Monday to Friday: 45 hours out of the 168 a week holds. The phone, for its part, can ring through all 168.
What Cantya does with a call
A call rarely runs more than two minutes. Here are its four movements, in the order they happen.
- 01
It picks up
Two rings, day and night, weekends included. The caller hears your own greeting, with the name of your business. Nobody reaches a voicemail box.
- 02
It understands
Your services, your hours and your rules, described once. The answers come out in your words, and in the caller’s language: six of them, switching mid-call.
- 03
It acts
It books the appointment once it has checked the slot is free, notes a call-back request, or transfers according to the rule you set.
- 04
It leaves a record
Every call reaches you summarised, with the transcript and the action that follows from it. That is the part people underrate when buying, and look at every day afterwards.
It puts the call through when somebody asks for you
The caller only has to ask for somebody: Cantya recognises the request and sends the call to your line, during the conversation. Nothing for them to dial, no need to ring back.
Two ways into the subject
The first family gathers what Cantya replaces: you are looking for a service that already has a name, and you want to know what ours does in its place. The second gathers what it takes on: there, you are no longer after a service but a result, a type of call you want off your hands.
Both lead to the same product. What changes is the route, and a page that takes the wrong route loses its reader before the second sentence.
What Cantya replaces
The service you are looking for already exists under another name. Here is what Cantya takes on in its place.
Virtual phone system
Cantya picks up in place of your phone system, understands the request and books the appointment. No box to install, no number to change.
SeeOut-of-hours cover
Cantya holds the line when the office is shut. It answers, applies your criteria for what counts as urgent, and brings you what cannot wait until tomorrow.
SeeTelephone answering service
Cantya answers in your name, informs the caller with your own answers and books the appointments. You pay for the minutes spoken, not for the calls picked up.
SeeSmart voicemail
Cantya understands what the caller is asking, answers when it can and books the appointment. The message only reaches you when your judgement is needed.
SeeOutsourced phone reception
No job ad, no training, no cover to find over the holidays. Cantya takes the calls all year and bills you the minutes spoken.
SeeWhat Cantya handles
Beyond picking up, the calls it deals with itself once you have taught it your trade.
After-sales phone line
Cantya takes the after-sales calls, answers on what you taught it about your products, and passes to your technician only the cases that genuinely need one.
SeeProduct advice by phone
Cantya explains your ranges, your options and your lead times, then books the appointment or the sales call-back when the sale is won live.
SeeBilling enquiries by phone
Cantya takes the calls about due dates, payment terms and payment methods, answers on your rules, and passes you the requests that touch an account.
SeeAppointment booking by phone
Cantya reads your real availability in Google Calendar or Outlook, offers the caller time slots and records the appointment with the reason and contact details.
SeeOrder tracking by phone
Cantya answers on your delivery times, delivery methods and carriers, takes down the order number and passes you whatever needs checking.
SeeLead qualification
Cantya puts your qualification questions to the prospects who call, books a sales appointment in your calendar when the request is ready and sends their answers to your Google Sheets, Airtable or Notion.
SeeBy department
What Cantya changes for each department, from customer service to IT.
Customer service
Cantya answers your customer service calls, handles simple requests with what your team has taught it, absorbs the peaks and transfers the call, context included, when the customer asks for an advisor.
SeeSales team
Cantya answers your sales team’s inbound calls, notes the need, the volume and the timeline, books the appointment in the team’s calendar and emails the call report to the salesperson.
SeeMarketing
Cantya takes the calls a campaign triggers, at any hour and in six languages, asks every caller how they heard about the offer and passes the leads to your tracking sheet and your salespeople.
SeeFinance and accounting
Cantya takes calls from customers, suppliers and employees, answers on the rules you gave it and passes the rest to your team, with the file complete.
SeeHuman resources
Cantya informs employees from your HR documents, pre-screens candidates on your criteria and offers a transfer to your team as soon as a situation calls for a person.
SeeIT and operations
Connection to the existing phone system, connectors, data location, traceability. Cantya is rolled out department by department, with no software to install and no infrastructure project.
SeeThe simplest thing is to hear it
A demonstration happens on the phone, in a minute. It is the only place a phone reception can be judged.
What a phone reception does not replace
It answers, and it calls
Cantya handles the call both ways: your inbound calls, and the calls it places for you — follow-ups, qualification, appointment confirmations, a call-back asked for during a call. Every outbound call follows the script you wrote and leaves its transcript in your space.
It promises no written message it cannot send
The channels available depend on your account and on whether they are switched on. As long as a channel is not active for you, no caller will be told they are about to receive anything through it.
It does not replace what is not the phone
A reception desk that also handles post, invoicing, case follow-up and people walking in keeps all of that to do. Only the phone half changes hands.
It does not decide for you
A quote that depends on an inspection, a commercial discount, a clinical or legal judgement: these are answers you can forbid it, and are better off forbidding explicitly rather than hoping it holds back.
Where to begin
The rest gets added as you go, by listening to the first calls: the calendar, the finer rules by time of day, the answers that were missing and that only real calls reveal. None of that gates the pick-up, which works from day one.
- 1
You describe your business
Twenty quiet minutes, starting from the template for your trade already filled in rather than from a blank page.
- 2
You set the rules
Who to transfer and when, what to note down, what must never be promised. You read the greeting back and adjust it.
- 3
You plug in the number
A dedicated number, or a forward from your current line. No code to dial, and free set-up when you configure Cantya yourself (full installation by our team on quote).
They trust us
Teams that answer with Cantya.
5,0/5Google rating · See the reviews Google review « J’ai mis Cantya en place pour gérer le SAV de ma boutique et franchement, ça m’enlève une bonne charge. Je m’y retrouve beaucoup mieux dans les demandes clients et je passe moins de temps dessus. » Google review « On utilise Cantya pour prendre le relais sur nos appels quand on est déjà en intervention ou qu’on ne peut pas décrocher. C’est vraiment pratique, on évite de perdre des appels et nos clients ont toujours une réponse. Ça nous soulage beaucoup au quotidien. » - Hosted in the EU
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- The AI says so
From the first sentence, as the EU AI Act requires.
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Frequently asked questions
Your line can be answering tonight
No commitment, no hardware, no change of number. You hear the result before plugging anything in.