Your AI Voice Receptionist

To switch it on, open Skills, find the AI Voice Receptionist and hit Install. Mucka then walks you through setting it up, which takes about five minutes. It comes with your plan, free trial included, and your first 60 minutes of calls are free.

The Voice Receptionist answers the calls you cannot get to. It picks up in your business name, talks to the caller, and depending on what you let it do, takes a message, saves a new client, or pencils in a job for you to approve. Because it is part of Mucka, everything it takes lands straight in your jobs, clients and diary, with nothing to copy across.

You keep your own number: you forward your calls to the number Mucka gives you, so the receptionist only picks up when you do not. See Forward your calls to Mucka for how to set that up.

How long your phone rings before it picks up is part of that forwarding, not a setting inside the receptionist. Open Settings, then Forwarding under Answering, pick 5 to 30 seconds and dial the code it shows you; dial it again with a different number to change it. To turn the receptionist off, dial ##002# from your phone to stop forwarding.

What the Receptionist page shows you

The page is your calls. Every call the receptionist has answered is listed there, newest first, and opening one shows you what the caller was told, what Mucka did about it, a recording you can play, and the transcript. Under the caller's number there is a Call back button that rings them from your phone, and Copy number if you would rather paste it somewhere.

Two things are worth knowing about that list:

• "Waiting on you" sits at the top, on its own. A pencilled booking is a promise the receptionist made to a caller, and it is not in your diary until you approve it. Those come first rather than being mixed in with everything else by date. Once the booking is decided, wherever you decide it (the card, the WhatsApp button, or ticking it off as pencilled on the job), the call leaves that group on its own and says Booked or Not booked. There is nothing to clear by hand.
• Opening a call tells you what Mucka did not do, and why. If a caller asked a price for something that is not on your price list, it says so — it did not quote, and it told them you would come back to them. That reads as a fault until you know it was a decision.

On a phone with the new look

On a phone with the new look switched on, the top of the page is a dark strip about right now: Answering your calls with your number and a Copy button, On a call now with who is on the line and how long they have been talking, or Not answering yet before you have a number. Under it is a card for the week: calls, visits pencilled in and messages taken, then the minutes and texts you have left and how many bookings are waiting to approve. With no number yet, that card has Get my number instead.

Waiting on you comes next, each booking as a card with Approve the visit (it confirms the visit in your diary and tells the caller, exactly as approving the card on your Actions does) and Listen first. Every other call follows a day at a time, each one showing who rang, when, what it was about, how it ended and how long the call lasted. The filter button beside the search shows Bookings, Messages, Put through, Missed and Mucka rang out; the cog beside it opens the settings.

Tap a call and it opens as its own page: Call back, Copy and The visit (or Their record) at the top, what it was about, what Mucka did with the time it did it (tap a time to play the recording from that moment), the recording, the conversation as messages, and Report a problem with this call to tell us about it. At the bottom are Back, a phone button to ring the caller back, and Approve while there is a booking waiting.

Everything you can change about the receptionist opens from the Settings button at the top of that page, in four groups: Answering, What it can do, Who hears about it, and Paperwork & minutes. Each one shows you what the setting currently is, so you can read the whole screen without opening anything.

Missed and Failed calls

The receptionist picks up and greets the caller within a few seconds, and its greeting tells them "Calls are recorded." A call marked Missed is somebody who rang off before it had spoken, usually two or three seconds in. The line was working; they had most likely been listening to your own phone ring first, and gave up. If that keeps happening, shorten how long your phone rings before it passes the call across (see Forward your calls to Mucka).

A call marked Failed stayed on the line past that point and the receptionist still said nothing. That one is our fault, not the caller's, and we would like to hear about it.

Either way you get a Missed call card with their number so you can ring them back, and it says which of the two it was.

Is it answering yet?

The top of the page tells you the truth rather than a status, and there are three things it can say:

| What it says | What it means | |---|---| | Claim your number to start forwarding your calls | You have not got a number yet. Nothing can reach the receptionist. | | Ready, but no calls are reaching it yet | You have a number and Mucka is listening — but nothing has ever rung it, which almost always means your business line is not forwarded yet. The forwarding instructions sit right underneath. | | Answered a call 40 minutes ago (or On a call now) | Calls are getting through. |

That middle one is the one to watch for. A number on its own does not answer anything; the forwarding is what makes it real.

Getting set up

1. Open Skills and hit Install on the AI Voice Receptionist.
2. Mucka walks you through setting it up. It opens with the paperwork — because Mucka handles your callers' details for you, the law asks for a data-processing agreement, and we have prepared it (see The paperwork for answering your phone). After that you pick a voice and what it says when it answers — tap Hear it to listen to the voice saying your business name before you settle on one — give it your website so it can learn what you do, choose what it is allowed to do, and set the hours it can book work in. It takes about five minutes.
3. The last step gets you your number. Nothing is bought until you get there, so you can take your time over the rest — but the number only comes once the agreement is accepted.
4. Forward your calls to that number and it starts answering.

Apart from the agreement, every step is optional and nothing is final. Skip anything you are not sure about and change it later in your receptionist settings.

Come back to it whenever you like. Pick up where I left off (or Finish setting up on the Receptionist page) opens on the first step you have not done yet, not back at the start. Continue saves what is on the step before it moves on. I'll do this later and going back save nothing, so if you have changed something on the step, Mucka asks whether to leave without saving first. That includes a draft from your website you have not saved yet: nothing from it is used until you save it.

On a phone with the new look, each step is its own page. The top says which step you are on, Step 3 of 7 · All steps opens the list of steps, and the bar goes green for the ones you have done. Each answer opens in a small sheet and saves when you tap Save. The button at the bottom says what comes next, like Next: What it knows. The paperwork opens as a page of its own: read the three documents, tick the box, then Accept agreement. On the last step, once you have a number, every forwarding code is a row: tap one to copy it, and pick how long your phone rings first beside the recommended one.

What it costs

The receptionist comes with every paid Mucka plan and your free trial, so there is nothing extra to subscribe to. Your first 60 minutes of calls are free — the same 60 however many of you there are — so you can give it a proper go before you spend anything. Both the calls it answers for you and the calls you ask it to make come out of the same minutes.

On the free trial? You can claim a real number and use it just like anyone else. It stays yours through your trial and for 14 days after it ends. If you have not added a card by then, we hand the number back to the network so we are not renting it for an account that is not using it, and once it is gone we cannot get that same number back. Add a card before the end of that window and it is yours for good.

After that, minutes come in packs of 500 for £45 (plus VAT). Bought minutes never expire, so anything you do not use this month is still there next month. You can also turn on auto-top-up so Mucka buys another pack automatically when you drop below a level you set, and the receptionist never runs out partway through a busy week.

Minutes and billing

Because the receptionist is part of your Mucka plan, there is no separate receptionist subscription. Open the Receptionist page and, under Settings, you will see your minutes balance, a Buy 500 minutes button, and the auto-top-up toggle. Every payment shows in your payment history with a VAT receipt.

Buying minutes is done on the web: in the phone app you will see your balance but not the buy button, so head to app.mucka.ai on a laptop to top up or add a card.

You can also just ask Mucka "how many minutes have I got left?" — it reads you the balance, along with your texts.

Choose what it can do

Open Receptionist to set it up. Under What your receptionist can do, switch each job on or off:

• Take a message / lead. Always on. The caller's name, number and what they need, saved for your team to follow up.
• Check addresses. Always on. It looks the caller's postcode up against the Royal Mail address file and reads the real address back to them, rather than spelling it from the sound of it.
• Add a new client. Let it save a first-time caller straight into your client list.
• Check the diary. Let it read your schedule and tell callers when you are free. It follows the notice each job needs (set on the price list item, or your usual notice under online booking), so it won't offer a boiler install tomorrow if you need three working days, and it tells the caller why.
• Pencil in a booking. Let it prepare a job for you to approve. Needs Check the diary on as well, because it can only pencil in a time it has checked is free.
• Look up a caller's bookings. Let it tell a caller it recognises what they already have booked in.
• Reschedule a booking. Let it pencil in a change to an existing appointment's time for you to approve. Needs Check the diary and Look up a caller's bookings on as well.
• Quote standard prices. Let it tell callers what something costs, using only the items you have ticked on your price list. Always given as a standard charge the team will confirm, never a fixed quote.

Switch off anything you would rather handle yourself.

If you switch on a job that needs another one, such as Pencil in a booking with Check the diary off, the page asks you straight away whether to turn that one on as well. Tap Turn it on too and both are on. Tap Not now if you would rather keep your diary to yourself: nothing else changes, and the switch stays on but turns amber with Waiting beside it, because it cannot do anything yet. Until you switch the other one on, your receptionist takes a message instead. The What it can do row says how many are waiting, so you can see it without opening the list.

If booking has been sitting in that state, you may also see a card in your actions asking whether to turn the diary on. Turn the diary on does exactly that and nothing more, and Keep it off leaves everything as it is. Either way you can change it again here whenever you like.

When it pencils something in, you get told

A pencilled booking is not a job yet — it is a promise the receptionist made on your behalf, waiting on your yes. So it does not sit there quietly:

• It goes straight into your diary as a pencil, so you can see the slot is spoken for. It stays there whether you act on it or not, even after the day has passed.
• You get a notification and a WhatsApp the moment it happens — "Booking to approve" — with who rang, what they want, when, and the address. The WhatsApp has two buttons: Approve it books it there and then, Open it sends you the link.
• An action card appears on your overview, and approving it turns the pencil into a real job.
• If the caller wanted to be seen today and nothing is left in today's diary, you hear about it straight away. The receptionist still pencils the soonest slot and tells them honestly it is not today but that it has been flagged. You get the same urgent alert as an emergency call, and the card says Wanted today, so you can ring them if you can squeeze them in. It counts when they ask for today or for "same day", or pick a same-day or priority option from your own script.
• If the slot is getting close and nobody has decided, Mucka reminds you again. The caller was told the team would confirm, so a booking nobody has looked at is the one thing here worth chasing you about twice.

Turning off engine-action notifications in Settings turns all of that off too — the pencil and the card still appear, they just stop chasing you.

There is deliberately no "decline" button on the WhatsApp. Saying no deletes the pencil and puts the slot back, and that is not something you want to do by accident from your lock screen, so it is a job for the app where you can see what you are giving up.

Say no and the pencil is removed, which puts the slot back. Say yes and it becomes an ordinary job. Doing nothing leaves it pencilled — visible, but nobody has been confirmed, so the caller is still waiting.

Quote standard prices needs a second step before it does anything: it only works once you have also ticked Let the AI receptionist share this price on the items you are happy for it to give out. Tick the items but leave this switch off and callers asking a price are told the team will get back to them. See Set up your price list for the full picture.

How it offers times

Most trades do not give a customer an exact start time, because a job overrunning two streets away turns that into a broken promise. So you choose how your receptionist words what is free. The setting appears on the Receptionist page under How it offers times, once Check the diary is switched on.

• Exact times. It offers a start time: "I've got Tuesday at 9am, or Tuesday at 2pm." This is what every account starts on.
• Morning and afternoon. It offers a half of the day: "I could do you Tuesday morning, or Tuesday afternoon." The split is midday, and the two halves follow your working hours.
• Your own slots. You set them up yourself, whatever you actually sell: 8 to 10, 10 to 12, 12 to 2, 2 to 4. Name each one however you say it on the phone, because that is the wording the caller hears.

Underneath the three choices is a line showing exactly what a caller would hear, updating as you change things. Set the days you work and the hours you start and finish in the same place, and the receptionist never offers a Saturday you do not work or a 7am you are not up for.

If you offer a window, that is what the customer is told and what they get in writing. The confirmation text says "8am to 12pm", not a start time, and if they ring back to check, the receptionist reads the window back rather than an hour. Your diary shows the window on the job too, so whoever is keeping the promise can see what it was.

Behind the scenes Mucka still puts the job at a real time inside the window (the first slot that is genuinely free), so two morning bookings never land on the same doorstep at eight o'clock. You will see that time if you open the job; the window is what the customer was told.

When the week is full, it looks further. If nothing is free in the days the caller asked about, the receptionist keeps looking, up to three weeks ahead, and offers the soonest day that has room, telling the caller it is the soonest you have. The same goes for a particular day: if Wednesday is full, they hear about Thursday rather than just being offered a message. Only when nothing is free for three weeks does it offer to take a message.

It will not offer a window that is mostly gone. A window that has already started is offered only while at least half of it is still to come, so a caller ringing at quarter past three is not offered "this afternoon, 12 to 5". They hear the next window instead.

Filling your afternoons before your mornings

Plenty of businesses would rather keep one half of the day clear: mornings for the big jobs you plan yourself, afternoons for whatever comes in over the phone. On Morning and afternoon, a Fill up first setting lets you say which half the receptionist leads with.

Pick Afternoons and callers simply hear "I could do you Tuesday afternoon." The morning is not mentioned, so nobody talks you into one.

It still will not turn work away, though:

• Once that day's afternoon is booked, it offers the morning. Each day is judged on its own, so a full Tuesday afternoon means Tuesday mornings go back on offer while Wednesday still leads with its afternoon.
• A caller who asks for a morning gets one. If they say "afternoons are no good for me", the receptionist checks and offers what is genuinely free. Same for an emergency, where the answer is whatever is soonest.

If you want a harder line, tick Only offer afternoons. Then it never books a morning over the phone at all: a caller who needs one is offered a message instead, and you ring them back and decide yourself. Worth knowing that this one does turn work away, which is the point of it, so only tick it if that is what you mean.

Set your working hours to your real hours, not the half of the day you want booked. The receptionist quotes your hours to callers, so an 8 to 5 business that sets 12 to 5 starts telling people it does not open until midday. Fill up first is the setting for that, and it keeps your hours honest.

How long it holds for a job

Unless you tell it otherwise, a booking taken over the phone holds an hour of your diary, whether it is a tap washer or a boiler swap.

You can do better than that from your price list: each item has a Typical length. Set Boiler service: 1 hour 30 once, and from then on a caller booking a boiler service gets offered slots that are actually long enough and the job goes in the diary at ninety minutes.

You do not have to tick share with receptionist for this to work. That switch is about whether the receptionist may say the price out loud; a length is never read to a caller, it just decides how much of your day to keep free. For anything not on your price list, the receptionist falls back to the length you set on the receptionist page.

How every call starts

Your receptionist opens every call with the same line, and you choose it in the receptionist's settings under Answering → Opening line:

• Short: "Brightwater Gas, calls are recorded, how can I help?" This is the one you get until you choose.
• Says it's automated: "Brightwater Gas, you're through to our automated line, calls are recorded, how can I help?"
• Your own words, like "Hi, I'm Sam from Brightwater Gas, calls are recorded. Who am I speaking with today?" You can give your receptionist a name this way, and it still tells a caller it is automated if they ask.

The name at the start of the two ready-made lines is your Answers as name, or your business name if you leave it blank. Put just the name there, like "Brightwater Gas" or "Brightwater Gas, Sam speaking": the receptionist adds "calls are recorded, how can I help?" itself, so Mucka will not save a name with "how can I help?" on the end, and shows you the name to use instead.

Every opening line has to say calls are recorded. Nothing plays before your receptionist, so this is the only place a caller is told, and the law needs them told. If your own words leave it out, Mucka will not save them. It shows you the same words with the notice put in, like "Mr Plumber, calls are recorded, how can I help?", and you tap Use this wording or change them yourself. The opening line is for phone calls only: a text always starts by saying it is the automated assistant instead.

Greeting returning callers by name

Turn on Greet returning callers by name and, when a caller's number matches someone in your clients, the opening line ends by asking for them, like "Brightwater Gas, calls are recorded, is that Janet?" instead of "…how can I help?". First-time callers get the normal opening line. Mucka only does this when it is sure of the match, so it will not guess.

A caller's number showing up is not proof of who they are, so the receptionist still confirms details before saving anything important.

It uses the name once, to show it has it right, and then leaves it alone. A receptionist who says your name in every sentence sounds like a script, so it does not.

If a caller asks for one of your team by name

It knows who works at the business, first names only, so "is Charles there?" is answered the way you would answer it: he is not free at the moment, can I get a message to him? It then takes the message for Charles. It cannot see who is in or out on the day, and it will not guess, so it never tells a caller somebody is on a job, off, or in a meeting.

If the caller is somebody it already greeted by name, it does not ask them for their name and number again before promising the callback. It has them.

With live transfer on (below), it offers to put them through instead.

Live transfer

The receptionist can put a caller through to somebody at the business, live, while they are still on the phone. It is off until you switch it on, under What it can do → Put callers through to a person on the Receptionist page. There are two switches:

• Put emergencies through. A leak, a smell of gas, no heating for somebody vulnerable. Any time of day.
• Put through people who ask for someone. Only while you are open. Out of hours they get a message taken, as they do now.

Then pick who to ring, up to six people. Everyone you pick rings at once.

What happens on the call:

1. The receptionist takes their details first: name, number and what it is about. So if nobody picks up, or the caller rings off while it is ringing, you still have the message and the urgent alert still goes out.
2. It tells them it is trying to put them through, and the line starts ringing your people. The caller hears it ringing.
3. Whoever answers hears who is calling and why, and presses 1 to take it, by name: "Hi Dave, it's Mucka. I've got Sally on the line…". That step is what stops a voicemail taking the call: a voicemail never presses 1, so a phone that is off or busy is simply skipped.
4. If nobody presses 1 within about 25 seconds, the caller comes back to the receptionist, which tells them the team has their message and asks if there is anything else.

The call shows on your Receptionist page as Transferred when somebody took it.

Two things worth knowing:

• The phone that diverts to your receptionist is skipped. Your receptionist only answered because that phone was not picked up, so ringing it again would get nowhere, and it could send the call round in a loop. If you work on your own, the urgent alert below is the right tool rather than this. Transfers are for a team, or an on-call person.
• Somebody needs a mobile number on their profile to be picked. Anyone without one is shown greyed out. The number you see calling you is your receptionist number, so you can save it as "Mucka transfer".

If a caller asks whether they are talking to a person

It tells them the truth. Asked "are you a human?", "is this a robot?" or anything like it, it says plainly that it is not a person, it is the automated assistant that answers your phone, and then it carries on helping them. It will never tell a caller it is a person, claim to be one of your team, or take on a name you have not given it.

It does not announce it the rest of the time. There is no disclaimer in the greeting and it does not bring it up mid-call, so callers who never ask just get their message taken or their job pencilled in. Honest when asked, out of the way when not.

Teaching it about your business

Scroll to What your receptionist knows and tell it about your business, so it can answer callers instead of taking a message for everything:

• About your business. A short description, like "Family-run plumbing and heating firm, Gas Safe registered."
• Services you offer. Add each one, like "Boiler repair" or "Bathroom installations."
• Areas you cover. The towns or postcodes you work in.
• Opening hours. These are the ones from your business details, shown here so you can see what your receptionist will tell callers. Change them in Settings › Business › Details — your diary, your holiday allowance and the times Mucka messages your customers all read the same hours, so there is only one set to keep right.
• Anything else about when you work. The things opening hours cannot say, like "24/7 emergency callout" or "we don’t work bank holidays". Your receptionist says this as well as your hours, never instead of them.
• Common questions. The questions callers ask most, with your answers, like "Do you give free quotes? Yes, free no-obligation quotes on all work."

In a hurry? Draft it from your website. At the top of the section, pop in your website address and tap Draft. Mucka reads your site and fills in the bio, services, areas, the note about when you work, and common questions for you. It does not change your opening hours — those are yours to set, because so much else reads them. It only uses what your site actually says, and nothing goes live until you have looked it over and tapped Save these details, so you stay in control of every word.

Use your website address, like www.yourbusiness.co.uk, not your email address. If Mucka says it could not read your site, check the address opens in a browser; some sites are built in a way Mucka cannot read, and then you can fill the details in yourself.

Whether you fill it in yourself or draft it from your website, your changes are only kept once you tap Save business details at the bottom of the section. If you have unsaved changes the button turns orange, so you always know when there is something still to save.

The receptionist only ever says what you put here. If a caller asks something you have not covered, it does not guess, it takes a message so you can follow up.

Your own script

Open Your script to have the receptionist ask your own questions before it books anybody in. It is optional: without one it asks its own. (How a call starts is a separate setting, the Opening line, described above.)

It is in the receptionist's settings. Tap Your script and it opens in place: add a type of job and its questions, then tap Save your script. The button says All changes saved once there is nothing left to save.

With the new look on a phone, Your script opens as a page of its own instead, with Save script at the bottom. Back takes you to the settings again.

• Questions for a type of job. Add a job type, like "Boiler service", and the questions to ask for it, like "What's the make and model of your boiler?" and "When was it last serviced?" Up to six for each job type, and up to eight job types.
• Questions for every booking. The ones you want asked whatever the job, like parking, pets or where the boiler is.
• Before booking, on calls Mucka makes. A line Mucka says before it pencils a visit in on a call it makes itself, such as ringing a new Checkatrade lead back. For example: "All works are subject to our company policy, found on our website." It then asks whether they would like it pencilled in. It is never said on calls or texts that come in to you, so your callers still get a short start.

It asks them one at a time, after the caller has said what they need and before it finds them a time, and skips any they have already answered. Every answer is written on the booking you approve, one per line, so your engineer turns up knowing what they are walking into. If it takes a message instead, the answers go on the message.

Some things it always does its own way, whatever your script says, because they are what keep you in charge of your diary and your prices:

• It pencils a job in for you to approve and tells the caller your team will confirm. It never tells them they are booked in.
• It only says prices from your price list that you have shared with it, and it never takes a payment.
• A smell of gas or carbon monoxide symptoms stop everything for the safety advice.

Your prices and your arrival windows are not part of the script. Share prices from your price list, and set morning and afternoon slots under How it offers times.

Bookings always wait for your nod

The receptionist never books a job on its own. When it pencils one in, it tells the caller the team will confirm the time, and it leaves you a booking to approve.

You will find it in your Actions list, under Actions in the menu or View actions on the Home page. A booking waiting on you counts as urgent, so it sits at the top. Messages and new leads the receptionist takes arrive in the same list, tagged New call or Urgent call. If the caller tells it something more after the message has been saved, Mucka adds it to the card when the call ends, under Also said, so a detail mentioned on the way out still reaches you. If the call already pencilled a booking in, anything the caller adds goes on the booking card rather than a second card, so you approve it with everything in front of you. They are not in your Notepad: that is your own inbox and to-do list, and nothing from the receptionist goes there.

A booking waits for you. Most cards clear themselves after a couple of days if you never touch them. A pencilled booking does not: the caller has been told someone will confirm, and the slot is being held in your diary, so the card stays put until you approve it, dismiss it, or the time itself has been and gone. You will not lose one by leaving it a few days.

Before it can pencil anything in, it has to have four things from the caller: their name, a contact number, the address the work is at, and a time it has actually checked against your diary. If it is missing any of them it asks, and it will not offer a time that is not genuinely free. So the booking that reaches you is one you can act on.

"Genuinely free" means the whole diary, not just your jobs. It will not offer a time that clashes with a job, a personal appointment, or anything in a connected Google or Microsoft calendar. It is never told what any of those are, only that the time is taken.

Pencilling is not just something the receptionist does, either. You can pencil any job in yourself when the work is not settled yet, and it behaves exactly the same way: the slot is held, and the customer hears nothing until you confirm it.

Open the card and you see exactly what it took:

• Time: the slot it checked and the caller agreed to
• Client: their name and contact number
• Address: where the engineer is going, with the postcode
• Job: what needs doing, in the caller's own words

The orange button books it, and it says so: Book it for Sarah, with the caller's name. Tap it and Mucka creates the job in your diary there and then, adding the client and the address if they are new to you, and sends the caller your usual booking confirmation if you have those switched on. To just read the booking, open the card and leave the button alone. If the slot has been taken since the call, Mucka tells you rather than double-booking you. Dismiss it and the pencil comes out of your diary, which frees the slot, but the caller is not told. To tell them, use Can't make that time? on the card instead: it texts and emails them with your reason and either asks them to pick another time or says sorry (see Pencil a job in). See Approve an action for how action cards work.

If the caller's name is already on your books, and their number and email are not, Mucka does not stop and it does not guess. It files this one under their postcode — Margaret Hughes (WS15 9ZZ) next to the Margaret Hughes you already had — and the card asks you whether it is the same person, with a Merge them button if it is. Two customers of the same name is ordinary; a lost booking is not. See Duplicate clients.

Getting the address right

Addresses are the easiest thing to get wrong on a phone call. Acacia sounds like Acasha, Bromley sounds like Bromham, and nobody spells a postcode out loud the way it is written. So the receptionist does not write down what it thinks it heard. It takes the postcode, looks it up against the Royal Mail address file, and reads the real address back to the caller to confirm before it uses it, exactly as Mucka does when you dictate an address in the app.

If a postcode covers a lot of houses it asks for the house number or name rather than reading the street out. If the lookup finds nothing, it does not guess or offer you a house nearby: it reads what it heard back to the caller once and takes whatever they say next. It never asks them to spell it a second time, because a caller going round in circles over a postcode is a caller who hangs up. The address reaches you as they said it, marked Address (not verified), for you to tidy up when you ring them back. A booking is still pencilled in, and its card leads with the address marked not verified, so you check it before you approve.

It will never tell a caller their postcode looks wrong or needs a space in it. Spacing and capitals do not matter, and the caller only ever spoke it.

It asks for an address once, when it is for something: to pencil a job in, to save a new client, or when it takes a message about work (a job, a fault, a quote) and you do not already have an address for them. A customer whose address you already hold is never asked for it, and nor is somebody ringing about something that is not work, such as paying a bill. The address goes on the message, so the team can ring back knowing where the job is. One that was found on the Royal Mail file shows as Address; one that was not shows as Address (not verified).

Existing bookings and changing a time

When someone rings whose number matches one of your clients, the receptionist can look up what they already have booked and read it back. It only ever tells the caller when it is and what the job is — never a house number, a balance or anything private, because a matching phone number is not proof of who is calling.

Tenants

A tenant is not usually your client, because the work is for the landlord or the letting agent. If you have them on the property's people (see Add tenants to a property) with their phone number, the receptionist knows whose home they are ringing from. It can tell them what is in your diary at that address, whoever the job is billed to, so a tenant ringing about the visit you texted them about hears the date you already have rather than being offered a new one. It will not pencil in a second visit for work that is already there. If the day does not suit, or they are telling you about a key, it takes that down for you to sort out with the landlord. It never moves a landlord's job on a tenant's say-so, and only current tenants count, so somebody who has moved out cannot hear the new tenant's visits.

If a tenant rings to book new work at the address they rent, a leaking tap say, the receptionist books it as it would for anybody, pencilled for you to approve, but the job goes under the landlord or agent who pays for the property rather than under the tenant. The card tells you the tenant booked it.

If the number matches nobody, because they are ringing from work, from a withheld number or from a phone you do not have on file, it asks for their full name and the postcode of the job address and finds them with those. A surname at a postcode is a household, which is a stronger match than the number alone. If that finds nobody either, it checks the spelling once and then takes a message rather than guessing.

A caller can also give the job number, such as J-106 from a text or email you sent them. That is what a tenant replying to an access message usually has. The receptionist tells them the visit is already booked, what it is and when, and does not pencil in a second one unless they ask for an extra visit. Because anybody can read a number out, it never says whose job it is or where it is, and it only lets the caller change the time when their own number or details already show the job is theirs. Anyone else who needs a different day has it taken down for you to arrange.

A visit booked for today stays on the list until the end of the day, even once its time has passed, so somebody ringing to say nobody has turned up hears the visit you booked rather than being told there is nothing. The receptionist can see what is in your diary, not why: it will not guess why a visit was moved or why nobody came. It says what the diary shows and offers to take a message for you.

How precise it is about the time is your choice, on the receptionist's own How it offers times screen, under When somebody rings to ask when you are coming. Pick just the day and it says "I can see you're booked in for Tuesday" — it will not name an hour, estimate one, or be talked into one if the caller pushes, and says the team will confirm nearer the day. You can also have it read back the half day or slot they were given, or the exact time. It follows however your diary already promises times until you choose. A precise time on the phone is a promise, and often one you cannot keep. This is about a booking already made; which times get offered to a new caller is How you promise times.

If the caller wants to move an appointment, the receptionist treats it as a change, not a new booking. It checks your diary for the day they want, offers a time that is genuinely free, and pencils in the change for you to approve. It never moves anything itself, and it tells the caller the team will confirm the new time.

Tap Review change on the card and you see the job, the client, where it is now and the new time. Approve it and Mucka moves the job in your diary. If the new time has been taken since the call, Mucka tells you rather than double-booking you. Dismiss it and the original booking stays exactly where it was.

When you're closed

Your receptionist answers round the clock, and it has always taken a message at eleven at night exactly as it would at eleven in the morning. What it can now do as well is say you are shut, and then get on with helping anyway.

Turn it on under Settings → Answering → When you're closed. Outside your opening hours the receptionist opens with one short line telling the caller you are closed, and then carries straight on: it still takes their name, their number and what they need, and it still checks the diary and pencils work in. Being shut is never a reason it tells someone to ring back in the morning.

Leave the wording blank and callers hear ours: "We're closed at the moment, but I can take a message and the team will give you a call tomorrow when they're back in."

Mucka works that day out from your opening hours, every call. Somebody ringing on a Thursday night is told tomorrow. Somebody ringing at six on a Friday, at a firm that is shut over the weekend, is told Monday, because telling them tomorrow would be a promise nobody is there to keep. Ring before you open in the morning and it says later today. The receptionist is never left to work the day out for itself.

You can write your own line instead, and it is said exactly as you type it. If you do, leave the day out of it and let Mucka add it, or you will end up promising Monday callers a call on Tuesday every week of the year. Keep it to a sentence or two, because it is the first thing the caller hears.

If they ask what time you open again, the receptionist tells them that too, off the same hours.

Two things worth knowing:

• Set your opening hours first. They live in Settings → Business → Details. Until they are saved the receptionist has no way of knowing when you are shut, so the switch stays greyed out and it says nothing. That is deliberate: plenty of trades take work at any hour, and a receptionist announcing a Monday-to-Friday nine-to-five nobody set would be turning away your best jobs.
• An emergency is handled the same at 2am as at 2pm. A gas smell or a burst pipe still gets the urgent treatment below, and still alerts you straight away. Being closed changes nothing about it.

Hearing about every call

Normally the only calls that reach you are the two worth interrupting for: an emergency, and a booking waiting on your approval. Everything else lands as a card in your Actions list, which is easy to miss if you are out on the tools all day.

Switch on Settings → Who hears about it → Let me know after every answered call and you get a notification and a WhatsApp after every call the receptionist answers, with who rang and what about, and their number so you can ring them straight back.

• It is off until you turn it on.
• With a team, you can pick who gets told, the same way you pick who hears about urgent calls. Leave everyone off and the whole office is told.
• A call that already pinged you is not told twice. An emergency and a pencilled booking have already reached you in a sharper way, so no second message follows them.
• Calls taken overnight wait until the morning rather than waking you. Nothing is lost, it just arrives once you are out of your quiet hours.

Asking Mucka who rang

In the app, ask Mucka something like "who rang?" or "any calls today?". Mucka tells you who rang and what needs you, and shows the receptionist's calls from the last week as cards, newest first. Each card shows who rang (the customer's name if they're on your books, otherwise their number), what came of the call, such as Booking to approve, Booked or Message taken, when it was, and what it was about.

Tap the play button to listen to the call. Recordings are deleted after a while, so an older call has no play button. Where a call left something to do, there's a line to tap through to it: the booking it pencilled in, or the customer. Tap a card to open the call on the Receptionist page, or Open all calls at the bottom to see the rest.

Only people who can open the Receptionist page see the calls in the chat. For anyone else Mucka says the calls are on the owner's side, rather than saying nobody rang.

When it's urgent

If a caller describes something urgent, like a gas smell, a major leak, or no heating for someone vulnerable, the receptionist keeps them calm, takes the details, and flags the call as urgent. Because it only answered because you could not get to the phone, it does not leave that sitting in the app for you to spot: it alerts you straight away with the caller's number, so you can ring them back rather than the emergency waiting to be noticed. For a suspected gas leak it also gives the caller the standard safety advice and the national gas emergency line.

The same goes for a caller who books something first and only then mentions the emergency. The booking card turns to Urgent call with what they said on it, and you are alerted just the same, once per call.

If you have a team, you can choose who gets that alert in the grid under Settings → Who hears about it, which has a column for urgent calls and a column for every call. Pick a couple of people rather than everyone, so you do not all ring the customer back at once. Leave everyone off and the whole team is alerted.

It remembers the last time they were in touch

If the number is one you have on file, the receptionist starts the call knowing what has passed between you over the last three months — the texts either way, and what their previous calls asked for and what came of them.

So somebody who rang on Tuesday about a leaking rad and rings again on Thursday does not have to explain it twice. If they say "like I said last time", it already knows.

Three things it will not do with that, deliberately:

• It never brings it up on its own. No opening with what they said before, no reading it back at them. It answers from it if they ask, and otherwise just uses it to keep up.
• It knows that is all it knows. It is told in as many words that this is the whole of its memory — no past jobs, prices, invoices or visits — so it cannot imply it is looking at a file it has not got.
• A number it does not recognise gets nothing. Somebody ringing for the first time is treated as ringing for the first time, because they are.

The reason it stops at three months is the same reason it confirms an address by street name only: a phone number is not proof of who is holding the phone.

A gas smell gets a text as well as a talking-to

If a caller says they can smell gas, the receptionist gives them the national gas emergency line on the call, and Mucka then texts them that number from your line once the call ends.

That is because a phone number said out loud, once, to somebody standing in their kitchen frightened, is the easiest thing in the world to lose. The text is the written copy of it.

Worth being straight with you about this one: it is the only message Mucka ever sends one of your customers without you approving it first. It is the same fixed safety wording every time, never anything Mucka writes itself, and it says nothing about you, the job or the money — just the emergency number and what to do. It only goes out for a gas smell, only to a mobile, and never if that number has texted STOP. If they text back, your receptionist answers them — see When a customer texts your receptionist number.

If it says it has taken something down and it has not

Rarely, the receptionist tells a caller their message has been passed on and then does not save it. Mucka checks every call for that after it ends, and if the words and the record do not match you get a card saying so, with what the caller actually said, so you can ring them back yourself.

If the caller described an emergency, that card is tagged Urgent call not logged and you are alerted straight away, exactly as you would be for one that saved properly. A call that went wrong should not be quieter than one that went right.

If someone rings off before the receptionist answers

There is a short gap after your line connects, a couple of seconds while the receptionist gets ready, before it can speak. Some callers hang up in it.

You get a card for those too. It shows their number and when they rang, so you can ring them back. Nothing was taken down, because nobody spoke to the receptionist, so there is no message to read, just a number worth returning.

Very short calls, under a couple of seconds, are treated as misdials and do not raise a card.

What you get afterwards

Open the Receptionist page and the Calls tab to see every call. Pick one and you get a short summary, what the receptionist did for you (took a message, added a client, pencilled in a booking), the full transcript, and a recording you can play back. Anything the receptionist saved, a new client, a message, a pencilled-in job, is already where you would expect it in Mucka.

Recordings are private to you (only owners and managers can listen) and are kept for 90 days, then deleted automatically.

If a call ever cannot be answered

On the rare occasion the receptionist cannot take a call, Mucka does not let it slip by quietly. You get an action card showing the caller's number and when they rang, so you can ring them straight back and never lose the lead. Very short hang-ups and wrong numbers are filtered out, so the card only appears when someone genuinely tried to reach you.