How it works
What actually happens when your phone rings
Ordella isn't a menu system and it isn't a voicemail with better manners. It's a receptionist that knows your business, answers every call, and finishes the conversation with a booked job.
Answering calls
Ordella picks up in your business name within a couple of rings, day or night. It handles as many simultaneous calls as come in, so your line is never engaged and nobody ever hears a voicemail beep.
You choose when it answers: every call, only when you don't pick up after a set number of rings, or only outside your working hours.
Qualifying the job
It asks the questions you'd ask (what the problem is, where the property is, what type of building, how urgent it is) and checks the job is inside your patch and the kind of work you actually take on.
Callers outside your area or asking for work you don't do get politely redirected, so they never turn into a callback you'll regret.
Booking into your diary
Ordella reads your live availability and offers real slots. Once the caller picks one, the job is written into your calendar with the address, contact number and full job notes attached.
Works with Google Calendar, Outlook and the main trade job-management tools. If you keep a paper diary, it texts you each booking instead.
Cancellations and reschedules
Customers can move or cancel a slot without interrupting your day. The diary updates itself and you get a message telling you what changed and when.
Freed-up slots can be offered to anyone waiting, so a cancellation doesn't have to cost you an afternoon.
Taking messages
Anything it can't resolve becomes a clear, written message, not a garbled voicemail. You get the caller's name, number, what they want and how urgent it is.
Every call is transcribed and searchable, so what was promised on the phone is never in dispute.
Out-of-hours and emergencies
Nights, weekends and bank holidays are when a lot of trade work comes in. Ordella triages urgency against your rules and either books the next slot or rings you directly.
You decide what's worth waking you for: job value, distance, time of night, type of emergency.
Escalating to you
Complaints, awkward quotes, existing customers with a problem, or anyone who asks for a human: Ordella hands over rather than pressing on.
It never pretends to be a person, and it never bluffs an answer it hasn't been given.
Worked example
An emergency call, start to finish
Fifty-eight seconds, out of hours, with no human involved, and a job in the diary at the end of it.
- OrdellaGood evening, you're through to Ordella for Hale & Sons Plumbing. How can I help?
- CallerThere's water coming through my kitchen ceiling. I think it's the bathroom above.
- OrdellaThat sounds urgent. Is the water still running, or have you managed to turn it off at the stopcock?
- CallerStill running, I can't find the stopcock.
- OrdellaIt's usually under the kitchen sink. Turn it clockwise while I get someone to you. Can I take the postcode?
- CallerM20 4QT.
- OrdellaPerfect, that's well within our patch. I've got an engineer who can be with you by half seven this evening. The emergency call-out is £95 plus parts. Shall I book that in?
- CallerYes please, that's great.
Setup
It takes an afternoon, not a project
A short call to capture how your business works, then we build and test your agent and hand you the divert instructions.
Stop losing jobs to voicemail
Book a 15-minute demo and hear Ordella handle your kind of calls. Live the same day if it's a fit.