Guides / Morag vs receptionist-style cover
This page is illustrative maths so owners can sanity-check options. It is not tax or employment advice; employer costs vary sharply by hours, age band, pension auto-enrolment, and agency margins.
Suppose you pay someone £11–£13 per hour at the till who also catches the phone during service — if they cover 35 paid hours per week, gross wages alone are roughly £385–£455 per week before employer National Insurance, pension, holiday accrual, recruitment, and cover for sickness. Annualised wage-only might land around £20k–£24k for that slice of time, with true employer cost higher.
If you already need that person on shift for front-of-house, the incremental cost of “phone duty” is smaller than hiring solely to answer calls — be honest about which case matches your shop.
Pricing on this site is built around usage (for example, from £0.35 per minute of connected voice — see pricing for current detail). If your inbound order calls average 3 minutes and you take 80 calls per week, that is about 240 minutes, i.e. rough usage of £84 per week at that illustrative rate — before any minimums, promotions, or taxes.
Some weeks are double that volume; some are half. Map your own busy periods rather than trusting a single headline number.
Next step: Book a demo with rough weekly call minutes, or join the waitlist. Read the UK AI phone agent checklist before you shortlist anyone.