A brokerage where every caller hit one shared line and one person had to know who they needed

The firm is a group of independent advisors who each run their own book, plus a small central team, all sharing one front line. Every call landed on the receptionist, who had to figure out in a few seconds who the caller actually needed, route them to the right advisor, take a message when no one was free, and buzz in whoever showed up at the door. The role carried real weight: client information is confidential, and nobody at the desk is allowed to give advice or answer a coverage question on the spot.

Then the receptionist gave notice. The firm faced either rehiring and retraining for a seat that is hard to keep filled, or running a front desk that drops calls and frustrates clients during the gap. Their lease even required a staffed reception, so simply going dark was not an option.

We mapped how calls actually move through the office before automating anything: who gets what kind of caller, when a message is fine versus when someone needs a live person, and the cases that should never be handled by a script. Then we built a voice agent that answers the shared line, identifies what the caller needs, and routes them to the right advisor or takes a structured message, all without ever offering advice.

The design is deliberately hybrid. After a caller loops twice without getting where they need to go, a real person steps in so no one is stuck talking to a machine, and every edge case that comes up gets folded back into the flow. A reception tablet handles in-person arrivals the same way, greeting visitors and pointing them to the right advisor, so the physical desk stays covered even with no one sitting at it. Routing rules and call scripts are configurable per advisor, because each one wants their calls handled a little differently.

The shared line now gets answered in seconds at any hour, callers reach the right advisor on the first try instead of being relayed by hand, and routine messages are captured in a structured form rather than scribbled on a pad. The firm kept its front desk running through the receptionist's departure without scrambling to rehire, and the central team stopped being interrupted to cover the phone.

What is left for a person is the judgment: the off-script calls and the handful of situations that genuinely need a human, not answering and relaying every call that comes in. The desk costs a fraction of a full-time seat to keep covered, and the lease's staffed-reception requirement is met by the tablet at the door.