The one-page brief for your phone
Most businesses have never written down how their phone should be answered, which is why every person who does it answers differently. One page fixes it, and the same page works for a new starter, weekend cover, a stand-in during holidays, and anything automated.
Put these on it, in this order
The exact greeting. Not a description of the greeting — the words.
Written as you would say them aloud, not as your website phrases them.
A range and what moves it. This is the question people are least prepared for and it comes up most.
Discounts, timescales you cannot guarantee, prices for work nobody has seen. Being explicit here saves an argument later.
Take the details and say somebody will ring back within a stated time. Then whose job that is.
The short list of things worth pulling you out of a job for.
Write the awkward ones out in full
Anything you find uncomfortable to say should be written as an exact sentence rather than an instruction. "Ask for a deposit" produces six versions from six people, half of them apologetic enough to make the customer hesitate. The sentence you would actually use produces one version, and it is yours.
One page, not a manual
The constraint is the point. A two-page document is read once and filed; a single page stays by the phone and gets glanced at. If it will not fit, you are including things that belong in a process document rather than in a brief — the test is whether somebody could read it in the ninety seconds before the phone rings.
It is also the best briefing you can give software
Everything on that page is exactly what an automated assistant needs, in the same form: the greeting, the answers, the limits, the escalation rules. Businesses that have written this page set up in a fraction of the time and get better results, because the hard part was never the technology — it was deciding what should be said.
Frequently asked
The exact greeting, your five most common questions answered aloud, prices with caveats, what must never be promised, what to do with something unusual, and who to interrupt for what.
One page. The test is whether somebody could read it in the ninety seconds before the phone rings — a two-page version gets filed and never read.
Writing instructions instead of sentences. "Ask for a deposit" produces six different versions; the sentence you would actually use produces one.
It is the best possible starting point — the same greeting, answers, limits and escalation rules, in the same form. The hard part was always deciding what should be said.