Anqa Desk, from Anqa Systems
An AI receptionist that answers the calls you cannot.
Anqa Desk answers your phone when you are with a client, with a patient, on a job, or off the clock. It answers with your name, captures a proper intake, books into your calendar, transfers genuine emergencies, and emails you a summary after every call. It runs on the number you already use, inside an account opened in your name.
Free assessment first · Keep your existing number · The account is yours
The demonstration line
Call it before you read anything else.
The number below is a working Anqa Desk agent for Federal Hill HVAC, a heating company we invented for the purpose. We built that one first, and it is the honest thing to put in front of you today: the same platform, the same guardrails, the same build process we would run for your practice. What changes for a firm or a practice is the intake it captures and where it sends it.
(860) 845-6882Things worth trying:
- Ask it to book an appointment.
- Ask it a question it has no approved answer for, and listen to what it does.
- Tell it your situation is urgent and see how it escalates.
- Try to get it to quote you a price it was never given.
The problem
The people who would answer the phone are the people doing the work.
An attorney is in a deposition. A dentist is chairside. An electrician is under a panel. The call that comes in during that hour is a new matter, a new patient, or a new job, and it goes to voicemail because everyone who could take it is busy earning.
For a long time that is fine. Every good practice and every good shop runs this way at the start, and it carries them further than people expect. It stops working at a particular volume, and most owners recognize the point when they hear it described.
What makes it expensive is not the number of calls missed. It is what one of them is worth. A single new matter, a single new patient, a single panel replacement is worth more than a year of answering it properly. That maths is different in every business, which is why we would rather work it out with you than assert it here.
For context in the trades: in Invoca's 2026 home services benchmark, measured across more than seventy million calls, fifty two percent were answered by a human being, ranging from thirty two to seventy four percent by trade. We have not found a comparably rigorous figure for legal or dental intake, so we are not going to quote you one.
Ownership and billing
The account is opened in your name, and the platform bills you directly.
This is the part that makes Anqa Desk different from a subscription, and it is worth understanding before you compare prices.
- The platform account is opened in your business name, on your payment method. The provider bills you directly for usage, at their published rates, with no markup from us.
- The agent configuration, including every answer you approved it to give, belongs to you.
- Any phone number provisioned for you belongs to you.
- Your call recordings, transcripts and call history belong to you.
What you pay us is separate: a one-time fee to build it, and a monthly service agreement to manage it. We are not reselling you minutes and we are not marking up your platform bill. You will see exactly what the technology costs, because the invoice comes to you.
If our engagement ends, none of that changes. The agent keeps answering. You can manage it yourself, hand it to another provider, or continue with us. We will show you how it works long before you need to know.
It is worth checking this with anyone you consider, ourselves included. Most AI receptionist services are sold as subscriptions where the provider holds the account, and several state in their own terms that a number they issue remains their property and may be reassigned after cancellation. That is a legitimate way to sell software. It is simply worth knowing which one you are buying.
The question worth asking any provider, us included: if I stop, what do I keep?
How it works
What happens on a call.
- Your phone rings and nobody picks up.
Unanswered and after-hours calls forward to Anqa Desk. This is a setting on the carrier line you already have. It takes a few minutes to switch on and less to switch off.
- The agent answers with your name.
It states plainly that it is an automated assistant and tells the caller the call is recorded.
- It handles the call.
For a practice that means a structured intake: who is calling, what about, when it happened, how to reach them. For a service business it usually means booking the appointment while the caller is on the line. Either way it answers only from what you approved.
- It escalates what should be escalated.
Urgent calls transfer to a live number you nominate. What counts as urgent is defined by you, in your words, before it takes a single call.
- The record lands where you work.
A summary by email, and on Pro, the intake written into your practice management or CRM system so nobody retypes it.
The boundaries
What the agent stays inside.
- It does not give legal, clinical or technical advice. It captures what the caller describes and routes it to the person qualified to answer. This is a hard boundary in the build, not a matter of tone.
- It quotes the prices and terms you approved, and no others. Anything outside that becomes a message for you.
- It books time rather than promising an outcome, so nobody is waiting on a commitment you did not make.
- When it does not know, it says so, takes the details and tells you. It does not guess, because guessing is how a business ends up honoring something it never offered.
These are constraints written into the build, not instructions we hope it follows. The demonstration line is configured the same way, so you can test every one of them yourself before you talk to us.
Recording, privacy and confidentiality
What we can put in front of your compliance review.
Connecticut requires that all parties to a telephone call be informed before it is recorded. Anqa Desk says so in its first sentence, before the caller begins describing anything, on every call. It is not a setting we turn off.
Beyond that, what a practice needs is not reassurance but paperwork and settings. What is available:
- The voice platform is SOC 2 Type II certified, and the audit report is available to you as the account holder.
- It offers a Business Associate Agreement at no charge, signed directly with you, because the account is yours. A signed BAA is required before any protected health information moves through it.
- Personally identifying information can be redacted automatically from transcripts, recordings and logs.
- You set the retention period, from a single day upward, after which stored data is deleted.
We configure those settings as part of the build and we show you where they are, because they are yours to change. For a dental practice we will also walk the whole chain with you, including where call summaries are delivered, since a compliance review looks at every place the information lands and not only at the phone system. For a law firm the questions are different and we will answer them plainly, including the one about conflicts: the agent captures intake, and a person runs the conflict check before anyone becomes a client.
We are not a law firm and we are not your compliance officer. We will tell you what is configured, hand you the documentation, and expect your own counsel to review it.
Connecticut General Statutes section 52-570d. Read the full recording notice.
Comparison
What the alternatives cost.
| Option | Monthly cost | Answers after hours | Captures intake | Knows your business | Someone to call |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voicemail | $0 | Takes a message | No | No | No |
| Answering service | $349 to $720 | Yes | Basic message only | No | A call center |
| Legal intake service | $300 to $2,100 | Yes | Yes | Somewhat | An account team |
| Front desk hire | $18.27 an hour | No | Yes | Yes | During their hours |
| Self-serve AI tool | $29 to $99 | Yes | If you built it that way | Only what you typed in | A help desk |
| Anqa Desk plans | $77 to $327 all-in | Yes | Yes | Yes | A direct number |
Answering service pricing reflects published 200-minute plans from PATLive and Ruby. Legal intake pricing reflects Smith.ai's published plans, from $300 a month for 30 calls to $2,100 for 300. The hourly wage is the national median for receptionists, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025. Anqa figures are all-in at 200 minutes a month across the three plans, Line through Office: our service fee plus estimated platform usage, which is billed to you directly by the provider at their published rates.
Where it starts
The assessment is free.
Before anyone talks about building anything, we sit down with you and work out what is actually happening to your calls, and what it is costing you. You get that back as a written report with recommendations, and it is yours whether or not you ever hire us.
Sometimes the report says a phone system is the wrong answer and the problem is how work moves through your office. You will hear that from us. It is usually cheaper to fix and it lasts longer.
We ask for a short phone conversation first, so that we are not driving to your office to tell you something we could have told you in ten minutes. After that, the visit and the report cost nothing.
Pricing
What it costs.
Three plans, depending on how much of your shop the phone has to know about. Each one is a one-time build fee, an optional monthly service fee, and the platform bill that goes to you directly. Nothing else.
One truck, one line
Anqa Line
Built from our template for your trade and configured remotely. Answering calls this week. No site visit needed.
From $299 to build, then $49 a month, plus platform usage billed direct to you
See what Line does →A crew and a calendar
Anqa Desk
Built around how your shop actually runs. Books the job, routes the call to the right person, writes into your software.
From $999 to build, then $99 a month, plus platform usage billed direct to you
See what Desk does →More than one location
Anqa Office
The whole front office, not just the phone. Wired into the systems you run on, tuned every month against real calls.
From $2,500 to build, then $299 a month, plus platform usage billed direct to you
See what Office does →Anqa Enterprise. Contact for pricing. Multiple locations, several intake paths, integration work beyond a standard connector. There is no standard version of this, so there is no standard price, and you will have a fixed number before anything starts.
How the billing works. The build fee is one time. The monthly fee is optional, and it is a service agreement to manage your account: we hold the configuration, make the changes, watch what the agent is doing and answer when you call. You own the build either way, so if you would rather run it yourself you can, and you keep everything. Usage of the voice platform is billed to you directly by the provider, on your own payment method, at their published rates. We do not resell minutes and we do not mark up your platform bill.
Same volume, five ways to cover it. The three Anqa bars show both halves of what you would actually pay.
Legal intake pricing is Smith.ai's published Basic plan, 90 calls for $810. Answering service pricing is the published 200-minute plans from PATLive and Ruby, which run $349 to $720; the lower figure is shown. Anqa Desk platform usage is estimated from the voice provider's published per-minute rates and billed to you directly at those rates, not by us. Your actual usage will differ, and we will estimate it from your real call volume during the assessment.
What usage actually runs. We will show you the provider's rate card during the assessment and estimate your monthly usage from your real call volume, so you have both numbers before you agree to anything. Usage rises and falls with how busy you are, which is the honest shape of it: a month with more calls costs a little more, and you can see exactly why.
What the build fee covers. Writing the answers your agent is permitted to give and deciding with you what it must never say. Building the call flow and the escalation rules. Connecting your calendar or your practice management system. Configuring forwarding on your existing line. Then testing it against failure cases before it takes a real call from a real client.
Fit
Who this is for.
Any business where the phone is the front door and the people who would answer it are the people doing the billable work.
Law firms
Solo and small firms where a missed intake call is a missed matter. Practice-area screening, urgency handling for arrests and court dates, and intake written into Clio, MyCase or PracticePanther. The agent captures; a person runs the conflict check.
Dental and specialty practices
New patient calls, scheduling and after-hours triage, with the privacy configuration and the signed agreements your compliance review expects.
Trades and service businesses
Heating and air, plumbing, electrical, roofing. Booking while the caller is on the line, and a hard stop with instructions to leave the building if anyone reports smelling gas.
Property management
After-hours maintenance calls sorted from everything else, with genuine emergencies reaching a person and the rest waiting until Monday.
We are probably not the right fit if someone is at a front desk all day and calls are already being answered, if you would rather configure and run the software yourself, or if your volume runs past roughly five hundred calls a month. The first means you may not need this. For the second there are cheaper tools and we will point you at them. The third is a larger build than the prices above and worth a conversation.
Who builds it
Anqa Systems
Powered by over 30 years of business technology for both Business Operations and Go To Market/Sales.
The people who build your agent are the people who answer when something is wrong. There is no queue in between.
Every build starts in your office, watching how calls actually move through it. We write the answers your agent is permitted to give, in your words, and decide with you what it must never say. Then we test it against failure cases before it takes a real call from a real client.
If your phone is already being answered, or your volume is too low for this to pay for itself, we will say so in the assessment, at no cost to you.
Questions
What people ask.
- Whose account is it, and who bills me?
- The account is yours, opened in your business name on your payment method, and the platform bills you directly for usage at its published rates. We invoice you separately for the build and the monthly service agreement. If you stop working with us you keep the agent, the number and every recording in it.
- Why not just bundle it into one price?
- Because then you would not know what the technology costs, and we would have a reason to prefer the platform that pays us best. This way our incentive is to configure the cheapest thing that does the job well, and you can see that we did.
- What if this ends up costing about the same as a bundled service?
- Then you are paying the same money for a different deal. With a bundled provider, the account, the configuration and often the number sit on their side, and cancelling ends the service with nothing to hand back. Here you hold all of it. If you keep us, you keep us because the work is worth it, not because leaving would cost you the agent. That is worth something even when the arithmetic is a wash, and when the arithmetic is not a wash it is worth more.
- Do I have to change my phone number?
- No. Anqa Desk uses a setting on the carrier line you already have, called conditional call forwarding, which hands over only the calls nobody answered and those arriving after hours. Switching it on takes a few minutes. Switching it off takes less.
- Will my clients know it is not a person?
- They will know they are speaking to an automated assistant, because the agent says so in its first sentence. They will also know it is your office, because it answers with your name and says only what you approved. Being told plainly, at the start, is the whole design.
- Is it HIPAA compliant?
- The voice platform is, and it will sign a Business Associate Agreement with you at no charge, because the account is in your name. We configure the redaction and retention settings that agreement requires. Anqa Systems is not itself a certified anything, and we would rather tell you that than let you assume otherwise. Before you take a live patient call we will walk the whole chain with you, including where summaries are delivered, and your counsel should review it.
- Can it run a conflict check?
- No, and you should be wary of anyone who says theirs can. It captures the intake and flags it; a person runs the conflict check before anyone becomes a client.
- What happens when it does not know the answer?
- It says it does not know, takes the caller's details, and emails you while the call is still recent. It does not guess.
- Does it sound like a robot?
- Call the demonstration line and decide for yourself. It is the one question on this page we cannot answer for you.
- What if I want to stop?
- Thirty days notice on the service agreement. You keep the agent, the number and the account. There is nothing to unwind.
- Who do I call when something is wrong?
- Sean Bjers, directly, at (860) 261-0023. There is no queue and no portal. It is also why we take on a limited number of these at a time.
Contact
Call the agent. Then call us.
The first number is the demonstration line. The second is a direct line to the person who would build yours. The assessment after that costs nothing, and the account ends up in your name either way.