What does it actually cost to answer one customer inquiry? Receptionist vs VA vs AI (2026 numbers)

Answering one inquiry costs about $10 with a human answering service, a share of $18.27 an hour with a receptionist, and $10 to $35 an hour with a virtual assistant, but the number that decides whether it was worth it is cost per booking. Smith.ai charges $300 a month for 30 calls (retrieved 1 October 2026)³; the BLS median receptionist wage is $38,010 a year before benefits⁴. At 30 inquiries and a 20% booking rate, $10 per call is $50 per booking. If only 10% book, it is $100. Twelve dated prices and the calculator follow.

What did owners find when the first bill arrived?#

The clearest record of what answering an inquiry costs is not on the pricing pages. It sits in reviews, written by owners on the day a bill surprised them.

On 4 June 2026, an owner who had tried the AI phone service My AI Front Desk posted a one-line account on Trustpilot. "I signed up for the 7-day trial, which required a credit card. On day 8, I was charged $299."¹ Other reviewers on the same page describe paying for an annual plan upfront and then disputing refunds. The tool may have answered calls well. The owner was still counting the wrong thing on the wrong day.

Years earlier, in October 2019, a five-star reviewer of Smith.ai on G2 had put the unit problem in one sentence: "Many of my calls are short and smith.ai charges per call."² The reviewer liked the service. The price unit did not match the work. A thirty-second wrong number cost the same as a twenty-minute intake.

On 5 March 2026, an event planning company reviewing Podium on Trustpilot described the other kind of cost, the one that never appears on an invoice: "we were not receiving the responses clients were sending back to us"¹⁴. The tool was billing. Replies from customers were going somewhere the owner could not see.

Each review is one owner's account and none of them describes a whole service. Together they show three ways the price of an inquiry goes wrong: the unit, the contract, and the gap between what is paid for and what reaches the owner.

How much does a receptionist, a VA or an answering service cost in 2026?#

The prices below were checked against each provider's page or a dated third-party breakdown, and they cover the main ways a small business pays someone or something to answer an inquiry. Phone services are included because their per-call prices are the market's reference point for "answering one contact", even though written inquiries are a different job.

Two facts stand out. Only the last row charges for a signed client, and it is limited to law firms. Every other row charges whether the inquiry books or not.

Why does the per-call price mislead a small business?#

The per-call price misleads because it measures the contact, and the owner is paying for the booking. The two diverge in three predictable places.

Short and junk contacts. The G2 reviewer's complaint was that short calls cost the same as long ones². Ruby's minute plans have the opposite issue: billing in 60-second increments, rounded up⁶, makes every short call cost a full minute. Either way, a wrong number or a vendor pitch is billed like a customer.

Add-ons that are the actual job. On Smith.ai's Starter plan, the base $10 covers answering. Booking the appointment is $1.50 more, and a text or email follow-up is $0.50 more³. With both, each call is $12.00; with recording too, $12.25. Booking and following up are the parts that turn a contact into revenue, and they are priced as extras.

Follow-up nobody buys. The add-on covers one follow-up message on the call. It does not cover the inquiry that goes quiet for four days after a quote. Pied Piper's 2026 mystery-shop study of 3,211 home-services inquiries found 72% received no follow-up at all, and only 28% were offered a time¹⁵. Paying per contact buys the first answer. The money is usually lost after it.

How do you work out cost per booking?#

Cost per booking divides what you spend answering inquiries by the bookings those inquiries produced, and it includes the owner time that the option leaves behind. The worksheet below uses four inputs you can read from your last 90 days.

INPUTS (from your last 90 days, divided by 3)
A  Inquiries per month:                              ____
B  Share that book (bookings / inquiries):           ____ %
C  Owner hourly value (your rate, or what an hour of
   your time is worth to the business):              $ ____

PER OPTION
D  Fixed monthly cost (plan, wage share, base fee):  $ ____
E  Per-inquiry charges (calls, chats, add-ons) x A:  $ ____
F  Owner minutes still needed per inquiry
   (follow-ups, checking, fixing) x A / 60 x C:      $ ____
G  Per-booking fees x (A x B):                       $ ____

TOTAL MONTHLY COST  T = D + E + F + G
BOOKINGS            K = A x B
COST PER BOOKING    T / K

CHECK: re-run with B halved. Options priced per
contact or per hour double their cost per booking.
Options priced per booking do not.

What does the calculator show for a typical service business?#

The worked example below is an illustration, not a customer. Illustration A photography studio receives 30 inquiries a month and books 20% of them, so 6 bookings. The owner values an hour at $100. Phone prices are applied as if each inquiry were one call, which flatters them for written inquiries that need several messages.

Prices from the table above. Minutes per inquiry, hourly value and VA hours are assumptions; replace them with yours. A receptionist does far more than answer inquiries, so the last row overstates the inquiry share.

The table hides one cost that the review record makes visible. None of the phone options answer email, contact forms or marketplace lead emails, and the VA covers only paid hours. The studio owner still answers the Saturday-night inquiry, so line F in the calculator is never zero.

Which pricing unit matches what you are buying?#

The pricing unit should move with the result you want, and for an owner-run service business that result is a booking or an accepted quote. Each unit in the market rewards something else.

• Per hour (VA, receptionist) rewards time spent. You pay for slow weeks and for evenings nobody covers.
• Per call, chat or minute (answering services) rewards contact volume. Junk contacts cost the same as buyers.
• Per seat or plan (Podium, Goodcall) rewards commitment. Annual terms move the risk to you.
• Per outcome (Fin) rewards a closed conversation, which is not always a solved one.
• Per converted client (Clio Grow AI) rewards the result itself, and is the closest match, though only for law firms.

For a closer comparison of what each option does with the inquiry after the first answer, see VA vs AI receptionist vs AI inquiry handler. For the value of the inquiries you are paying to answer, the Lost Inquiry Calculator uses the same inputs.

The playbook: what to check before you pay anyone to answer#

1. Count, then divide. Pull 90 days of inquiries and bookings. Your own booking rate matters more than any table here.
2. Price the add-ons that do the job. Booking and follow-up are the revenue steps. Put them in line E, not in a footnote.
3. Read the contract page, not the plan page. Note the term, notice period and trial terms in writing before you enter a card.
4. Find who answers the written channels. Email, contact forms and marketplace lead emails need a named owner, or line F stays high.
5. Run the halved-booking check. If halving your booking rate doubles the cost per booking, you carry all the risk of a slow month.

Where Valet fits#

Valet answers written inquiries: email, website contact forms, listing and marketplace lead emails, and requests on your free Valet page. It answers from your own price list, packages, calendar and policies, offers real times and books them, and follows up at most twice by default with something useful each time. Pricing during early access is a small monthly base plus a fee only for bookings or quotes Valet wins, capped monthly, month to month. To see what your current inquiries cost before choosing anything, start with the free lead check: forward 10 to 20 recent inquiries and see what went unanswered, what stopped after one reply, and what it was worth.