Hiring a receptionist vs an AI answering service: what makes sense for a small plumbing firm?
Daan van den Bergh
If the main reason you want a receptionist is that the phone gets answered, an AI answering service covers that job for a fraction of the cost, including the hours a 40-hour employee is off. Hire a person when you need someone running the office, with the phone as one part of it.
The numbers below are worked through Dutch employment law, so your own country's floors will differ.
What does hiring a receptionist cost in the Netherlands?
About €33,700 a year in wages and holiday pay for an adult on 40 hours a week at the statutory minimum wage, before you pay a single employer premium. That figure is a floor I built from the statutory rules, nothing else:
- Wages. The Dutch minimum wage for employees aged 21 or older is €14.99 an hour gross from 1 July 2026. At that rate, forty hours a week for 52 weeks comes to €31,179.20.
- Holiday allowance. The government's page on holiday pay says someone on the minimum wage is always entitled to 8% holiday allowance over their wage. On €31,179.20 that is €2,494.34.
Together that makes €33,673.54 a year, or about €2,806 a month. That is the statutory minimum for an adult. Your sector can set a higher one: the collective agreement for the Technisch Installatiebedrijf, declared generally binding up to and including 31 January 2028, covers employers who install and repair water, gas, sanitary and central-heating installations. Its function handbook places receptionists and telephonists in function groups 4 and 5, where monthly pay from 1 March 2026 starts at €2,857 and €2,914 gross. If your firm falls under it, budget from those scales.
Employer premiums come on top. The Belastingdienst's table of 2026 rates lists, among others, a 6.10% employer's levy under the Zvw, the Dutch health insurance act, and an unemployment-fund (AWf) premium of 2.74% or 7.74%.
Then there is sick pay. Under article 7:629 of the Dutch Civil Code, an employee who is off sick keeps 70% of their wage (up to a statutory daily maximum) for up to 104 weeks, and for the first 52 of those weeks no less than the minimum wage. For a receptionist on the minimum wage, that floor means their full wage for the first year of an illness - and the desk sits empty unless you pay someone else as well.
How many hours does one receptionist actually cover?
On a 40-hour contract, roughly 1,920 of the year's 8,760 hours, about 22%. Forty hours for 52 weeks is 2,080 paid hours, and article 7:634 gives an employee paid for the full year holiday of at least four times their weekly hours, which here is 160. Any sick days come off what is left.
The other 78% falls outside their working week: nights and weekends, plus the weeks they are away. A boiler that packs up on a Saturday evening rings in one of those hours, and unless you pick up yourself, it lands in your voicemail. What you'd charge for that work is its own question, covered in pricing out-of-hours plumbing cover.
Even inside office hours, a receptionist is one person with one ear. While they talk a customer through a quote, the next caller waits or hangs up. SwiftGuard's Starter plan answers 3 callers at the same time, Pro answers 6.
A receptionist on a 40-hour contract is at the desk for roughly 1,920 of the year's 8,760 hours. The phone can ring in any of them.
What does an AI answering service cost instead?
€69, €199 or €449 a month ex VAT: those are SwiftGuard's three plans, with 150, 350 and 1,000 call minutes a month. Twelve months of Starter on monthly billing come to €828 ex VAT, about 2.5% of the roughly €33,700 wage floor above; twelve months of Pro, €2,388 ex VAT, are about 7% of it.
SwiftGuard is an AI receptionist: like an answering service, it picks up your calls, 24/7, in your company's name, and it takes the caller's details and books the job into your calendar while they are still on the line.
| Receptionist (40 hours, Dutch minimum wage) | AI answering service (SwiftGuard Starter) | |
|---|---|---|
| Yearly cost | About €33,700 in wages and holiday pay, before employer premiums | €828 ex VAT on monthly billing |
| Hours on the phone | Roughly 1,920 a year | 24/7, every day |
| Callers at once | One | Three |
| Off sick | 70% of wages for up to 104 weeks, at least the minimum wage in the first 52 | Not applicable |
| What it does | Whatever office work you train them for, plus the phone | Books the job into your connected Google Calendar, or takes a message when it can't help |
| Limits | Their contract hours | 150 call minutes a month, each call up to 10 minutes |
The minutes are the limit to plan around. There are no per-minute overage charges, and the included minutes are a hard cap, so size the plan to your busiest month rather than your average one.
When is a receptionist still the better hire?
When there is an office to run. An AI answers calls and books jobs; a person can also chase unpaid invoices, order parts for tomorrow, sort the post and open the door when a customer drops off a key. If that work already fills most of a week, the phone is one more task on a hire you would make anyway.
A person is also better, in my view, with what a booking flow leaves out: the caller who is upset and wants to be heard, the regular who expects you to remember their boiler, the request that fits no category. SwiftGuard's agent takes a message when a call falls outside what it can do, so those calls still reach you - as a callback, not a conversation.
There is a third option between the two, a human answering service that charges a monthly fee plus a price per call, and we compared it with an AI on cost and hours in answering service vs AI receptionist.
Do you need a receptionist, or just your calls answered?
Write down what the receptionist would do all week besides the phone. If the list fills the hours, hire the person, and send the calls they cannot take to an AI: conditional call forwarding passes on only the calls that don't get through to the desk, and on a mobile number setting it up takes two short dial codes. SwiftGuard answers every call or only the ones you miss, whichever you set up.
If the list is mostly the phone, the cheaper answer is the one that never clocks off. Before you spend anything, count how many calls you are missing, then compare the plans against a year of wages.