My front desk person just quit — how do I cover the phones?

First, stop the bleeding today: get something answering the line — call forwarding to a designated phone, an answering service, or an AI receptionist — before you write the job posting. Hiring a good front-desk person takes weeks; your phone starts losing customers the first hour it rings unanswered. The callers don’t know you’re short-staffed, and the research on missed calls is unambiguous about what they do next: most won’t leave a voicemail, and most will simply call a competitor.

Today: triage

Forward the line somewhere a human can sometimes answer, and put an automatic missed-call text-back on everything that rings out (“We’re briefly short-staffed — text us what you need and we’ll respond fast”). Update your voicemail greeting to say the same. This costs almost nothing and converts silent hang-ups into conversations you can answer between tasks.

This week: a real bridge

Forwarding to the owner’s cell collapses fast — you’re now interrupting your own billable work every hour. The sustainable bridge is answering help: a staffed service or an AI receptionist configured with your hours, services, booking rules, and an urgent-call handoff to your cell. Modern AI setups can be live quickly, speak English and Spanish, and book directly into your calendar — which matters, because during a vacancy the bookings are exactly what you can’t afford to drop. Whichever you choose, give it a one-page brief: top ten questions callers ask, what to book, what to escalate.

When you rehire: keep the net

The vacancy often shows something uncomfortable: even when the desk was staffed, one human was never covering lunch, rushes, both lines, and after-hours. When the new hire starts, consider keeping the backup for overflow — the human takes everything they can, the net catches the rest. You’ll also never again be one resignation letter away from an unanswered phone.