Us, or another pair of hands?
The real competitor to automation is usually a person. Here is the arithmetic without a thumb on the scale, including the parts that favour hiring.
What a part-time receptionist actually costs
Twenty hours a week at a realistic London rate. Figures are indicative and you should check them against your own payroll.
| Part-time receptionist | W2 Systems | |
|---|---|---|
| Gross pay | ~£15,600 a year20 hrs/week at £15/hr | — |
| Employer National Insurance and pension | ~£2,400 a year | — |
| Build or recruitment | £500–£2,000 onceadvertising, time, training | a fraction of it |
| Running cost | — | a fraction of itplus AI usage at cost, typically £5–£20 |
| Hours covered | 20 a week | 168 a week |
| Holiday, sickness, notice | Statutory, and you cover the gap | None |
| Roughly, year one | £18,500–£20,000 | a fraction of it |
Rates checked against typical London part-time administrative pay in 2026. Employer National Insurance and auto-enrolment pension are estimates; your accountant will have the exact figures.
Hire the person if any of these are true
Hire someone
a person wins here
- The job is mostly in the room: greeting people, handling keys, making coffee, chasing a contractor down the corridor
- Your enquiries are genuinely complex or emotional every time
- You want someone who spots what nobody asked for
- You are growing and need capacity you can point at other work next month
- Under about fifteen calls or messages a week, the maths simply does not justify a build
Automate it
where we win
- The same twenty questions arrive every week and the answers are in a sheet
- The volume is spiky: quiet all morning, then eight calls during service
- Your problem is evenings, weekends and the hours nobody is paid to cover
- You already have staff and they are being interrupted rather than under-occupied
- You want the same answer given the same way every single time
The best answer for most businesses our size is both. The automation takes the repetitive eighty per cent, and the person you already employ gets their afternoon back to do the work that actually needs them. We have never yet built something whose purpose was to make someone redundant, and we would tell you if that is what you were asking for.
Next stepTwenty minutes on the phone. Then a straight answer.
Tell us what you keep doing by hand. We'll tell you which workflow pays back first, what it costs, and whether it's worth doing at all. If it isn't, we say so.