Pick the channels your customers actually use.

Website chat and voice are usually live within a week or two. Those are the quickest because they don't depend on anyone else's approval process.

WhatsApp is the slow one. It runs on Meta's official WhatsApp Business Platform, and Meta has to verify your business before you can send anything. That verification typically takes a few days, but can stretch to a couple of weeks if documents need resubmitting — and that part is genuinely outside our control.

If you want everything live at once, plan for about three weeks. If you want something working next week, we'll start with website chat and add the rest as approvals come through.

For WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger — yes, eventually. But you don't need to have it ready before we start.

Most small businesses we work with either don't have one, or have one somebody set up years ago and nobody can remember the login. Either is fine. We'll walk you through creating or recovering it on the onboarding call, and we'll do the technical connection ourselves once you've granted access.

What we can't do is create it for you — Meta requires the business owner to do that part, and rightly so.

Meta verifies that your business is real before letting an automated system message people on WhatsApp. It's their anti-spam measure, and on balance it's a good thing — it's part of why customers trust WhatsApp messages from businesses.

You'll typically need your registered business name and address, your website, and a document showing the business exists — a Companies House record, a utility bill in the business name, or a business bank statement.

We'll tell you exactly what to submit and check it over before you send it, because a rejected submission adds a week.

Usually not the one you're using day to day, no. A number can only be registered to one WhatsApp service at a time, so if your mobile is already on WhatsApp Business or personal WhatsApp, using that same number would mean losing access to it on your phone.

Most clients use a second number for this — either a new one we provide, or a spare line the business already has. If you genuinely want to migrate your main number across, that's possible, but it's a bigger conversation and we'd talk it through properly first.

Three things: your Instagram account needs to be a Professional account rather than a personal one, it needs to be linked to a Facebook Page, and that Page needs to sit inside a Meta Business account.

Switching to a Professional account takes about thirty seconds in the Instagram app and doesn't change anything your followers see. If you're already running ads or using Instagram Insights, you're almost certainly set up already.

No, and please don't. Meta has a proper partner access system — you grant us specific permissions on your Business account, and you can revoke them at any time without changing a single password.

Same for your calendar. You authorise the connection through Google or Microsoft directly, and you can disconnect it whenever you want.

If anyone in this industry asks for your actual passwords, that's a reason to be cautious.

You've got two options, and we'll recommend one based on how you work.

Divert: your existing number stays exactly as it is, and you set it to forward to your agent when you don't pick up within a few rings, or outside opening hours. Nothing changes for your customers and you can switch it off any time. This is what most clients choose.

New number: we give you a fresh UK number for the agent to answer, which you can use on your website, adverts or Google listing. Useful if you want to see exactly how much business the agent is handling.

1 — Discovery call (45 minutes). We go through how enquiries reach you now, what your customers usually ask, how you want bookings handled, and when a real person should be brought in.

2 — Access and accounts. We send you a short checklist of what we need and help you sort anything missing. This is where Meta verification starts, if you're having WhatsApp.

3 — We build and train it. We train your agent on your services, prices, tone and process, and build the conversation flows — what it asks, what it books, when it escalates.

4 — You test it. We give you a private version to try before any customer sees it. Message it, ring it, try to catch it out. We adjust until you're happy.

5 — Go live. We switch it on and watch the first few days closely, tweaking as real conversations come in.

A flow is just what the agent does in a given situation — someone asks about availability, it checks the calendar and offers slots; someone describes an emergency, it takes the details and alerts you straight away.

You don't design them. You tell us how you'd want it handled and we build it. On the discovery call we'll ask things like: what's the most common question you get? What would you never want a bot to answer? What counts as urgent enough to interrupt you?

Then we build it, you test it, and we change anything that doesn't feel right.

It hands over. We agree the escalation rules during setup — some businesses want anything unusual passed straight to a person, others are happy for the agent to take a message and flag it.

Either way the customer gets a clear, polite response rather than being stuck in a loop, and you get the full conversation so you can pick it up knowing exactly what was said.

Realistically, around two to three hours in total, spread across a couple of weeks. The 45-minute discovery call, half an hour or so sorting account access, and an hour testing it before go-live.

Everything else is our side. We'd rather ask you a few more questions upfront than build something that doesn't sound like your business.

Then start with voice. It needs none of it — just a phone number and a conversation with us about how you work.

Plenty of the businesses we work with are strongest on the phone and barely touch social media. That's completely fine, and it's why the plans start with a single channel rather than forcing you to take all five.