How do I forward my business number to an AI receptionist and keep my number?

You keep your number. You set up one forwarding step: on a cell or landline you dial a short code from that phone, and on a cable or VoIP line you switch on forwarding in your provider's portal. Then you choose who picks up: your phone first, the receptionist on every call, or the receptionist only after hours.

When we read through owner comments this fall, the same worry kept coming up: my number is my business. It's on the truck, the invoices, the yard signs and the Google listing. Nobody wants to hand that over to a piece of software, and you don't have to.

Your customers keep dialing the number they already have, and your line forwards the calls you choose to the receptionist. You set that up once. To hear what's on the other end first, call Max on the landing page. It answers as a made-up shop and needs no account.

Will I lose my business number if I use an AI receptionist?

No. Nothing a customer sees changes. They call the number on your truck, your phone company forwards the call, and the receptionist answers in your shop's name. Your estimates and invoices carry the phone number from your Swivl company profile, so fill that in with the number you already use and it stays the only one customers ever see.

Swivl gives the receptionist its own number to forward to, with no monthly number fee. You never hand that one out. If you stop paying, it keeps answering to the end of the period you already paid for. Drop to the free Starter plan instead and it stops answering that day. Either way Swivl holds the receptionist number for thirty days, so if you switch the receptionist back on you get the same one and your forwarding still points to it.

Which calls should I forward: the ones I miss or all of them?

Phone companies give you two kinds of forwarding. Conditional forwarding, also called forward on no answer, rings your phone first and sends the call on only if you don't pick up. Unconditional forwarding sends every call straight through, and your phone never rings.

Most shops want the first kind. You still take the calls you can take, and the ones you'd have missed under a sink or on a roof go to the receptionist instead of voicemail. Unconditional makes sense for a day you know you can't answer, a holiday week, or a number you only use for new work. The last code you dial wins, so you can switch back and forth.

Inside Swivl there's a second switch that decides what the receptionist does with the calls it gets. Ring me first lets your own phone ring and has the receptionist step in only when nobody answers. Answer every call has it pick up right away. Only after hours keeps the shop phone yours during the hours you set and hands it nights and weekends. You can change it whenever you like.

When I ran the plumbing company, I answered the phones myself most of the time in the early days. That meant during dinner, during church and in my sleep, and it couldn't last without me losing my sanity. When we got bigger we passed an on-call phone around. Thirty percent of the time the person holding it missed the call because they were asleep or didn't answer.

So we hired an after-hours answering service. It answered every call, sales calls and people looking for jobs included, and it was very expensive. I wish I'd had something like this back then. I would have saved a ton of money.

If you can answer like Sara, keep doing it. Ring me first is built for owners like her: the receptionist only covers the calls that land while you're asleep or on a ladder. Her full interview is on Swivl Sessions.

One thing you can't set in Swivl is how many rings happen before your carrier forwards. T-Mobile lets you pick the delay, from 5 to 30 seconds. Swivl's forwarding guide puts Verizon at three to six rings and most landlines at about four, with no way to change it. If you want the receptionist to pick up sooner than your carrier allows, forward every call and let it answer first.

What code do I dial to forward my calls?

On a cell phone or a traditional landline, you dial a code from the phone you're forwarding, then the receptionist's 10-digit number. Wait for the confirmation tone before you hang up. Nothing shows on the screen afterward, which is why the test call at the end matters. These are the codes from each carrier's own support page, checked October 22, 2026.

AT&T wireless plans take different codes from AT&T Digital Phone, and other local phone companies have their own. You don't need to look any of this up. Setup asks for your carrier, gives you the code for your line and texts it to your phone so you can dial it from the handset. If a code gets refused, stop trying variations. The line is probably VoIP.

How do I forward a cable or VoIP business line?

If your phone came with your internet, or your line lives in an app, there's usually no code to dial. Forwarding is a setting in the account you sign in to. Spectrum Business, RingCentral, Vonage, 8x8, Ooma and Nextiva all work this way. The label changes from one to the next: Call Handling, Call Forwarding, or Find Me / Follow Me. The setting you want is the one that forwards when a call goes unanswered. On RingCentral, set the receptionist to ring after your own phones, not at the same time. Swivl's carrier-by-carrier forwarding guide has the menu path for each.

How do I know the forwarding worked?

Call your business number from a different phone and let it ring through. You should hear your receptionist answer. Swivl runs this test for you at the end of setup with a button called Check It Works: it calls your line, and if the receptionist picks up, you're connected. Don't skip it. A forwarding code that quietly failed looks exactly like a slow week.

To turn forwarding off, dial the off code from the table or flip the switch back in your portal. You can also pause the receptionist inside Swivl for an hour, until tomorrow, or until you turn it back on, without touching your carrier. While it's paused or unavailable, calls go to your backup number or voicemail, never a dead line.

Swivl's setup walkthrough for the AI receptionist at an example shop: name and voice, prices and service area, when it answers, then Forward My Line, where you pick your carrier, dial the code Swivl gives you (for example *72 plus the receptionist's number) and press Check It Works. Jump to forwarding at 1:59.

What else do I set up before it answers my customers?

Forwarding is the part that touches your phone company. The rest happens in Swivl and takes a few minutes.

• A name and a voice. There are 26 voices, including bilingual English and Spanish ones that switch when the caller does.
• Your services and prices. It quotes only what you switched on in your price book, always says the final price gets confirmed on site, and offers to send someone out for anything you haven't priced.
• Your hours and service area, read from your Swivl profile, and answers to the questions customers ask most, written your way.
• Who it transfers to. Urgent calls like a burst pipe after hours go down your emergency list in the order you set. A caller who smells gas gets told to call 911, and then you get the call.
• Texting. Missed-call text back and texting customers start once your number is registered for business messaging. Setup walks you through it, and carriers take a few days to approve it.

Get that transfer list right before you need it. One missed call got us kicked off a big municipal contract with Gwinnett County that we'd worked really hard to win. They had a backflow issue at night, and their on-call maintenance guys called us. The call went through our answering service to our on-call person, who didn't answer, and the county had to close down an aquatic center. That was definitely our fault for not picking up the phone, and it was about a million-dollar phone call.

Afterward we set up a waterfall so someone answered no matter what: the on-call person, then the next person, then the next, and finally me. Your emergency list in Swivl works in that same order you set. Answering the phone is not optional if you want to grow your business.

A 30-second Swivl ad with AI-generated footage: a plumber at fictional Ridgeline Plumbing gets hit by a cleanout just as his best customer calls. Swivl's AI receptionist answers in the shop's name, books her kitchen-sink clog on his schedule and texts her the estimate.

What does the AI receptionist cost once it's forwarded?

It runs on the Growth plan, $49 a month, with no contract. Growth includes 1,500 credits a month, and a call costs 10 credits a minute, only while the receptionist is on the line. That works out to about 150 minutes of calls if calls are all you spend credits on. Texts and AI estimates draw on the same allowance. Spam calls are never billed, and the receptionist number has no monthly fee.

New accounts get 14 days on Scale Pro, which includes the receptionist, so you can forward your line and hear it answer real calls before you pay anything. The office side of Swivl is free on every plan: unlimited users, estimates, invoices and scheduling, plus the mobile app. Start free here, and see every plan on the pricing page.

More on the choice itself: answering services for contractors and what missed calls cost a shop.