San Francisco receptionist and admin wages sit well above the national average, and a full-time hire just to answer the phone rarely pencils out for a small practice or firm. FirstReply answers every call, day or night, on a local 415 or 628 number, hands the caller to you the moment they ask for a person, and books the appointment while they're still on the line.
San Francisco receptionists average close to $24 an hour and administrative assistants closer to $30, both meaningfully above the national numbers for the same job. Add payroll tax, benefits, and the fact that one person cannot cover nights, weekends, or a lunch break, and a lot of small practices and firms in the city let calls go to voicemail.
Same assistant everywhere, but what it asks and where it sends the call get set up around your practice, not pulled off a shelf.
The Civic Center Courthouse on McAllister Street and the firms clustered downtown run on intake calls that land after six. The assistant records what happened, when, and how to reach the caller, flags the urgent ones, and books the consultation. It never gives legal advice, quotes a fee, or says whether someone has a case.
Rent alone makes a dedicated front-desk hire a hard sell for a lot of San Francisco practices. Callers asking what you treat, what it costs, and whether you take their insurance get answered from your own uploaded documents instead of a hold queue.
Consultancies, agencies and service businesses packed into SoMa and the Mission run lean, and the person who would normally grab the phone is usually the same person billing hours to a client. The assistant takes the message and the calendar slot instead.
Instead of routing the caller through blind, it rings your cell, states who is on the line and what they need, and waits for you to pick up before connecting anyone. You get forty-five seconds. If that lands on your own voicemail, the assistant reclaims the call.
Under Penal Code 632, a California caller has to be told before a call gets recorded. That's baked into how the system works: recording is off by default and only runs for clients who choose it, and choosing it means a spoken heads-up plays first. What you get afterward, recorded or not, is the call typed out in full, plus a quick summary.
IG Digital Lab is at 3550 Watt Ave, Suite 408 in Sacramento. What a caller hears is a local 415 or 628 number and a warm transfer to your cell, and the setup, price and support stay the same wherever in the city your business sits.
It's ours. We run it live so an SF firm can hear what a custom assistant does before paying an admin's day rate for a full-time hire.
Typical build cost for a single connected assistant: your phone, your CRM, your calendar. Priced after a free audit, not a menu.
Optional ongoing care once it's live. You can skip it and the assistant keeps running.
The audit. We look at your current setup before quoting anything.
Multiple SF locations change the scope, so that gets priced after the audit too. The line in the header is the best way to judge it.
We are at 3550 Watt Ave, Suite 408 in Sacramento. Your callers reach a local 415 or 628 number and get a warm transfer to your cell, and the price is the same as for any other city we serve, so no San Francisco address is involved.
Yes. We can provision a 415 or 628 number, the two area codes that have shared San Francisco and Marin County since the 2015 overlay, so ten-digit dialing already matches what your callers expect. Or forward your existing number to us and keep what is already on your signage.
Not without agreement from everyone on the line, under Penal Code 632. That's exactly why recording isn't automatic: each client decides whether their number records calls, and if they say yes, a spoken notice runs before the recording starts. Either way, the conversation gets typed out and summarized for you afterward.
Because the alternative costs more here than almost anywhere else. A San Francisco receptionist averages roughly $24 an hour and an administrative assistant closer to $30, both above the national figures for the same role, before payroll tax, benefits, or the nights and weekends one person cannot cover. Worth hearing what a custom build could do for your line before you commit to a hire.
FirstReply itself isn't for sale; it's our own line, kept running so you can call it and judge it. What an SF firm can buy is a custom build for their own number, priced after a free audit: a single connected assistant, wired to your phone, CRM and calendar, typically runs $2,500 to $6,000, with optional ongoing care after launch at $300 to $500 a month. More than one location gets quoted after the audit.
Call the number in the header and listen first. Then tell us how your phone gets answered today and we'll audit it for free.
Elsewhere in California: Sacramento · Roseville · San Jose · Los Angeles · San Diego
Tell us how your calls get answered today. We'll look at your setup and tell you what a build like this would take for your business. Fifteen minutes on the phone, no obligation.