Does it work with my existing number?

Forwarding is a feature of the phone line you already have, not something GreetKeeper installs. Every carrier supports it, and you switch it on from your account or by dialing a short code.

That means you can turn the whole thing off in about a minute if you change your mind. Nothing about your number has moved.

It also means your number keeps working exactly as it does now for everything else. Outbound calls, texts, the listing on Google, all unchanged.

Unconditional forwarding sends every call straight through. Businesses with no front desk use this, and so does anyone who wants the assistant to be the first voice on every call.

Busy-or-no-answer forwarding sends calls only when your line is engaged or rings out. Practices with a receptionist use this: the human answers when they can, and the assistant catches the overflow.

Time-based forwarding switches at set hours. The office answers nine to five and the assistant takes evenings, weekends and lunch.

You can change your mind whenever you like. Most people start with no-answer forwarding for a week, read the transcripts, then decide whether to send everything.

Say your plumbing company has collected three numbers over fifteen years. The local landline is painted on both trucks. A toll-free number survives from an old directory ad. There's also a call-tracking number on your Google Ads, so you can see which calls the ads produced.

Each one is handled at a different place. The landline forwards from your phone company, by star code or in the online account. Your toll-free number is managed by whichever provider hosts it, and its dashboard has a setting for where calls ring. The tracking number already forwards to your landline, so it needs nothing: those calls arrive at the landline and follow whatever the landline does.

By the end of the afternoon all three reach the assistant, and none of them has changed. The trucks, the fridge magnets and the ads are still correct.

The usual snag is access. Forwarding gets set by the account holder, and for a surprising number of small businesses that's a former partner, a relative who set up the phones in 2014, or the marketing agency that bought the tracking number. Get the login, or get the person, before you book an hour to set things up.

Check what your plan allows. Nearly every carrier supports forwarding, but a few prepaid mobile plans restrict the no-answer kind, and some bundled business lines only expose it through a support call. A five-minute chat with the carrier settles it.

Know what doesn't forward, too. Text messages sent to your number stay on your phone or in your carrier's app, because call forwarding only moves voice calls. If customers text that number today, they still can, and you'll still be the one reading those.

Porting is a separate decision you don't have to make. Should you ever want to move the number to another carrier, that's between you and the carriers, and the forward gets set up again on the new line in a few minutes.

GreetKeeper gives you a forwarding number and the exact steps for your carrier. Setting it up is a few minutes at the phone, not an engineering project.

Caller ID passes through, so you see who rang and the transcript carries the number.

If you ever stop, you cancel the forward at your carrier and your line returns to whatever it did before.