Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you sign up through one, Adapting Services may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Each affiliate link is labelled where it appears. We only recommend tools we think fit the problem, and we say plainly who each one is not for. Features and prices were checked on each vendor's own website on 19 October 2026 and can change, so check current pricing before you buy.

Every missed call is a customer deciding whether to try you again or try the next business on the list. Plenty won't leave a voicemail. The same goes for the visitor on your website at 9 p.m. with a quick question and no way to ask it.

For businesses with 10 to 200 people, the problem is rarely laziness. The phone rings while the office manager is with a customer, the owner's cell is the "main line", and website enquiries land in an inbox nobody checks on weekends. This guide covers two tools that help: KrispCall for calls and texts, and Tidio for website chat. It also explains when you don't need either.

Start by counting what you're missing

Before buying anything, spend one week tracking:

How many calls go unanswered, and at what times of day.
Who answers the phone when the usual person is busy (often nobody).
The 10 questions customers ask most often, by phone or email.
How many website enquiries arrive after hours, and how long they wait for a reply.

If your missed calls cluster at lunch or after 4 p.m., the fix might be a call-routing rule rather than a new hire. If the same 10 questions take up hours every week, that's a good case for chat with saved replies.

KrispCall: a business phone system that routes calls to the right people

KrispCall

KrispCall is a cloud phone system. Your team makes and takes business calls and texts from a browser or mobile app instead of desk phones or personal cells. Based on KrispCall's pricing page, the features most relevant to missed calls are:

Multi-level IVR ("press 1 for service, 2 for sales"), which sends callers to the right person or team.
Voicemail, call hold music and greetings, so callers get a professional experience even when nobody can pick up.
Mobile apps and a browser dialer, so the business line rings wherever your staff are, without giving out personal numbers.
Business SMS for quick replies, which many customers prefer to a call back.
Call recording, call transfers and a power dialer on the Advance plan and above.
100+ integrations, including HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive and Zapier, so calls can be logged against customer records.
One free US, Canadian or UK number per user on every plan.

Cost: KrispCall's site lists the Starter plan at $15 per user per month, or $12 per user per month billed annually, for teams of 1 to 5 users. Advance ($40, or $32 annually) and Max ($60, or $48 annually) cover larger teams. Calls and texts are billed separately on a pay-as-you-go basis, so budget for usage on top of the subscription. There's no free trial or free plan, but paid plans come with a 14-day money-back guarantee, and you can book a demo first. Check current pricing before you buy.

Try KrispCall (Affiliate link: we may earn a commission at no cost to you.)

Worth knowing: if you plan to text US phone numbers, US carriers require A2P 10DLC registration, which has one-time and monthly fees listed on KrispCall's pricing page. Calling, and receiving texts, don't need it.

Tidio: answer website visitors, even after hours

Tidio

Tidio adds a live chat widget to your website and brings customer conversations into one inbox. According to Tidio's website:

One inbox for live chat, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger messages.
Saved replies for the questions you answer every day.
Flows, a no-code builder for automated messages, which can collect a name, email and question when nobody is online.
Lyro, Tidio's AI agent, which answers common questions using your own support content and can hand off to a person.
Help desk tickets for conversations that need follow-up.
Browser, desktop and mobile apps, and integrations with platforms such as Shopify and WordPress.

Cost: Tidio offers a free-forever customer service plan and a 7-day free trial of its paid features, with no credit card needed for the trial. Paid plans are priced by the number of conversations your team handles each month, and the AI agent is priced separately. Check current pricing on Tidio's site.

Try Tidio (Affiliate link: we may earn a commission at no cost to you.)

A caution on AI answers: an AI agent is only as good as the content you give it. Start with your 10 most common questions, write clear answers, and review conversations weekly. Never let it answer questions about pricing exceptions, safety, legal matters or anything involving personal information without a person in the loop.

Who these tools are NOT a fit for

KrispCall is probably not worth switching to if your current phone system already routes calls well and your missed-call rate is low. It's also a poor fit if your staff can't reliably use an app on a computer or phone, or if you want to try before paying anything (there's no free trial, only a money-back window).
Tidio is not worth much if your website gets very little traffic, or if your customers almost always call rather than browse. Chat that nobody answers is worse than no chat at all, so set office hours and an after-hours message.
Neither tool replaces a clear owner. Decide who answers calls and chats, during which hours, and what happens to anything left overnight.

A simple 2-week rollout

Week 1: set up call routing (who rings first, who rings second, then voicemail) and a short after-hours greeting. Write saved replies for your top 10 questions.
Week 2: turn on website chat during business hours only, with an after-hours form that collects contact details. Review every missed call and chat at the end of each day.

After a month, compare your missed calls and response times with your first week's count. If you want help working out where enquiries are slipping through, the free Process Scan below is a good place to start.

Written by Sean Martin, Adapting Services. 15+ years in IT, processes and operations, and practical AI work. Member of the OpenAI Partner Network.