Merchants Virtual
Merchants Virtual Presents

A boiler fails at nine on a Friday night.
The job goes to whoever answers the phone.

Most firms never find out how many of those calls they lose. A call that rings out leaves nothing behind — no message, no record, no second chance. The customer simply rings the next firm on the list.

What this is

A service that answers your line when you can't — evenings, weekends, mid-job, on the ladder. It answers in your firm's name, takes the details, recognises a genuine emergency from one that can wait until morning, books the work in, and sends you the details before the customer has hung up.

AI software with light human oversight. You approve everything. It sits alongside your team, not in place of it.

Every call answered. Every job logged. Nothing left to memory or luck.

Before you decide anything, you can hear it. We make a forty-second recording of what your own out-of-hours line could sound like — your firm's name, a real emergency handled, the job booked. It costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

The terms

£1,250 a month

It keeps a record of every call it answers and every job it books. If after ninety days that record doesn't show more work captured than it has cost you, you pay nothing — every penny back.

The log decides, not us. That clause is in writing from day one.

Five places available locally to begin with. Live within the week.

Take a place Hear a demo made for your firm — free

A smaller start is available — after-hours answering alone at £399 a month, with the same ninety-day terms.

How it starts

  1. We set it up for your trade, your area, your way of working. Nothing for you to learn.
  2. It starts answering. You get each job's details by text as they land.
  3. You check the log whenever you like. After ninety days, the log has either paid for the service or it hasn't — and the terms above apply.

Who is behind it

Merchants Virtual is run by Robert Daubigny. Forty years building and running business-to-business service operations in the UK — including one that became the largest of its kind in the country. This service exists because the most expensive thing in a trades business is rarely the work itself. It is the work that never arrives because nobody answered.

Questions before committing: [email protected] — replies come from Robert, same working day.