A secretary for the phone.
Without the job ad.
Most SMBs do not need a full secretariat, they need someone who reliably picks up. fonea answers every call, handles routine questions, books appointments and hands you every message properly structured. For a flat CHF 90 per month instead of a salary.
What is a telephone secretarial service?
A telephone secretarial service handles the secretarial work that happens over the phone: answering calls, giving information, arranging appointments and passing on messages. It replaces a secretary’s phone work, not their case handling.
The calculation few people run
Why a part-time role just for the phone rarely pays for itself
A 40% role costs more than the salary
On top of gross pay come AHV, IV, EO, ALV, BVG, accident insurance and holiday accrual. CHF 2,200 gross becomes roughly CHF 2,800 in real monthly cost, before the workstation, the onboarding and the time recruiting itself takes.
roughly 25% on top of gross salary
Part-time misses exactly the off-hours
A 40% role works two days. The phone rings on the other three anyway. And the calls worth the most arrive in the evening and on Saturday morning, when nobody is there regardless.
3 of 5 working days uncovered
Holidays, illness and resignations land back on you
A one-person secretariat has no cover. Holidays and sick days fall to the owner, and a resignation restarts a search that runs three to six months in the current Swiss labour market.
Per-call pricing punishes your good months
Classic providers charge a base fee plus a price per call. In the very month your marketing works and the phone runs hot, the bill rises with it. That is the wrong direction: more demand should not cost more.
What changes
Secretarial work on the phone, at a fixed price
Flat rate instead of per-call pricing
CHF 90 per month with 120 conversation minutes. Ten calls or a hundred makes no difference to the bill, and off-hours carry no surcharge.
No vacancy, no cover, no onboarding
No job ad, no interviews, no holiday planning. What fonea should say you change yourself in the dashboard, and it applies from the next call.
Messages arrive structured, not as scribbled notes
Every call is summarised with name, number, request and urgency, then emailed to you. No deciphering a note someone wrote in a hurry.
Appointments land straight in the calendar
A classic telephone secretarial service notes a callback request. fonea checks your availability and books the appointment, so the task is done rather than merely passed on.
Hours, not weeks
How to set up your telephone secretarial service
Capture what callers actually ask
Opening hours, prices, directions, appointment requests, callbacks. In most businesses six to ten topics cover more than 80% of calls.
Define the answers
We store your wording, your pricing information and your rules for what gets transferred and what is answered directly.
Activate call forwarding
Your number stays. Forward on no-answer, on busy or always, with Swisscom, Sunrise or Salt. Undoing it takes a moment.
Read along and refine
You see every conversation in the dashboard and adjust answers where needed. Cancel monthly, no minimum term.
Typical conversations
What a telephone secretarial service sounds like day to day
Routine question, no callback needed
Callback request, properly captured
Caller asks for someone who is out
Swiss hosting and data protection
Secretarial work is trusted work
Persistent data stays in Switzerland
Contact details, transcripts and summaries sit on Swiss infrastructure. Transient speech processing runs in Germany, where data is processed and not permanently stored.
No information you have not defined
fonea does not invent anything. What is not stored is not answered but captured as a question and passed on. That is the difference from a stand-in service that improvises.
FADP compliant, with a data processing agreement
Processing under the revised Swiss FADP and GDPR, encrypted storage, deletion schedules to your specification. No voice profiles are created.
Pricing
Transparent pricing
Included
- 120 minutes AI talk time included
- DE, FR, IT, EN, ES + Swiss German
- Calendar integration & appointment booking
- AI answering machine 24/7
- Interactive AI for customer service
- Email & SMS notifications
- Cancel monthly, no commitment
- No setup fees
Included
- 500 minutes AI talk time
- 3 concurrent calls
- 3 phone numbers
- Unlimited assistants
- Unlimited users
Features
- Everything in Basic
- Outbound calls
- No setup fees
Included
- From 2,000 minutes
- Custom concurrent calls
- Custom phone numbers
- Unlimited assistants
- Unlimited users
Features
- Everything in Professional
- Custom voice
- Custom SLA
- No setup fees
Frequently asked
Telephone secretarial service — common questions
What does a secretarial service cost in Switzerland?
External providers with staff typically charge CHF 200 to 650 per month, usually a base fee plus a price per answered call. An in-house 40% role costs roughly CHF 2,800 per month including social charges. fonea costs CHF 90 per month as a flat rate with 120 conversation minutes.
Is there a telephone secretarial service with a flat rate instead of per-call billing?
Yes, that is exactly fonea’s model: a fixed monthly price with an included minute allowance, regardless of how many calls come in. The advantage shows in good months. With per-call pricing the bill rises precisely when your marketing is working.
What is the difference between a telephone secretarial service and an answering service?
The level of ambition. An answering service picks up and passes on. A secretarial service also takes on secretarial tasks on the phone: giving information to your specification, arranging appointments, documenting requests. In practice the terms are often used interchangeably, so always ask whether a provider only takes notes or also books.
Does fonea replace a secretary?
Only the part of the work that happens on the phone, and there only the recurring requests. Bookkeeping, correspondence, file management and anything requiring judgement stay with people. Most businesses therefore deploy fonea where nobody was picking up at all, not as a replacement for an existing role.
What happens to calls fonea cannot answer?
fonea does not improvise. Either the call is transferred to your team immediately, if you have set that up for the topic, or a structured message with name, number, request and urgency is captured and emailed to you. You call back with full context.
How long does setup take?
Basic setup takes around 30 minutes and the assistant is live afterwards. Unlike a hire there is no notice period at a previous employer, no onboarding time and no probation period during which you do not know whether it will work out.
Your telephone secretarial service starts today.
Live in hours, number stays, cancel monthly. No minimum term.
Get started