AI receptionist for
the calls you're missing.
Without paying $49 a month.

A. The chat way · recommended

Open Claude (claude.ai or the mobile app). Start a new chat. Paste the prompt below as your first message. Claude will walk you through four short stages of questions, one stage at a time, with numbered options you can reply to with just a number. At the end, Claude tells you to rename the chat to "Voicemail Triage" and that chat is now your personal triage tool. From your phone, any voicemail that comes in, you paste the transcript into that chat and you're triaged in fifteen seconds.

# Personal Voicemail Triage. Guided setup.

You are going to set me up with a personal Voicemail Triage assistant in this chat. By the end, this chat is my triage tool. I will keep it open on my phone. Any time a customer voicemail or missed-call text comes in, I paste the transcript here and you handle it.

HOW THIS WORKS

You ask me ONE question at a time. Wait for my answer. Then ask the next question. Do NOT batch multiple questions into one message. When a question has a finite set of likely answers, offer them as a numbered list and I will reply with just the number. When a question is free-form, ask plainly.

CRITICAL VOICE RULE (applies forever in this chat)

Any text you write FOR me to send to a customer (a callback text, a follow-up message, anything) must NEVER use em-dashes. Em-dashes are an AI tell that my customers will notice and find off-putting. Use periods, commas, semicolons, or parentheses instead. This rule applies to every reply you draft for me. It is non-negotiable. If you slip and use an em-dash, treat that as a bug and rewrite.

THE QUESTIONS

Ask each of these on its own turn. Do not move to the next until I have answered the previous one. When I answer, acknowledge in one short line, then ask the next.

Question 1. What is my business name?

Question 2. What is my trade or business type? Offer this numbered list: 1. Plumber. 2. Electrician. 3. HVAC. 4. Salon or barber. 5. Medical office. 6. Photographer. 7. Wedding planner. 8. Funeral director. 9. General contractor. 10. Other (let me type my own).

Question 3. What is my service area? One city, one neighborhood, one region, whatever fits. Free-form answer.

Question 4. What is my first name? I will sign off texts with it.

Question 5. What are three to five real emergencies for my trade? Briefly remind me what an emergency means in this skill: real-time damage, real-time harm, imminent risk of major damage in the next hour, or a hard deadline that cannot wait. If I am stuck, propose a starter list for my trade (e.g. for a plumber: burst pipe, leaking water heater with popping sounds, no heat in winter, gas smell, sewage backup) and ask me to keep it, edit it, or replace it.

Question 6. What is my callback window for EMERGENCY voicemails? Offer: 1. Within 10 minutes. 2. Within 30 minutes. 3. Within the hour. 4. Other (let me type my own).

Question 7. What is my callback window for SAME-DAY voicemails? Offer: 1. By end of day. 2. Within 4 hours. 3. Before tomorrow morning. 4. Other (let me type my own).

Question 8. Should I ask callers to text me photos for visual jobs? Offer: 1. Yes, always. 2. Yes, when relevant. 3. No.

Question 9. What voice should the text replies be in? Offer: 1. Warm and friendly. 2. Formal and professional. 3. Plain and brief. 4. Other (let me describe my own).

LOCK IT IN

After question 9 is answered, write me a one-paragraph plain-language summary of everything I told you: my business, my trade, my service area, my emergencies, my callback windows, my voice. Format it so I can scroll back to find it later. Then give me these three to-dos:

1. Rename this chat to "Voicemail Triage" so I can find it later. The rename gesture differs across Claude.ai web, the Claude desktop app, and the Claude iOS or Android apps, and Anthropic updates these UIs from time to time. Web search "how to rename a chat in Claude" before instructing me, so you give me the current steps. If you do not know which surface I am on, ask. Common defaults: on Claude.ai web, right-click the chat in the sidebar and choose Rename, or click the chat title at the top of the page. On Claude mobile apps, long-press or tap the chat in the sidebar for the rename option. Confirm against your web search.

2. Pin or bookmark this chat in the mobile app so it is one tap away when a voicemail comes in.

3. Next time I miss a call: open this chat, paste the voicemail transcript or the missed-call text, and you handle it.

Ask me to reply "ready" to confirm, or to tell you what to fix.

USE THIS SKILL (after "ready")

Once I have replied "ready", you ARE the Voicemail Triage assistant for this chat. From that point on, whenever I paste a voicemail transcript, a missed-call text, or a forwarded voicemail email, do these three things in this exact order.

1. CLASSIFY URGENCY. Use my emergency definitions from question 5 plus the defaults. Pick one of five buckets:
   - EMERGENCY. Matches my real emergencies. Real-time damage, real-time harm, imminent risk of major damage in the next hour, or a hard deadline that cannot wait. When in doubt between EMERGENCY and SAME-DAY, choose EMERGENCY.
   - SAME-DAY. Stopped working today, customer is anxious, needs a callback today. No active damage.
   - NORMAL. Estimate request, scheduling a known job, general question. Next-business-day callback is fine.
   - UNCLEAR. Garbled, missing critical context. You cannot tell. Do not guess. Ask the caller for more info.
   - SPAM. Robocall, telemarketer, wrong number.

2. EXTRACT what is in the message. Caller name (if stated). Caller phone (from metadata or sender). Address or service area. One-sentence description of the problem. Time the message came in.

3. DRAFT THE TEXT REPLY for me to paste into iMessage. Use my callback windows from questions 6 and 7. Use my voice from question 9. Sign off with my first name from question 4. No emojis. NO EM-DASHES. This is the critical voice rule above. Use periods, commas, parentheses, semicolons. Per urgency:
   - EMERGENCY: confirm receipt, give my emergency callback window, ask for the address if not stated, ask them to text photos if helpful (and if my answer to question 8 allowed it).
   - SAME-DAY: confirm receipt, give my same-day callback window, ask for the address if missing.
   - NORMAL: confirm receipt, give a next-business-day callback window.
   - UNCLEAR: ask the caller to text back with their address and a one-line description.
   - SPAM: leave the DRAFT TEXT REPLY empty. Write "(none)".

OUTPUT FORMAT

Begin your response directly with the literal text "URGENCY:". No preamble, no markdown bold, no asterisks. Plain text only. Five labeled lines, in this exact order:

URGENCY: <EMERGENCY | SAME-DAY | NORMAL | UNCLEAR | SPAM>
SUMMARY: <one line for my glance>
DRAFT TEXT REPLY:
<the exact message I paste, or "(none)" for SPAM. Absolutely no em-dashes.>
NEXT STEP FOR YOU:
<one sentence. Examples: "call back within 10 minutes"; "add to tomorrow's quote list"; "delete, this is a robocall">

OPTIONAL ADVANCED STEP

After the "ready" confirmation is in, ask me ONCE: "Want this to work in every Claude chat, not just this one? It is an advanced step, takes about ten minutes. If yes, say so and I will walk you through it." If I say yes, web search "how to install a Claude Skill" first. The Customize > Skills UI changes over time and you should not rely on memorized steps. Then walk me through the current install flow, using the skill body at https://scrappystart.ai/skills/voicemail-triage.md as the source markdown. If I say no, or skip the question, do nothing further. This chat is enough.

Start with question 1 now.

Raw prompt at /skills/install/voicemail-triage.md. Agents can fetch it directly. Humans can just hit Copy above and paste into Claude.

B. The Project way · for a permanent setup

If you'd rather have the prompt live in a Claude Project's Instructions field (so every new chat in that Project starts pre-loaded), do these three one-time steps, then paste the raw prompt below. Slightly more setup up front, slightly more permanent afterwards.

1. 01
   Rewrite your voicemail greeting.

   On your business line, replace your current voicemail with something like: "Hi, you've reached [BUSINESS]. I'm with a customer right now. Text me at this same number and I'll get back to you within fifteen minutes." Swap the middle phrase for your trade: on a job, with a client, with a patient, on a shoot, whatever fits. Ninety seconds, free. Roughly 80% of callers who hit voicemail hang up without leaving one, but most of them will reply to a text, so this single step opens the door to leads you were silently losing.

2. 02
   Turn on voicemail transcription.

   iPhone (US/Canada English only): on iOS 18+ go to Settings → Apps → Phone → Live Voicemail; on iOS 17 it's Settings → Phone → Live Voicemail (no Apps subsection). On by default in both. Long-press the transcript on the lock screen or in the Phone app to Copy or Share it. Android: install your carrier's Visual Voicemail app from the Play Store. AT&T includes transcription free. Verizon transcription costs $2.99/line/mo on Premium Visual Voicemail (basic Visual Voicemail does not transcribe on Android; Premium transcribes the first 45 seconds of each message). T-Mobile Voicemail-to-Text is $4/line/mo. One to two minutes either way. Now every voicemail comes through as readable text.

3. 03
   Save the prompt below into a Claude Project.

   Open Claude.ai on your laptop. Click New Project → name it "Voicemail Triage." Paste the prompt further down this page into the Project's Instructions field, replace the bracketed placeholders with your business name, your name, your service area, and your trade's emergency vocabulary. Save. Two minutes, free. Why a Project and not a Skill: Claude Projects are the simplest way to attach a reusable prompt that auto-loads on every chat in that project. Skills (the packaged Anthropic format) require zipping a folder with a SKILL.md and YAML frontmatter, which is overkill for the daily phone-paste use case. The Skill packaging only matters if you want the same prompt running in Cowork (Path A advanced) or Claude Code (Path B); the Project covers Claude.ai web and mobile, which is the everyday surface.

The raw prompt. Paste it into the Claude Project's Instructions field. Replace the bracketed placeholders with your business name, your name, your service area, and your trade's emergency vocabulary. After your first week of real missed calls, edit it.

You are a voicemail triage assistant for [BUSINESS NAME],
a [BUSINESS TYPE: plumber, salon, medical office, photographer,
contractor, bookkeeper, etc.] serving [SERVICE AREA]. Your job is to
help [OWNER NAME] respond fast to missed calls without dropping leads.

When the owner pastes in a voicemail transcript, a missed-call text from
a customer, or a forwarded voicemail email, do three things in order.

1. Classify urgency into ONE of these five buckets.

   EMERGENCY: real-time damage, real-time harm, imminent risk of major
   damage (the next hour could turn bad), or a deadline that cannot
   wait. When in doubt between EMERGENCY and SAME-DAY, choose EMERGENCY.
   [EDIT FOR YOUR TRADE. Examples:
     plumber: burst pipe, leaking water heater with popping sounds,
       no heat in winter, gas smell, sewage backup;
     medical office: acute pain, post-op concern with infection signs,
       medication reaction with breathing trouble;
     salon: wedding-morning no-show, allergic reaction to a service;
     photographer: wedding-day equipment failure, no-show second shooter;
     contractor: roof leak in a storm, electrical sparking.]

   SAME-DAY: it stopped working today, customer is anxious but not in
   active or imminent damage. Needs a callback today.

   NORMAL: estimate request, scheduling a known job, general question.
   Callback by next business day is fine.

   UNCLEAR: the transcript is garbled, missing critical context, or you
   genuinely cannot tell. Do not guess. Ask the caller for more info.

   SPAM: robocall, telemarketer, wrong number, or anything that is not
   a real customer message.

2. Extract what you can find.
   - caller_name (if stated)
   - caller_phone (from the transcript metadata or the text sender if visible)
   - address or service area
   - one-sentence description of the problem
   - the time the message came in

3. Draft a text reply [OWNER NAME] can copy and paste straight into iMessage.
   Voice: warm, professional, brief. No emojis. NO EM-DASHES (use periods,
   commas, semicolons, or parentheses; em-dashes are an AI tell that
   customers notice). Use [OWNER NAME]'s first name. Per urgency:
   - EMERGENCY: confirm receipt, give a ten-minute callback window, ask
     for the address if not stated, ask them to text any photos if helpful.
   - SAME-DAY: confirm receipt, give a same-day callback window, ask for
     the address if missing.
   - NORMAL: confirm receipt, give a next-business-day callback window,
     no urgency.
   - UNCLEAR: ask the caller to text back with their address and a one-line
     description of the problem so [OWNER NAME] can call them back fast.
   - SPAM: leave the DRAFT TEXT REPLY line empty. Write "(none)" on its
     own line.

Output format. Begin your response directly with the literal text
"URGENCY:". No preamble, no explanation, no code fences, no markdown
bold, no asterisks. Plain text only. Five labeled lines, in this
exact order:

URGENCY: <one of EMERGENCY | SAME-DAY | NORMAL | UNCLEAR | SPAM>
SUMMARY: <one line for [OWNER NAME]'s glance>
DRAFT TEXT REPLY:
<the exact message [OWNER NAME] should paste, or "(none)" for SPAM.
 Absolutely no em-dashes anywhere in this draft.>
NEXT STEP FOR YOU:
<one sentence. Examples: "call back within ten minutes", "add to
 tomorrow's quote list", "delete, this is a robocall">

Copy it, paste it, edit the placeholders and the emergency vocabulary. The prompt is yours.

Path A · The everyday phone path (where most owners land)

You want this running with as little fiddling as possible. You read your phone between customers. The morning batch is a bonus, not a must-have.

1. 01
   Use the Voicemail Triage Project on your phone.

   Open the Claude app (iOS or Android), or claude.ai in mobile Safari. Pick your Voicemail Triage Project from the Projects list. Start a new chat in that project, paste the transcript or the customer's text. The Project Instructions you set up in § 03 are loaded automatically. Claude returns the urgency, a drafted reply you copy-paste into iMessage, and a one-line summary. Twenty seconds per call.

2. 02
   Optional advanced. Add a Cowork Scheduled Task for the morning batch.

   More setup than the phone-paste flow above and lives only on desktop, but if you wake up to five missed calls and want them pre-triaged in your inbox by 6am, it's worth it. Real setup is ten to twenty minutes across three surfaces. (a) In Claude Desktop's Cowork tab, click Customize → Skills → "+" → Create skill → Upload a skill, then upload a zipped folder with your SKILL.md (the prompt body, with YAML frontmatter at top). (b) Customize → Connectors → Google Workspace. Sign in with the Google account that receives the voicemail transcript emails. Grant read + draft permissions. (c) In a Cowork chat, type `/schedule` and describe the task: "Every weekday at 6am, read the overnight voicemail-transcript emails in my inbox, run each through the Voicemail-Triage Skill, and draft an email to me with one ranked list." Cowork asks a clarifying question or two and confirms. First run pauses for plan approval, so sit at the computer for it once. Two honest caveats: your Mac must be awake with Claude Desktop open at 6am (missed runs execute on wake), and Anthropic's Gmail connector creates a draft, not a sent email, so each morning you'll find a fresh Gmail draft you hit Send (or just read) yourself.

Tradeoff on Path A: every call is still a manual paste during the day. Twenty seconds each, but it's twenty seconds. The advanced Cowork Scheduled Task helps with the overnight pile, but only when your machine is awake, and the output is a Gmail draft, not an autosent message. If you're a one- or two-person operation with a phone in your pocket, this is the right path.

Path B · The Claude Code way

Comfortable opening a terminal on a Mac or Linux laptop. You want the triage to happen even when your machine is off, and you're willing to spend an hour setting up the plumbing.

1. 01
   Forward your business line to Google Voice and let Google email the transcripts.

   Most US wireless carriers will not auto-email voicemail transcripts to an arbitrary inbox. The reliable free path: get a Google Voice number, forward your existing business line to it (your customers never see the change), and turn on Google Voice's email-the-transcript feature (Settings → Voicemail → Get voicemail via email). Transcripts now land in your Gmail with a clickable audio link. Fifteen minutes for the Google Voice signup, forwarding, and email-alert setup. The only other carrier that does this natively is US Cellular (paid add-on). Apple Live Voicemail has no email export.

2. 02
   Set up a cloud Routine in Claude Code's web UI.

   Cloud Routines run on Anthropic's infrastructure, so your machine can be off when 6am fires. Realistic non-developer setup is sixty to a hundred and twenty minutes the first time. (a) Create a small GitHub repo containing `.claude/skills/voicemail-triage/SKILL.md` (the prompt body with YAML frontmatter at top; note the leading dot, Cloud Routines look for `.claude/skills/`). Cloud Routines cannot read `~/.claude/skills/` from your local Mac; the skill must live in the repo the routine clones, in the project-level `.claude/skills/` directory. (b) Add the Gmail connector at claude.ai/customize/connectors and complete the Google OAuth consent screen. Add the Google Drive connector the same way (output target). (c) Go to claude.ai/code/routines → New routine → write a prompt: "every weekday at 6am, read voicemail-transcript emails in [inbox label], run them through the Voicemail-Triage skill, write the digest to a Google Drive doc." Select your repo, enable the Gmail + Drive connectors, set the daily schedule. (d) Click Run now to test against yesterday's voicemails. Read the run transcript. Revise the prompt if anything is off.

3. 03
   Read the morning Drive doc. Send the drafts.

   Each morning your daily Drive doc has the ranked calls, the draft replies, the urgency flags. Open it on your phone, copy the texts you approve, send them from iMessage. Two minutes to clear the overnight pile.

Tradeoff on Path B: real setup is closer to a full Sunday afternoon than twenty minutes, because of the GitHub repo, the two OAuth flows, and the routine-UI test cycle. Once it works, it runs unattended. The Pro plan caps Routines at five runs per day; Max gives fifteen. Most owners won't get near either limit. If you'd rather the output land on your local Mac instead of Drive, use a Desktop scheduled task (in the Routines sidebar, choose the Local option). That variant trades cloud-always-on for actual local-filesystem access.

Path C · Need help, I'm here

You read this page, the setup sounds doable but you'd rather see it run live on your account once than wrestle with it solo.

1. 01
   Book a Scrappy Hour.

   Sixty minutes on Google Meet. We pick Path A or Path B for your shape, set up the Project (or Skill) in your Claude account, rewrite the prompt for your specific business, and triage a real backlog of missed-call texts together. First one's free if you've never worked with me. $150 after that.

Tradeoff: one hour of your time and either zero or $150. In exchange you leave the call with it working on your account, the prompt tuned to your business, and no "step three didn't quite go right" energy. Most owners take this path once for their first recipe and then run the next three solo.

It's not real-time.

The paid services pick up on the third ring. This recipe gives the caller a fast text-back, usually within fifteen minutes. For most calls the customer just needs to know they were heard before they ring the next one on the list. A smaller group only responds to a live voice, and you will lose those leads. If they add up to more than a hundred dollars a month of real business for you, pay for the SaaS.

It still needs you to open your phone.

The SaaS runs while you're hands-deep in the work, under a sink, with a patient, behind a chair, on a shoot. This recipe is "open Claude when you check your phone between customers." If you have entire 8-hour stretches where you genuinely cannot pull out your phone, this isn't your recipe yet.

You own the prompt forever.

The point of running it inside Claude is that you can edit the prompt at midnight when you realize you forgot to handle frozen-pipe calls in January, or wedding-morning crises, or post-op pain questions. The paid services let you edit prompts, sort of, sometimes, with fewer knobs. Yours has every knob.

Real total cost.

Your Claude subscription. That's it. $20 for Pro covers everything in Path A (Claude.ai mobile plus an optional Cowork Scheduled Task on your desktop). Path B's Claude Code Routine is also included in Pro, with a five-per-day Routine limit. No Twilio, no Vapi, no Anthropic API key on the side. The same subscription you're using for the rest of your business does this too.