EmpfangoThe short answer
A human 24/7 answering service costs a cleaning company with 40 staff around €500 a month at 300 call minutes. A pro-rated office employee costs around €480 with availability only in the morning. An AI phone assistant costs from €99 a month at a fixed price.
Phone answering costs for a cleaning company depend less on the plan than on the call profile: sick calls between five and seven in the morning, clients during office hours, applicants in the afternoon. This article works through the three options for an example company, with prices from the providers' websites and stated assumptions. The general comparison between answering services and AI phone assistants across all industries is at answering service vs. AI phone assistant; this article covers only the cleaning case.
The example company: 40 staff, 18 sites, two site managers
The example company has 40 cleaners, 18 sites in routine cleaning, two site managers, the owner and a part-time office employee working 20 hours a week in the mornings. All values are assumptions and can be replaced with your own.
- Calls: around 12 per working day, plus a few at weekends; roughly 300 call minutes a month in total.
- Peaks: two or three sick calls between 5 and 7 a.m., clients and property managers between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., applicants in the afternoon, sales calls spread over the day.
- Who answers today: before 9 a.m. the site manager or the owner on a mobile, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. the office employee, after that mobile or voicemail again.
- Industry context: 85% labour cost share, 71.3% of companies with higher sick leave, 48,000 unfilled positions (BIV 2025; autumn survey 2024 cited by bkvfirmenservice.de). Why the sick call is so expensive is worked out in the article sick leave in cleaning: the cost of phone time.
Option 1: human answering service
Human answering services charge a base fee between €49 and €199 a month plus €0.75 to €1.34 per call minute. At 300 minutes a month that comes to between roughly €330 and €500.
Die Telefonhelden from Nuremberg is the only provider with a dedicated page for cleaning companies. It lists qualifying enquiries for routine, special and window cleaning and “sick call coordination” as services. The plans according to its pricing page (retrieved 14 Oct 2026): Starter from €49.99 plus €0.99 per minute from the 26th minute, Basis €59.99 plus €0.89, Power €69.99 plus €0.79, Premium €79.99 plus €0.75, all during office hours; the 24/7 package costs from €199 plus €0.99 per minute. Minimum term three months. Büroservice24 lists €49, €79 and €99 a month plus €0.94 to €1.34 per minute on its product page, without an industry page.
For the example company: the office-hours plan Basis at 300 minutes: €59.99 plus €267 = around €327 a month. With that, the sick calls at 5 a.m. still go to the site manager. The 24/7 package covers them: €199 plus €297 = around €496 a month, around €5,950 a year. If volume rises to 600 minutes, the per-minute share doubles.
Option 2: in-house office employee, pro-rated
A part-time office employee working 20 hours a week costs the company an assumed €1,600 a month in employer costs. If 30% of her time goes to the phone, that is €480 a month for availability during 20 of 168 hours a week.
The advantage should not be underestimated: the office employee knows the sites, clients and colleagues, recognises callers by name and can call for cover herself. The disadvantage is the hours. Before 9 a.m., after 1 p.m., during holidays and her own sick days, the desk is empty. The time-tracking provider clockin advertises that “every third call in small businesses goes unanswered” (provider claim, retrieved 14 Oct 2026); there is no independent industry figure. What matters for the calculation: the €480 buys availability at the hours when the fewest sick calls come in.
If you need the office employee anyway for invoices, quotes and HR, the phone share is not a saving but time freed up for those tasks.
Option 3: AI phone assistant
An AI phone assistant such as Empfango costs from €99 a month at a fixed price with no overage billing for minutes, and answers around the clock, including at five in the morning and on Sundays.
Empfango answers every call, identifies the request and captures name, callback number, site and request. The sick call goes to the site manager via WhatsApp, Telegram or email, without a diagnosis, only with the absence and expected duration; the flow is described under capturing sick calls by phone. Clients get information from the knowledge base, applicants get an appointment, sales calls are noted as callbacks and never put through. Empfango forwards urgent calls to a number on file; if nobody answers, a callback is recorded. Every call is stored as a transcript with a summary in the dashboard, and cleaners can call in their own language.
What Empfango does not do: call replacement staff, change the roster, or write into industry software unless a webhook is set up. Which plan fits 300 minutes a month is shown under pricing.
The comparison in numbers
At 300 call minutes a month, the human 24/7 service comes to around €496 a month, the pro-rated office employee to around €480 and Empfango to a fixed price from €99. Only two of the three options cover the sick call at 5 a.m.
| Option | Base fee per month | Per-minute price | Cost at 300 min/month | Cost per year | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Die Telefonhelden, 24/7 package | from €199 | €0.99 | approx. €496 | approx. €5,950 | around the clock |
| Die Telefonhelden, Basis | €59.99 | €0.89 | approx. €327 | approx. €3,920 | office hours |
| Büroservice24 | €49–99 | €0.94–1.34 | approx. €330–500 | approx. €3,970–6,010 | depending on plan |
| In-house office employee, 30% of 20 hours/week (assumption) | – | – | approx. €480 | approx. €5,760 | Mon–Fri mornings |
| Empfango | from €99 fixed price | no overage | from €99 | from €1,188 | around the clock |
What the price does not show
The monthly price is only part of the comparison. What matters is cover search, capture quality, data protection, contract term and behaviour as volume grows.
- Cover search: a human service can call colleagues by arrangement; Empfango cannot. In return, with Empfango the report reaches the site manager in a structured form in under a minute, so the cover search starts earlier.
- Capture: both variants deliver a note. Empfango also delivers the transcript, so questions like “Did she mention the keys?” do not stay open.
- Data protection: a sick call is health data under Art. 9 GDPR. Both variants need a data processing agreement. Empfango processes in the EU, does not store audio permanently and starts every call with a fixed AI announcement; details under privacy.
- Term: Die Telefonhelden state a three-month minimum term; Empfango can be cancelled monthly.
- Volume: at 600 instead of 300 minutes, the human 24/7 service rises to around €793 a month; the fixed price stays.
- Language: many cleaners prefer to call in sick in their native language. Empfango is multilingual; with human services it depends on the team.
Frequently asked questions
With human agents, between roughly €330 (office hours) and €500 (around the clock) at 300 call minutes, based on the plans of Die Telefonhelden and Büroservice24 (retrieved 14 Oct 2026). An AI phone assistant such as Empfango costs from €99 a month at a fixed price.
If sick calls and client calls currently land with the site manager, yes. Twelve calls of four minutes are 200 hours a year per site manager; the site manager phone time calculator works out what that costs with your figures.
Only in 24/7 plans, at Die Telefonhelden from €199 a month plus per-minute price. Office-hours plans and a morning office employee do not cover the time between 5 and 7 a.m. Empfango answers around the clock at no extra charge.
The site manager or the dispatcher, as today. Empfango reports the absence with name, site, duration and callback number; the decision who steps in stays with the company. More on the page AI phone assistant for cleaning companies.
Conclusion: availability at the hours when people call
For the example company with 40 staff, the human 24/7 service and the pro-rated office employee both come to around €480 to €500 a month, an AI phone assistant from €99. The more important difference is the time of day: sick calls arrive before the office is staffed. Anyone comparing only the plan price misses that the cheapest office-hours option does not cover the most expensive call of the day. Run the numbers with your own call and minute figures, and check which option answers the calls at 5 a.m.