Holidays, Sick Leave and Busy Spells: How to Cover Your Business Phone

In August the receptionist goes on holiday. In November someone takes three weeks of sick leave without warning. And every Monday morning the phone rings twice as much. In a small business, when one person is missing, customer service is the first thing to suffer.

When you notice it most

• Holidays. They're predictable, but someone has to cover them, and in summer and at Christmas several overlap.
• Sick leave. It comes without warning and without a return date, so there's rarely time to find a replacement.
• Busy spells. Mondays, after bank holidays, during campaigns or sales, more calls and messages come in than the team can handle.
• Small teams. If one person answers the phone, manages the calendar and serves at the counter, any absence leaves all of that uncovered.

The usual options and their limits

Sharing the phone across the team. No direct cost, but every call interrupts someone who was doing something else, and work that isn't their usual job tends to be done worse.

Forwarding calls to the owner's mobile. It works for a few days. Then the problem goes on holiday with you.

Hiring a replacement. It takes time to recruit and train, and for short sick leave it rarely pays off. In Spain a full-time receptionist costs around €1,900 a month at the 2026 minimum wage.

A virtual secretary or call centre. Someone picks up, but usually they just take a message: they don't know your business or book into your calendar. They tend to charge per call, around €190 a month for 100 calls. We compare a receptionist with an AI assistant in AI assistant vs traditional receptionist.

An AI assistant. It doesn't take holidays or sick leave, it handles several calls at once during busy spells, and it doesn't need retraining every time the person changes. It answers, books appointments and sends confirmations by phone and WhatsApp, and notes down for your team anything that needs a person.

Get it ready before you need it

The worst time to organise cover is the first day of someone's leave. A few decisions made calmly avoid most problems:

• Have your business information written down. Opening hours, services, prices and answers to frequent questions. If it only lives in one person's head, it leaves with them.
• Decide who gets the alerts when the usual person is away, so no message ends up in an inbox nobody checks.
• Tell people about changed hours. If you close in August, callers should know and be able to request an appointment for September.
• Check the shared calendar. Whoever covers, a person or an assistant, needs to see the real availability.

To see what those unanswered calls cost you, read what missed calls really cost your business.

What works best: AI answers, your team decides

It's not about replacing anyone. The model that works best is mixed: the assistant answers first, handles the usual requests and passes on to the team whatever needs a person. When someone is missing, the business keeps answering as usual. And when they come back, they have more time for the customers in front of them.

Conclusion

You can't avoid absences, but you can stop them leaving the phone unanswered. The key is having cover ready before you need it, not improvising it on the day someone is missing.

Repplia answers your business's calls and WhatsApp messages all year round, including holidays, sick leave and busy spells. The Full Time plan, which covers the whole day, starts at €159/month. We set it up with you and you try it free for 15 days, no card required.