Start with the wage, then keep going
The median receptionist in the US earned $38,010 a year in 2025, or $18.27 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is the number most owners have in their head when they think about hiring someone to answer the phone and keep the board full.
It is not the number you pay. Across private industry, benefits made up 30.0 percent of what employers spent on compensation in June 2026 (BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation): payroll taxes, insurance, paid leave and retirement. Wages were the other 70 percent.
Public averages, not a quote. Use your own numbers.
- Median receptionist wage: $38,010 a year (BLS, 2025)
- Wages are 70 percent of total compensation cost (BLS, June 2026)
- Total compensation cost: $38,010 / 0.70
About $54,300 a year before you have hired, trained or covered a single evening.
One hire covers one shift
A full-time week is 40 hours. A week has 168. Your hire covers about a quarter of the hours your phone can ring, and the other three quarters are nights, weekends, lunch, vacation and sick days.
Home-service demand does not keep office hours. A no-heat call on a January night or a burst pipe on a Sunday is often the most motivated caller your shop will hear from all week. If that call reaches voicemail, the hire you just made did not help.
Not whether you can afford one person, but how many hours of coverage you are actually buying for that money.
The costs that never show up on payroll
- Hiring time: writing the ad, screening, interviews, and the calls you miss while you do it.
- Training: your pricing, your service area, your emergency rules, your scheduling software. Weeks before they book work the way you would.
- Management: someone has to check their work, cover their breaks and answer their questions. In most shops that someone is the owner.
- Turnover: front-desk roles turn over often. Every departure restarts the hiring and training clock.
When a hire is the right answer
A person is the right call when the job needs judgment on the spot all day: walk-in customers, complex commercial quotes, a dispatcher who knows every tech and every truck. If that is your shop, hire well and pay well.
If the job is mostly the repeatable work that falls through the cracks today (answering and booking, following up estimates, reminding past customers, asking for reviews), you are paying a salary for work that does not need one.
The other way to staff it
Rivvet gives your shop a full front office without the payroll. It books jobs, holds leads and wins past customers back, under rules you set and approve. It covers the nights and weekends a single hire cannot, and it does not need managing. You stay in command. You stop managing.
Compare it to one employee on the pricing page, with your own job value and volume.
Questions owners ask
How much does a receptionist cost a small business?
The median receptionist wage in the US was $38,010 a year in 2025 (BLS). Benefits averaged 30 percent of private-industry compensation cost in June 2026, so the full cost of one full-time hire at the median is roughly $54,000 a year, before hiring, training and turnover.
Should my first office hire be a receptionist or a dispatcher?
Hire for the work that is actually leaking. If calls and follow-up are slipping, that is front-office coverage. If trucks are running empty or double-booked, that is dispatch judgment. Many shops need coverage first and judgment later.
Can one person cover after-hours calls?
Not on a normal schedule. A full-time week is 40 of the 168 hours in a week. Covering nights and weekends with people means more shifts, an answering service, or a front office that does not clock out.
Put your own job value and volume into the pricing calculator and see the cost side by side. See pricing.