When the call comes in Spanish,
nobody has to hang up.
Your line rings and the caller speaks Spanish. Right now that call usually ends in a hang-up, a message nobody can act on, or a job that goes to the company down the road. fonea answers on the number you already publish, hears which language the caller opened with, and stays in it. No second line, no “press 2 for Spanish”, no waiting for the one person on staff who can help.
What is a bilingual answering service?
A bilingual answering service answers your business calls in more than one language. fonea picks up in English or Spanish on your existing number, detects which language the caller used, answers their questions and books the appointment.
The caller you never hear about
A caller who cannot be understood does not leave a message
The call ends before anyone knows it happened
A Spanish-speaking customer calls, hears an English greeting or an English voicemail prompt, and hangs up. Nothing gets written down. You never learn the job existed, so it never shows up as a lost lead. It shows up as a quiet week.
A hang-up leaves no record behind
One bilingual employee is a single point of failure
Plenty of US businesses solve this with the one person on the team who speaks Spanish. That works right up until they are on a job, at lunch, on vacation or out sick, and it quietly makes every Spanish-speaking customer depend on one specific human being.
Coverage ends when that person leaves the room
A second line and a language menu both leak callers
Publishing a separate Spanish number splits your advertising, your Google listing and your reviews. A “press 2 for Spanish” menu makes the caller do work before anyone has said hello. Both treat half your customers as an exception to route around.
Every extra step between ring and hello costs calls
What changes
What a genuinely bilingual line does
One number, both languages, no menu
fonea hears the language the caller opens with and answers in it. English callers get English, Spanish callers get Spanish, and neither one presses a key, waits for a transfer or asks whether anybody there speaks their language.
Answered in seconds, day or night
No voicemail and no hold music, at 8am on a Monday or 9pm on a Sunday. The caller who cannot reach you in the evening is usually the caller with the urgent problem and the readiness to pay for it.
Appointments booked in the caller’s language
Connected to Google Calendar or Microsoft 365, fonea reads real availability and books the estimate or the service call during the conversation, then confirms it by text or email.
Your bilingual staff stop being the switchboard
The person on your team who speaks Spanish goes back to the work you hired them for. Calls that genuinely need them arrive as a live transfer or a written summary instead of an interruption every twenty minutes.
Live within 24 hours
How the bilingual line goes live on your existing number
Keep the number on your truck and your Google listing
Landline, VoIP or cell. fonea works through the call forwarding every US carrier already supports, so there is no porting, no new contract and no second number to advertise.
Tell fonea how your business answers
Business name, hours, service area, the questions you get every day, and what counts as an emergency. You write it once, in English, and it carries into every language the assistant speaks.
fonea answers in the language the caller used
The assistant greets everyone with your business name, continues in English or Spanish depending on how the caller speaks, books what can be booked and transfers what cannot.
You read the call in the language you work in
Every call comes back as a structured summary by email or text: who called, what they wanted, what was booked or promised. Summaries are written in the language you configure, so a call taken in Spanish still reaches you in English.
Typical calls
The same line, two languages
Home services: no-heat call in Spanish at 8pm
The caller never has to switch to English and never has to ask whether anyone there speaks Spanish. The call ends as a dispatch or a booked morning slot instead of a hang-up.
Property management: tenant reports a leak on a Saturday
The emergency is triaged and escalated in under a minute. The manager gets the summary in English, with the unit number and callback already captured.
Landscaping: English caller, same number, same assistant
Nothing about the English call changes. The bilingual part is invisible to callers who never needed it.
Disclosure, recording and privacy
What fonea does on every call, in either language
Callers are told it is an assistant, in their own language
At the start of every call fonea discloses that the caller is speaking with a digital assistant, in Spanish to a Spanish-speaking caller and in English to an English-speaking one. The disclosure cannot be switched off. Nobody is left thinking they reached a person.
No voiceprints, no biometric identifiers
fonea does not build voice profiles and does not identify callers by how they sound. Illinois BIPA turns on the collection of biometric identifiers such as voiceprints; fonea creates none. Audio is transcribed and the transcript is encrypted.
Storing call recordings is a checkbox you own
Recordings are stored only while two switches are on: a master switch on the business and one on each assistant. Both are in your dashboard under “Store call recordings”, both are on by default, and either one turns storage off without a support ticket or a plan change. Some states require every party on a call to consent before it is recorded, among them California, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Washington, while others require only one. Which rule applies to your calls is yours to determine; switching the audio off is not.
fonea answers calls, it does not place them
This is an inbound assistant. It does not autodial, run outbound campaigns or leave prerecorded marketing messages, which is the conduct the TCPA is aimed at. Appointment confirmations go only to callers who asked for that appointment on the call.
California callers, and the data you hold about them
The CCPA and CPRA give California residents rights over the personal information a business holds about them. You remain the business your callers deal with; fonea processes call data on your instructions, with configurable retention so a deletion request is something you can actually carry out.
Encrypted, and not training anyone’s model
Call data is encrypted in transit and at rest. It is not sold, and it is not used as training data for someone else’s model.
Pricing
Transparent pricing
Included
- 120 minutes AI talk time included
- EN, ES, FR, DE, IT
- 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
Also in Spanish
fonea in Spanish
Frequently asked
Bilingual answering service, answered
What is a bilingual answering service?
A bilingual answering service answers your business calls in more than one language, so a customer who speaks Spanish gets the same reception as a customer who speaks English. Traditionally that meant a call center with bilingual agents, billed per call or per minute. fonea does it as software: it picks up on your existing number, detects the language the caller is speaking, answers questions, books appointments and transfers the calls you have told it to transfer.
How much does a bilingual answering service cost?
fonea is $90 a month including 120 minutes of talk time, with no setup fee, no per-call charge and no surcharge for answering in Spanish. You can cancel monthly. Traditional bilingual answering services usually price per call or per minute on top of a base rate, which makes a busy month impossible to predict, and a bilingual receptionist on payroll costs well over $2,000 a month in wages alone before evenings and weekends are covered.
Do callers have to press a key to get Spanish?
No. There is no language menu and no “press 2 for Spanish”. fonea listens to how the caller opens the conversation and answers in that language, then stays in it for the rest of the call. If a caller switches mid-call, the assistant follows. From the caller’s side it simply sounds like the business speaks their language.
Is this a Spanish answering service or a bilingual one?
Both, on one number. A Spanish answering service usually means a separate line, a separate number to advertise and a separate queue. fonea answers English and Spanish callers on the same line you already publish, which keeps your marketing, your Google Business Profile and your reviews pointing at a single number.
Which languages does fonea speak?
English, Spanish, German, French and Italian, with automatic detection on every call and no per-language charge. For most US businesses the pair that matters is English and Spanish, but the others are included at the same price if your customer base needs them.
Do I need a second phone number for Spanish-speaking callers?
No, and there is a good argument against having one. A second number splits your advertising spend, your call tracking and your reviews, and it only works when the caller already knows which number to dial. fonea answers both languages on the number that is already on your truck, your website and your Google listing.
How is this different from hiring a bilingual receptionist?
A bilingual hire brings judgment fonea does not have, and costs accordingly: one salary does not cover evenings, weekends, lunch, vacation or sick days on a single phone line. fonea covers all of those hours at a flat rate and never puts a caller on hold behind another company. The sensible split for most businesses is people during the day and fonea for everything outside it, or fonea on overflow when the line is already busy.
Are callers told they are speaking with an AI?
Yes, always, and in the language they are speaking. fonea discloses at the start of every call that the caller is talking to a digital assistant, and that disclosure cannot be disabled. fonea also creates no voiceprints and no biometric profiles of callers.
Can I switch call recording off?
Yes, from the dashboard, per business and per assistant. Storing call recordings is governed by two switches: a master switch on the business and one on each voice configuration, and audio is stored only while both are enabled. Both ship on by default, and turning either one off stops the audio being stored, with no support ticket, no engineering and no plan change. One line can keep recordings while another does not. Note what the switch does and does not cover: it controls the stored audio, not transcription or the written call summaries, which are separate. Some states, including California, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Washington, require all parties to consent before a call is recorded, while others require only one; whether that duty applies to your calls is for you to determine. Either way, every caller is told at the start of the call that they are speaking with a digital assistant.
Does fonea work with my existing phone number and carrier?
Yes. fonea works through standard call forwarding, which every US carrier supports on landlines, VoIP lines and cell phones. You keep your number, with no porting and no new contract, and you choose whether calls forward always, only when your line is busy, or only when nobody answers. Turning forwarding back off takes seconds.
Further reading
What Is an Answering Service and Does Your Business Need One
What is an answering service? Plain-English guide to types, costs, and how live and AI answering services help UK small businesses never miss a call.
AI Receptionist vs Answering Service: Which Is Right for You?
AI receptionist, human answering service, or in-house reception? An honest, vendor-neutral comparison of cost, availability, and fit.
How Much Does an Answering Service Cost? (UK)
How much does an answering service cost in the UK? See per-call, per-minute, and monthly rates, plus how AI compares for small businesses.
Answer every caller, in the language they called in.
Live within 24 hours, keep your number, cancel monthly. No annual contract.
Get started