A UK AI company for small businesses
A UK AI company that runs what it sells, in its own business
Registered in England as company 13356970, VAT registered, based in Manchester, and using every AI system on this site to answer our own phone, sort our own inbox and quote our own work before anybody else pays for it.
Since 2021trading as a registered UK company from a real Manchester office, not a mail-forwarding address.
Company 13356970. VAT GB413260048. Cariocca Enterprises, 2 Sawley Road, Manchester M40 8BB.
The problem with choosing a UK AI company right now
The market filled up faster than the accountability did. A great many AI companies appeared in the space of about two years, and telling the real ones from the rest is genuinely hard from a website.
- Half the sector is a landing page, a reseller agreement and a Calendly link.
- Case studies name industries rather than clients, because the clients do not exist yet.
- Nobody publishes prices, so you cannot compare anything without three sales calls.
- The team page shows stock photography or nobody at all.
- Companies formed last quarter describe themselves as leaders in the field.
- And the one thing that would settle it, what do you run yourselves, is never answered.
None of that means the market is fraudulent. It means the usual signals are weak, so you need different ones. This page is our attempt to publish them.
Who we are, in verifiable terms
Everything in this section can be checked without taking our word for it, which is rather the point of putting it on a page.
Manchester PC Services LTD is registered in England and Wales, company number 13356970, and the registration is public on the Companies House register alongside the filing history and the registered office. We are VAT registered under GB413260048. The trading address is Cariocca Enterprises, 2 Sawley Road, Miles Platting, Manchester M40 8BB, which is a real office we work from rather than a mail-forwarding suite.
The business is a computer repair and technology company first. That is unusual for an AI company and it is the single most important fact about us, because it means we are not a consultancy that discovered AI. We are an operating business with customers, invoices, a phone that rings and a bench with work on it, that built AI systems to fix its own problems and then found other businesses had the same problems.
We also ran the UK service operation for a European hardware manufacturer for several years. That work is where the operational discipline comes from: tracked cases, contacted customers, closed loops, because when a national brand hands you their customers, a dropped case is a contract conversation rather than an apology.
What we are not
We are not a reseller and we take no commission from any tool we recommend, which matters more in AI than in most sectors because a large part of the market is affiliate income wearing a lanyard. If the honest recommendation is a free tool used carefully, that is the recommendation you get.
We are not a venture-funded startup pursuing scale, and we are not an enterprise consultancy with a small-business side door. We are a small British company selling to small British companies, which is the only market we understand properly.
Why a repair company is a credible AI company
Because the hard part of applied AI is not the model, it is knowing which parts of a real business tolerate automation and which do not. That knowledge comes from running something, not from reading about it. We learned where the line sits by crossing it with our own customers and pulling back.
The full account of how a repair bench turned into this is on the about page, including the parts that did not work.
What this UK AI company actually builds
Nine connected services, all of them running here first. Prices published on every one.
AI receptionists and voice agents
Phone answering that takes the job details, checks the area and flags emergencies. Ours answers our own line, so when you ring us you meet the product.
AI receptionistAI website chat
Site visitors answered out of hours using your real prices and policies, with the conversation turned into an enquiry rather than a transcript.
AI website chatBusiness process automation
Invoices read off PDFs into the accounts, records moved between systems, reports that build themselves. Every example we cite runs in our own back office.
Business automationAI consultancy and implementation planning
Advice priced separately from the build, so "do nothing yet" stays something we can afford to tell you.
AI consultancyLead capture, quotes and job workflows
The connective tissue that turns an answered call into finished, invoiced work without anybody retyping anything.
Lead capture and follow-upWebsites, hosting and the foundations
The unglamorous half. Sites built to produce enquiries, hosting and email somebody is accountable for.
Connected websitesWhy we can say this with a straight face
How a Manchester repair business became an AI company
It started with a bench, a box of screwdrivers and a promise that if you sent us something broken we would tell you the truth about it. We have always collected and returned rather than run a walk-in counter. That business still exists and still pays its own way, which is worth stating plainly because a great many AI companies have no revenue that is not investment.
We were good at the repairs and quietly terrible at everything around them. Calls rang out while both hands were inside a machine. Quotes went cold. One afternoon we rang nineteen open quotes out of curiosity and won precisely none of them, because the moment had passed weeks earlier. The shared inbox opened on eighty-three unread emails most mornings, with enquiries, suppliers and noise all interleaved.
So we built the fixes. Call answering first, because we could measure what we were losing. Then follow-up, then quoting, then the invoice handling that was eating evenings. Each one was built to solve something specific and painful, tested on our own customers, and in two cases deliberately switched back off because the output was not good enough for a business with a reputation to protect.
Other businesses started asking what we were running. That is the entire origin story of this side of the company. We are not an AI company that went looking for a market. We are an operating business that solved its own problems and discovered the solutions were sellable, which is why the advice sounds like operations rather than strategy.
We are not an AI company that went looking for a market. We solved our own problems and found the solutions were sellable.
Read the whole storyHow to check whether a UK AI company is real
Eight checks you can run in about fifteen minutes, before you speak to anybody. We have deliberately written them so that we could fail some of them, because a checklist you cannot fail is marketing.
Look them up on Companies House
Free, instant, and it tells you the incorporation date, the registered office and whether accounts have been filed. A company formed four months ago describing itself as established is a useful signal. So is a registered office that turns out to be a formation agent used by two thousand other companies.
None of that is disqualifying on its own. A new company can be excellent. But it should match what the website implies about experience.
Ask what they run in their own business
The single most revealing question available, and very few suppliers answer it well. A company selling AI receptionists whose own phone goes to voicemail has told you exactly what it thinks of its product.
Ask for specifics: which system, running since when, what broke, what did you turn off. Anyone genuinely operating these things has a stock of unglamorous answers ready.
Check whether advice and implementation are priced separately
If a supplier only earns when you buy the build, their recommendation cannot be structurally neutral however honest the individual is. Separate pricing for advisory work is what makes "do nothing yet" a survivable thing for them to say.
See whether prices exist anywhere
Quote-only pricing is sometimes legitimate, because complex builds genuinely vary. But a company with no published number for anything, not even a starting point, is usually pricing on what it thinks you can afford. Ours are on the pricing page, including the ones that make us look expensive next to a cheap tool.
Ask what happens to your data and who is accountable
Call recordings, transcripts and customer records are personal data, and the duty sits with your business whoever supplies the software. A serious supplier answers immediately: what is processed, where, for how long, and who can see it. The ICO guidance on AI and data protection sets out what you need to be able to explain, and the NCSC guidance on AI and cyber security covers the risks that arrive with the systems.
Ask what happens when you leave
You should own the data, the configuration and the documentation, and be able to take all three elsewhere including the awkward parts. A supplier whose work is deliberately hard to hand over is telling you how they expect to retain you.
Ask for a failure story
Anybody who has run AI in production has one. No failure stories means no production. We have two we volunteer: workflows we automated, watched, and deliberately returned to a person because the output was not good enough.
Check whether they will meet you
Not essential, and plenty of excellent suppliers are remote. But a supplier willing to sit in your office, with a real trading address behind them, has different incentives from one who only ever appears on a screen. We are office based in Miles Platting and we come to you across Greater Manchester.
Run these eight on us as readily as on anybody else. If the answers do not satisfy you, that is genuinely useful information and you should act on it.
The kinds of UK AI company, and who each suits
Not a ranking. These are different businesses solving different problems, and picking the wrong category costs more than picking the wrong company within it.
| Type | Typical engagement | Suits | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise consultancy | Six figures, months | Large organisations with in-house IT | Small clients get a junior team |
| Venture-funded product | Self-serve subscription | Standard needs, no integration | Roadmap serves the average customer |
| Freelance AI consultant | Day rate | One defined project | No cover when they are unavailable |
| Reseller or agency | Commission on tools | Buyers who know what they want | Recommendation follows the margin |
| Operating business that built its own | Published monthly pricing | Small firms wanting proven systems | Smaller scale, narrower speciality |
We are the last row, and the "watch for" column is accurate about us: we are a small team with a deliberately narrow focus on service businesses. If you need a bespoke model trained on proprietary data, hire the first row.
What we will not do
A UK AI company that lists only capabilities is describing an ambition. These are the limits, published before you pay.
We will not build systems that act unsupervised where being wrong is expensive. Paying invoices, committing to prices, sending contractual documents in your name. Those get prepared automatically and approved by a person, every time, because the minutes saved by removing that approval are worth far less than one confidently wrong decision.
We will not deceive your customers. Any voice or chat system we build says what it is in its first sentence and offers a route to a human at all times. This is partly ethics and partly commercial: callers who work out mid-conversation that they were fooled remember it, and the damage lands on your brand rather than ours.
We will not take on work we do not believe in. We have ended paid discovery sessions by recommending a process change instead of a build, and we have told businesses their phone problem was a staffing problem. That is a worse outcome for our revenue and a better one for our reputation, and over a long enough period those are the same thing.
And we will tell you when you are too small, or too big
Businesses turning over very little rarely need any of this, and we say so. Businesses with an in-house development team usually want a partner rather than a supplier, and sometimes that partner should not be us. Both conversations happen more often than a sales page would suggest.
What working with us actually looks like
Four stages, and you can stop after any of them with something useful in your hands. Nothing here requires a long contract.
- 01
A free systems review
A conversation about where enquiries arrive, what happens to them and where the week goes. No charge, no obligation, and it frequently ends with us recommending something cheaper than you expected.
- 02
Measure before building
Where the answer is not obvious, we measure it: one real week of calls, enquiries and quotes. Guessing is how businesses buy the wrong system, and the measurement usually costs less than the mistake.
AI Opportunity Assessment - 03
Start with one thing
One service, configured around your actual process, running alongside what you do now so nothing is at risk while you watch it. If it does not earn its keep, you stop.
- 04
Connect the rest, slowly
Only once the first piece has proved itself. Businesses that buy four services at once rarely embed any of them, which is a pattern we have watched often enough to warn about.
All our services
What UK rules mean when choosing an AI supplier
You do not need to become an expert, but two or three questions are worth asking any AI company before you sign, because the accountability lands on your business rather than theirs.
The duties that matter most to a small business are the existing ones. Using AI does not change your responsibilities under UK data protection law: if a system processes customer names, recordings or records, you remain the party accountable for it being lawful, whoever wrote the software. The government's data protection guidance for businesses is the plainest summary of the basics, and the ICO's advice for small organisations is written for firms without a legal department.
Transparency is the direction of travel everywhere. Both the UK regulatory approach and the wider international picture are converging on the principle that people should know when they are dealing with an automated system. That is why every voice and chat system we build says what it is immediately, and why we would treat a supplier offering to pass their AI off as human as a warning about everything else they do. We set out the timeline in plain English in our guide to AI regulation.
The practical version is short. Ask what data the system sees, where it is processed, how long anything is kept, who on the supplier side can access it, and what happens to all of it if you leave. An AI company that answers those five without hesitating has thought about them. One that treats them as an obstacle has told you something more useful than any case study.
Frequently asked questions
Are you a registered UK company?
Yes. Manchester PC Services LTD, registered in England and Wales, company number 13356970, VAT number GB413260048, trading from Cariocca Enterprises, 2 Sawley Road, Miles Platting, Manchester M40 8BB. All of it is checkable on the Companies House register.
What makes you different from other UK AI companies?
We are an operating business that built these systems for itself first. Our own phone is answered by the AI receptionist we sell, our inbox is triaged by the automation we sell, and our repair quotes are drafted by the workflow we sell. Most suppliers cannot say that, and it is the question we would ask any of them.
Do you work with businesses outside Manchester?
Yes, UK wide, and most setup happens remotely. Being Manchester based matters for on-site work and for clients who want to meet whoever is building their systems, which is why we keep a separate page for AI in Manchester.
How big is the team?
Small, deliberately. We are not going to pretend otherwise on a page about verifying suppliers. The practical consequence is that we take on fewer clients and stay narrow, which suits small service businesses and would not suit a national rollout.
Do you build custom AI models?
No. We build applied systems on top of existing models and integrate them with the tools you already run. If your requirement is a bespoke model trained on proprietary data, you want a specialist AI development company and we will say so rather than attempting it.
What does it cost to work with you?
Advisory sessions from £149, the AI Opportunity Assessment at £99, monthly services from £24.99 to around £249, and automation builds from £500, all plus VAT. Every figure is published on the pricing page rather than being quote-only.
Will you come to us?
Yes, across Greater Manchester as standard and further by arrangement. We are office based in Miles Platting rather than a walk-in shop, so the normal pattern is that we come to your premises. For repair work we collect and return rather than asking anybody to drop things off.
Who owns what you build for us?
You do: the workflows, the configuration, the documentation and the data. If you ever move elsewhere we hand over everything including the parts that are awkward to explain. We are not interested in building something you cannot leave.
Where to go next
The pages that answer the obvious follow-up questions.
- All our AI servicesThe nine services, what each fixes, and the order to buy them in.
- AI consultancyAdvice and planning priced separately from any build. From £149.
- PricingEvery price we charge, published and organised by problem.
- About Manchester PCThe full story, including what we got wrong.
- AI in ManchesterThe local version of this page, for businesses nearby.
- The story of AI so farHow the technology got here, in plain English and without hype.
Ask us the eight questions
Book a free systems review and put the checklist above to us directly. You will get straight answers about what we run, what we charge, what we will not do, and whether any of it is worth your money. If it is not, that is what the call will conclude.
Company 13356970. VAT GB413260048. All prices plus VAT.