Guide
What an AI receptionist can and cannot handle
Most disappointment with AI phone systems comes from buying one for a job it was never suited to. Here is the honest split, based on the calls a managed receptionist actually receives.
An AI receptionist is not a replacement for the person who knows your business. It is a way of making sure the calls nobody was going to answer still turn into something you can act on. Judge it on that, and it does the job well. Judge it as a substitute for judgement, and it will let you down.
What it handles well
The common denominator is that these are all structured, bounded tasks — the answer is either information you have already agreed, or a set of details to collect.
- Answering when nobody else can. Overflow when the line is busy, and out-of-hours calls that would otherwise reach voicemail.
- Confirming the basics. What you do, which areas you cover, your opening hours, whether you handle a particular type of job — the questions with a fixed answer you have signed off in advance.
- Capturing an enquiry properly. Name, number, what the job is, where it is, and how urgent it is — asked consistently, on every call, including the third one that day.
- Getting the details to your team. A structured message rather than a voicemail someone has to listen to and transcribe.
- Being identical at 2am and on a Friday afternoon. Consistency is the part humans find hardest and this finds easiest.
What it should hand to a person
- Anything requiring a commercial decision. Pricing a non-standard job, agreeing a discount, committing to a date you have not confirmed.
- A complaint, or a caller who is distressed. These need a person, promptly, and the right behaviour is to capture the details and escalate rather than attempt to resolve.
- Anything ambiguous. When a caller's description does not match any agreed service, the correct outcome is a captured enquiry and a flag that a human needs to call back — not a confident guess.
This is the behaviour we configure deliberately. A receptionist that improvises is worse than one that says it will get someone to call you back.
What it should not be asked to do
- Book directly into your diary, unless a specific supported integration has been tested and you have seen it work. Otherwise you are trading missed calls for double-bookings, which is a worse problem.
- Give advice with consequences. Anything clinical, legal, financial or safety-related belongs with a qualified human.
- Handle every call in the business. If your customers are mostly repeat clients who expect to speak to you, an AI receptionist on the main line is the wrong shape. Overflow and out-of-hours is the right shape.
- Pretend to be a person. Ours identifies itself as an automated assistant answering on behalf of the business. Callers deal with that fine; discovering it later is what irritates people.
How to test one before you buy
Call it and behave like your worst caller, not your best one. Interrupt it. Change your mind halfway. Ask something outside the obvious script. Ask a price. What you are testing is not whether it sounds good when you cooperate — it is what it does when you do not.
A well-configured receptionist will stay calm, capture what it can, and be honest about the limit. If it invents an answer instead, you have learned the important thing about it in under two minutes. You can call ours and try exactly that.