AI Receptionist: get started and use it well
What to give us so the AI sounds like your company, how transfers and messages work, and how to improve it over time.
The AI receptionist answers your calls day and night, understands what the caller needs, answers from your information, and passes the caller to the right team or takes a message. See also How the AI receptionist works.
What to prepare
The better the information, the better it sounds:
- Your greeting, for example "Thank you for calling Acme, how can I help?"
- Facts callers ask about: hours, address, services, prices you are happy to share, delivery, returns.
- Teams it can transfer to, and when each one is available.
- What to collect before passing a call: name, company, order number.
- What it must never do, for example give medical advice or promise a discount.
How a call goes
- The AI answers with your greeting.
- It works out what the caller wants and answers from your information.
- If a person is needed, it transfers the call to the right team.
- If nobody is available, it takes a message.
- You see a summary and transcript of the call in your customer portal.
Best practice
- Keep answers short. Phone callers want a sentence, not a page.
- Start with your ten most common questions and add more from real calls.
- Read the transcripts every week for the first month. Each wrong answer shows what information to add.
- Tell callers they can ask for a person. It builds trust and the AI will transfer them.
- Set team hours, so the AI does not offer a transfer when nobody is there.
Advanced options
Ask us about these:
- Several AI agents, for example one for sales and one for support, each with its own voice and instructions.
- Remembering callers: returning callers are greeted with what we know from earlier calls.
- Appointments taken during the call.
- Your help articles as knowledge: the AI answers from the same text as your help pages.
- A fallback: if the AI is ever unavailable, calls go straight to your staff.
Common questions
Will callers know it is an AI? Tell us how you would like it to introduce itself. We recommend being open about it.
It gave a wrong answer. Send us the call from your portal and we correct its information.
Can it keep my existing number? Yes. Your number stays the same and calls are routed to the AI.