What an AI receptionist can and cannot do

An AI voice agent answers a phone number in a natural-sounding voice, has a conversation with whoever called, and does something with the result. That is the whole product. Everything else is a question of how well it does each of those three things for your business specifically.

What it does genuinely well

• Picking up. Always, immediately, at 2am, on a bank holiday, on the Sunday of a bank holiday weekend. Every call to the number it owns is answered, which is the entire value proposition and not a small one.
• The same five questions. Are you open Sunday. Do you cover my postcode. Roughly what does that cost. Do you do emergencies. Where are you. Most inbound calls to a small service business are one of a handful of questions.
• Taking a proper message. Name, number, what they want, when they are free — captured consistently, written down, and sent to you as a summary rather than a voicemail you have to listen to and transcribe yourself.
• Booking into a calendar, when the rules are simple. Available slots, a duration, a buffer, a confirmation.
• Never being rude, never being rushed, never being in the middle of something else.

What it does badly, or not at all

• Judgement. An unusual, high-value, slightly-off enquiry needs a human who can hear that something is unusual. The agent will handle it politely and get it wrong in ways that sound fine on the transcript.
• Quoting anything with real variables. If the price depends on seeing the job, the agent must say that and take details. An agent that guesses a number puts you in an argument later about a figure you never gave.
• Distress. Someone upset, someone whose job has gone wrong, someone ringing for the third time. That call needs a person, and the agent's job is to recognise it and get out of the way quickly.
• Heavy accents on a bad line, in a noisy place. Better every year, still not perfect, and worse than a human on the same call.
• Anything you did not think of. It only knows what it was configured with. The gap between what you told it and what your customers actually ask is where the disappointment lives — and it is why the first fortnight of transcripts is the most valuable thing you will read.

The thing nobody mentions: which number it answers

This matters more than any feature. There are two ways to do it, and they are not the same product.

You can point it at a new number, or you can put it in front of the number you already have. We do the first. The agent gets its own line, and that is the number that goes on the website, the Google Business Profile and any advertising. Your existing line carries on exactly as it always has — nothing is diverted, forwarded or intercepted, and if you ignore the whole thing it changes nothing about your current phone.

The second approach — putting an agent in front of your existing line, or catching your overflow — is a genuine product that some people sell, and it can work. But understand what you are agreeing to: it sits in the path of calls from your existing customers, and when it misbehaves it misbehaves on those calls. Ask which one you are buying. If the answer is vague, that is the answer.

Do callers know?

Some do, some do not, and the number who do not surprises people. It matters less than you would think for a short factual call and more than you would think for a long one. Our position: do not pretend. A greeting that says the assistant can take details and book a slot sets the caller's expectations correctly, and a caller with correct expectations is not annoyed when the assistant behaves like an assistant.

What to ask before you buy one

• Which number does it answer, and what happens to my existing line?
• Can I read every transcript, and where do they live?
• What does it do when it does not know the answer? (The only good answer is: takes a message and tells a human.)
• Who changes the hours, the prices and the services, and how quickly?
• What does it cost per month, and does that change with call volume?
• What happens to it if I stop paying — does the number come with me?

Is it worth it?

The arithmetic is unromantic, and it has to be done on the right thing. Because the agent answers its own number rather than yours, what you are buying is not the recovery of calls you currently miss — it is a second route into your business that is always open, and which is what your website, your Google listing and any advertising point at. So the question is what one job is worth to you against what the line costs a month, and how much of your new enquiry flow you are willing to send down a route that never rings out.

If your enquiries arrive by email and form rather than by phone, or your existing line is already covered by people who answer it well, this may be worth less to you than the automation that comes after it. We will say so on the call, because somebody who bought the wrong thing does not come back for the right one.