What is an AI receptionist
and how does it work?
An AI receptionist is software that answers your phone and does what a receptionist would do on the call: answer questions about your services and prices, book an appointment in your diary, take a message, or put the caller through to a person. FirstReach answers on the first ring, tells the caller it is an automated assistant, and replies in about 750 milliseconds.
Four things happen, in order.
It answers
There is no ring-out and no queue. The caller hears a greeting written for your business, and is told at the start that they are speaking to an automated assistant.
It listens
The caller says what they want in their own words, rather than choosing from a menu. The assistant matches that against what you have told it about your services, prices, hours and rules.
It acts
Where the request is one you have authorised, it finishes it on the call: a real slot read from your diary and written back, a question answered from your own information, or a message taken.
It stops
Anything outside the rules you set goes to a person, live if someone is free and as an alerted message if not. It does not improvise an answer.
Three things it gets confused with.
A voicemail
Voicemail records a message and waits for you. Published UK research puts the share of callers who hang up rather than leave one at around 69%. An answered call can become a booking.
A menu system
There is no list of options to press. The caller says what they want in their own words and the assistant works from that.
A website chatbot
It runs on your phone line, not a box in the corner of a web page, and it completes the booking rather than collecting an enquiry.
Four things, and all of them stay yours to change.
- Your services, prices and how long each one takes.
- Your opening hours and your booking rules, including anything that has to happen first.
- A booking system or calendar it can read and write to.
- Who a call should go to when it needs a person, and in what order.
- None of it is fixed. What it says, what it offers, what it refuses and who it transfers to are all configured for your business, and changed whenever you ask.
See it answer your phone.
Book a 20-minute consultation. We map your workflow, preview a persona built for your business and show you what a pilot would look like.