AI receptionist for your business: what it can and can't do

What an AI receptionist actually does on a call

A caller rings your number. Instead of voicemail or a hold queue, they hear a voice agent that has been set up with your services, opening hours, prices you are happy to share and the questions you use to qualify a new enquiry. It can:

• Answer common questions from the information you give it: what you do, where you are, when you are open, how the process works.
• Qualify the caller with the same questions your team asks, and record the answers.
• Book the appointment into your calendar while the caller is still on the line, with a confirmation by text or email.
• Route the call to the right person when the caller asks for someone, or when the conversation needs a human.
• Log everything. The recording, a written summary and the answers go into your CRM against the contact, so nobody has to type up notes.

The same agent can also make outbound calls: reminders before appointments and follow-up calls to enquiries that did not book. Those calls have extra legal rules in the UK, covered below.

Where it works well, and where it needs a person

Call type	Good fit for a voice agent?	Why
Out-of-hours and overflow calls	Yes	The alternative is voicemail, and most callers do not leave one
New enquiries with standard questions	Yes	The questions are predictable and the goal is a booked call
Appointment booking and rescheduling	Yes	Clear rules, a calendar to check, a confirmation to send
Reminder and confirmation calls	Yes, with consent	Short, scripted and easy to measure
Complaints and upset callers	No	Hand over to a person straight away
Pricing negotiations or bespoke quotes	No	Take the details and book a call with your team
Anything regulated or sensitive	No	Medical, legal or financial advice needs a qualified person

Our rule of thumb: let the agent handle calls where the right answer is already written down somewhere in your business. When the answer needs judgement, the agent's job is to collect the details and get the caller to the right person fast.

What can go wrong, and how it is prevented

The agent says something wrong. A business is responsible for what its automated systems tell customers. In Moffatt v Air Canada (2024), a Canadian tribunal held the airline liable after its website chatbot gave a customer incorrect information about a fare policy. The fix is to limit the agent to answers taken from information you have approved, and to have it say "I'll get someone to confirm that" when it does not know.

Callers feel tricked. Tell callers at the start that they are speaking to an automated assistant, and give them a way to reach a person. People are far more patient with a voice agent that is honest about what it is.

Outbound calls break the rules. Under the UK's PECR rules, automated marketing calls need the person's specific prior consent. General marketing consent is not enough. A voice agent is not live speech, so treat any outbound marketing call it makes as an automated call. Service calls, such as a reminder about an appointment the person booked, are a different category, but check your own position with the ICO guidance.

Data ends up in the wrong place. Calls are recorded and transcribed, so recordings and summaries need to sit in accounts you control, with access limited to the people who need them.

How we build one

1. Listen first. We go through real calls with you: the common questions, the qualifying questions, and the calls that should always go to a person.
2. Write the call flow. What the agent says, what it asks, when it books and when it hands over. You approve it before anything goes live.
3. Connect it. Your phone number, calendar and CRM, built in your own accounts.
4. Test it on real scenarios. Normal calls, awkward calls, people who go off-script, bad lines and people who ask for a human.
5. Launch in stages. Usually out-of-hours calls first, then overflow, then more once the summaries show it is handling calls properly.

More on what the service covers is on our voice agents page.

What it costs

There are two parts:

• The build. Projects start at £4,500. The price depends on how many call types the agent handles, how many systems it connects to, and whether it makes outbound calls as well as answering them. You get a written scope and price before anything is built.
• Running costs. Phone minutes and AI usage are billed per minute by the providers, paid from your own accounts. The total depends on call volume and call length, and we estimate it with you from your current call numbers before you commit.