Before AI answers your phone, let it answer your messages

An AI receptionist is worth it for a small business when it starts in writing, on texts, website chat and messages, and takes the phone only when nobody can pick up. The vendors selling it say yes. The owners on Reddit who tried it mostly say no. The two sides are arguing about different things: the owners’ complaints are all about the phone. In writing, the same kind of software answers a customer in about a minute, and two of our projects show it.

In this article: who is right · why customers hang up · what the AI can answer · what goes to a person · what it looks like working · the phone, and the other options · questions people ask · where to start

Who is right, the vendors or the owners who tried it?

The vendors are right that AI can answer a customer’s routine questions, and the owners who tried it are right that callers hang up on it. The vendors sell a voice that answers your phone and books the job. The owners on Reddit put that voice in front of real callers. In a thread on r/Entrepreneur with more than 230 comments, the top answer says AI receptionists “mostly get confused and annoy the customer”. A thread on r/smallbusiness put it in one line: “If I call a company and get AI, I hang up and call a competitor.”

Every one of those complaints is about a phone call. None of the pages that rank for this question asks what happens when the same software answers a text.

Why do customers hang up on an AI receptionist?

Customers hang up on an AI receptionist because a phone call promises a person, and the AI voice breaks that promise before it says anything useful. The caller expected someone who works there and hangs up at the greeting, before finding out whether the AI could help.

A text makes no such promise. A customer who texts to ask if you work Saturdays wants the answer before they ask the next business. A correct reply in a minute does that job, whether you typed it or an AI did. Start the AI on your written messages, and give it the calls nobody picks up.

Which messages can an AI answer on its own?

An AI can answer any message whose answer is already written down in your business. That covers your hours, your prices or how you price, whether you do this kind of job, which slots are open, what is included and where to park. If a new employee could answer it on day one with the right document open, an AI can answer it too, at any hour and in the customer’s language.

Everything else goes to a person: complaints, refunds and requests for an exception. So does any question where a wrong answer costs you money or a customer, or where the answer is “it depends” and it depends on you.

You can test your own business in an hour:

1. Pull last month’s texts, chat messages, emails and missed calls.
2. Mark each one: was the answer already written down, or did it need you?
3. Count the two piles.

If the first pile is bigger, start the AI on your messages. If the second is bigger, you need a person, and software will not change that.

What does the AI hand to a person?

A good AI receptionist hands a person the whole conversation: the customer’s name, what they asked, what the AI already answered and how to reach them. It tells the customer that a person will take it from here, and that person starts where the AI stopped instead of at “how can I help you?”

The AI hands over instead of guessing when the answer needs judgment. We built an assistant for a law practice’s website, and the hard part was the line between information and judgment. The assistant explains the options in plain language. It never tells a visitor whether they qualify for one, because that decision belongs to the attorney. When the answer depends on the attorney, it offers a consultation.

The same rule works in any business: the AI answers what is written down and books you when the answer depends on you.

What does it look like when it works?

A working AI in a written channel answers the customer in about a minute and passes a person only the messages that need one. Both projects below are written channels, not phone lines.

We rebuilt the retrieval system behind Cortado’s AI guest messaging, the part that finds the facts for each reply. Guests had been waiting minutes for a reply, because the facts about each property sat in separate sources. We moved those facts into one place, and replies came down to under a minute.

The assistant at the law practice, which we do not name, answers a visitor’s question in 20 to 90 seconds and then offers a consultation on the firm’s calendar. The client reported roughly 100 visitor questions in the first 2.5 weeks after launch, and about 33 of them became booked consultations. These are the client’s own approximate figures from a short window, and the case study gives them with the same two caveats.

When is AI on the phone worth it, and what else covers the phone?

AI on the phone is worth it as backup: after hours, and when everyone who could answer is busy with a customer. It works when its greeting says it is a virtual assistant and what it can do, and when it connects the caller to a person as soon as they ask. As the first voice every caller hears during business hours, it is the version the Reddit threads are about.

Compare it with the other ways to cover the phone:

Option	Wins when	Stops working when
A missed-call text-back	You miss a few calls a week and can answer texts between jobs	The texts come in faster than you can answer them
A human answering service	Your callers need a human voice, as in emergencies	Most calls are routine questions you pay a person to repeat
Answering it yourself	The phone rings a few times a day and you can reach it	You are on a job or with a customer when it rings

A missed-call text-back is the low-cost way to start in writing. It texts a caller you were about to lose, so you can answer between jobs. When those texts come in faster than you can answer, let an AI answer them.

Frequently asked questions

Is an AI receptionist a good idea?

An AI receptionist is a good idea for the questions your business answers the same way every time, and a bad one for the calls where a customer wants a person. Start it on texts, chat and messages, and put it on the phone as cover after hours and when everyone is busy.

How much do people charge for AI receptionists?

Trillet, one of the vendors that rank for this question, lists $49 a month for 150 minutes of calls and $0.20 a minute after that. Compare plans on what a minute costs past the included block, and on whether texts and chat cost extra.

Will customers know it is an AI?

Customers know it is an AI when it tells them, and it should tell them in its first sentence. A good greeting says it is a virtual assistant and what it can do, and offers a person.

Where do you start?

Start by sorting last month’s messages into the ones an AI could answer and the ones that need you, and count the missed calls. If the AI could answer most of them, put it on your texts and website chat, and on the calls nobody picks up, so a missed call turns into a booked job instead of a lost one. A person keeps answering the phone whenever someone can. If you miss only a few calls a week, a missed-call text-back covers them for less.

If you want a second opinion, tell us what your customers ask and where they ask it: text, chat, email or phone. We will tell you which messages to hand to an AI and which to keep.