An AI receptionist that answers when you cannot, and hands you the call.

What an AI receptionist is

An AI receptionist answers your phone with a voice, holds a conversation with the caller, and does the things a front desk would do on a first call: find out who is calling, what they need, where they are, and when they want it. It reads from a written record of your business, so it can answer the questions you are asked all day (hours, service area, what you do and do not do) and take a message for the ones it cannot.

It is not a phone tree, and it is not a recording. It is also not a chatbot on your website, though we build those too; see AI chatbots for service businesses. It is the thing on the other end of the line when you cannot get to the phone.

What ours does

The AI front desk is part of Relay, the software we build and operate. It is the same one that answers the number at the bottom of this page. On a call it will:

1. Pick up when you cannot. Your phone rings first. If you do not answer, the assistant takes the call. You can also set it to answer every call, or to ring you only for the callers you have flagged and let the assistant take everyone else.
2. Take the details. Name, number, what the caller needs, where they are, how urgent it is. It asks in plain conversation, not as a form read aloud.
3. Answer from your own facts. It reads your hours, service area, prices and policies from a record we write with you. It will not state a price, a policy or an availability it was not given. If two things it was told disagree, it says so rather than picking one.
4. Book where it can. When the caller wants a time and your booking is set up, it offers one and confirms it. When it cannot, it takes the request and tells the caller when to expect you.
5. Hand anything complex to a person. A caller who needs a real decision gets a message taken and a callback promised, not a guess. From the app, you can also take over a live call: the caller stops hearing the assistant and starts ringing you.
6. Log the call in your inbox. Every call lands in the same place as your texts, emails and web form enquiries, in one thread per customer, with the number, the time, and the details the assistant took. When you are free, the thread is waiting.

If the assistant ever cannot take a call, because of a fault on the line or the voice service behind it, the caller falls through to voicemail with a greeting and a beep. Silence is never the fallback.

What it will not do

Honest limits, because an oversold AI receptionist is worse than none.

• It will not make things up. If your record does not say what a service costs, it will not invent a number. It takes the question and passes it to you.
• It will not make a decision that is yours. Whether to take a job, what to charge for an unusual request, whether to fit someone in tomorrow: those come to you as a message, not as a promise the assistant made.
• It will not make outbound calls. It answers. It does not ring people back, chase quotes by phone, or run a call campaign.
• It will not take payments or read card numbers over the phone.
• It is not a dispatcher. It does not know where your vans are or which technician is free. It books against the availability you gave it and leaves the rest to you.
• It does not understand every caller perfectly. Nobody does, on a phone. Background noise, a poor line, a caller who talks over it: sometimes it will ask again, and sometimes it will take a message rather than push on. Call our line and judge for yourself.

One more thing you should know before you put a line like this in front of customers: the call audio is processed by a voice platform and a transcription service to hear and speak. We tell you which ones before your line goes live.

AI receptionist vs a human answering service vs voicemail

Voicemail

Costs nothing and catches little. The caller has to leave a message for nobody and wait, with no idea when you will ring back. Many do not. Voicemail is the floor you never fall below, not the front desk.

A human answering service

A person picks up, reads from a script, takes a message and sends it on. It is the right fit when calls need a human judgement on the spot, or your callers strongly expect a person. The trade-offs: the operator does not know your business beyond the script, the message usually arrives as an email or a portal entry rather than in the caller's thread, and you are typically billed by the minute or by the call, with a monthly plan on top. Long calls and busy months cost more.

An AI receptionist

Picks up in the same second, every time, any hour, and never has all its lines busy. It answers from your own facts rather than a script, and the call lands in your inbox next to the caller's texts and emails. The trade-off: it takes a message where a human might have used judgement, and it will sometimes ask a caller to repeat themselves. On cost, ours is part of the done-for-you service: a block of talk minutes each month, a per-minute rate above that, quoted on the call. No staffing charge, because there is no agent.

The honest test is your call log. If most calls are "are you open", "do you cover my area", "can someone come Thursday", an AI receptionist handles them. If most are long, technical negotiations, a human service or a hired front desk is the better fit, and we will say so.

How it pairs with missed-call text and the 60-second reply

The receptionist is one of three pieces that answer the same question: a customer reached out, and nobody was free.

• Missed call text back is the lighter option for the phone: callers get a text from your number instead of talking to an assistant. When the assistant has the call, the missed-call text stays quiet, so nobody is texted "sorry we missed you" mid-conversation.
• The 60-second first reply covers everything that is not a call: a web form, a text, an email. Each gets a first touch inside a minute, in a message you wrote and approved. Ours was measured at 2.9 seconds on our own line.
• Follow-up automation carries the ones who did not book on the first call. The thread stays in a follow-up cadence until they book, reply, or opt out.

All three write to one inbox and one CRM, so a caller who rang, then texted, then filled in your form is one thread, not three.

How we set it up

No software to learn, no script to write. A small team, led by Artie, directs an engineering fleet that builds and operates everything; you deal with Artie.

1. Fifteen minutes with Artie. You bring the number you answer on and tell us where calls go missing. We tell you whether the receptionist is the right first piece or whether missed-call text or the first reply would pay back faster.
2. We write your business down. Hours, service area, what you do and do not do, rough pricing if you want it quoted, how you want a message taken. This is the record the assistant answers from. You approve it.
3. You choose the voice and the name. A handful of voices, a greeting in your words, a tone. The assistant introduces itself as your front desk.
4. We connect your number and pick the mode. Ring you first, answer everything, or ring you only for flagged callers. Your existing number keeps working as it does now.
5. We test it on your line, then switch it on. You call it, we call it, and we fix the wording until it sounds like you.
6. We run it. Month to month, no long-term contract. When your hours change, you text Artie and the assistant answers with the new hours from then on.

Setup usually takes one to three weeks for the whole system, with the highest-payback piece first.

Who it is for

Businesses where the owner or the crew answers the phone while working: plumbers, HVAC and electrical contractors, roofers, cleaners, landscapers, pest control, groomers and boarders, med spas, small practices. Businesses with a front desk that still lose the calls at lunch, after five and on weekends. And a business starting out that wants the phone answered properly from day one.

It is not for a business whose calls are mostly long, technical conversations needing a decision on the spot, or one with a full-time front desk that already answers everything. If that is you, the money is better spent elsewhere, and we will say so.