An AI receptionist that answers the phone when you can’t

When the voice assistant steps in

It doesn’t replace whoever answers your phone: it steps in when nobody can pick up. You decide when, and the rest of the time the phone rings where it always has:

• When you’re busy. If the line is engaged or nobody picks up within the seconds you set, the call goes to the assistant instead of being lost.
• Out of hours. At night, over lunch, on Sunday. The assistant books an appointment, takes a message or passes the call to an on-call mobile.
• When the diary is the reason for the call. ‘I’d like to book an appointment’ is the most common call at a clinic, a salon or a garage, and the one that least needs a person: the assistant checks the real diary and books.

It runs on your existing number with a conditional divert, the same kind you would set up for an answerphone: when nobody answers, when the line is engaged, or outside the hours you choose. You can switch it off whenever you like, and the number stays yours. Before you turn it on, it’s worth checking with your phone provider what diverted calls cost on your tariff.

What it does on a call

1. It introduces itself as an AI and mentions the recording in its first sentence. It offers ‘person’ to reach someone on the team.
2. It understands why they’re calling: a new appointment, a change, a cancellation, a question about opening hours or the address, a message.
3. It books into your diary, with your practitioners, your appointment lengths and your free slots, and confirms by WhatsApp to the same number with the address and how to cancel.
4. It takes a message when the call isn’t about an appointment, and sends it to you in writing with the caller’s number.
5. It transfers the call to the person you choose if the caller asks, if there’s an emergency or if the conversation goes beyond what it knows how to do.

The sample call on this page is a typical one. At 19:48, with the clinic closed, someone rings about a bad back. The assistant says what it is, doesn’t comment on the pain, offers two times and books the one the caller picks. A minute later the confirmation arrives on WhatsApp, with the address and a way to cancel by replying.

At the end of the day you have a sheet with the calls answered, the appointments booked, the messages taken and the calls that went to a person.

What the law requires, and what we do

Recordings and transcripts are kept for as long as you decide, hosted in the European Union; the language model and the provider that transcribes the voice are processors in the United States under standard contractual clauses, as our privacy policy explains (in Spanish). All of this goes into your own business’s privacy notice, with wording we give you ready to use. The number is still yours and your provider’s: the divert can be removed whenever you like.

Voice and WhatsApp, the same assistant

What it does on the phone is what it does on WhatsApp: the same diary, the same prices, the same way of talking. A call that ends in an appointment sends the confirmation by WhatsApp; a customer who wrote on WhatsApp and then rings is recognised. For your business it’s one concierge with two doors.

It also means there’s only one set of information behind both: the phone and the chat answer from the same prices, the same appointment lengths and the same opening hours. The customer gets the same answer whichever door they knock on, and you don’t keep two versions of anything.

Who it’s for

Clinics and practices whose phone rings in the middle of a treatment, salons with one person doing everything, garages where whoever answers the phone is under a car, academies with an office that’s only staffed part of the day. What they have in common is the diary: most calls are someone wanting an appointment, and those are the calls an assistant can close on its own.

Below ten or fifteen calls a day it isn’t worth it: a good answerphone greeting and a WhatsApp reply usually do the job. If your problem is missed calls, start with the text message that saves one. If you’re weighing up options, our guide to telephone answering services compares a human, a virtual and an AI receptionist, and what happens to your calls after hours covers evenings and weekends.

If you already know the phone is where you’re losing customers, book a demo. It’s a 30-minute video call, we reply in under 24 working hours, and we’ll show it to you on your own phone line.