What an AI receptionist can and cannot do
The demonstrations are impressive and the sales pages are not honest about the limits. Here is what actually happens when one answers your phone, including the three situations where it should not.
- An AI receptionist reliably handles the routine 70% of inbound calls: opening hours, location, what you charge, whether you cover a postcode, and booking a straightforward appointment.
- It should hand over to a human — not improvise — on complaints, anything medical, anything about money owed, and anyone who sounds distressed.
- It answers every call, within two rings, at any hour. That is the actual advantage, not the cleverness.
- For clinics there is a serious catch: callers volunteer health information unprompted, which is special category data under UK GDPR and needs a lawful basis and a signed DPA before you switch anything on.
- Cap the voice minutes in the contract with a stated overage rate. Uncapped voice AI is how a £299 month becomes a £900 month.
The demonstration is always the same, and it is always good. Somebody rings a number on stage, a warm voice answers on the second ring, handles an interruption, checks a diary, offers two times, confirms one, and says goodbye. The room makes an appreciative noise.
What the demonstration never shows is the call where somebody is crying because their dog has been hit by a car, or the one where a man wants to know why he has been charged twice, or the one from a woman with a strong accent, in a supermarket, on a bad line.
Those calls are a minority. But they are the ones that determine whether the thing is an asset or an embarrassment, and they are entirely absent from the sales page.
Judge it on the worst call it will take, not the best one it can demonstrate.
What it genuinely does well
The honest case for an AI receptionist has almost nothing to do with intelligence. It is availability.
It answers every call, within two rings, at eleven at night and at six on a Sunday morning and during the ninety minutes you are in a meeting. It never has a day off and it never gets three calls at once and has to put two of them on hold. For a business where the alternative is a phone ringing out, that is the entire argument, and it is a strong one.
Within that, it handles the routine well:
- Opening hours, location, parking. The questions you answer forty times a week and resent every time.
- Do you cover my area. Give it your postcodes and it will tell somebody in Bagshot yes and somebody in Basingstoke no, politely, without you being interrupted.
- What does it cost. Give it the price list and it quotes the published figures. Never a bespoke number, never a discount, never an estimate for a job it has not seen.
- Taking a message properly. Name, number read back and confirmed, what they want, when they are free. Better than most voicemails and far better than a scribbled note.
- Booking into a diary. Where the diary is connected and the appointment type is standard, it will find a slot, hold it and confirm it.
The three calls it should refuse to handle
A well-built agent is defined as much by what it declines to attempt. Ours is instructed to stop and hand over in three situations, and we would say the same about anyone else's.
Complaints. Somebody who is angry needs a person, immediately. An automated voice attempting to de-escalate is petrol on the fire, and the recording of it will end up somewhere you would rather it did not.
Anything clinical. A caller asking whether they should come in, whether a symptom is serious, or whether they can take something before an appointment must reach a human. There is no version of this where an automated answer is acceptable.
Money in dispute. Billing questions where somebody believes they have been overcharged are a conversation with a person, full stop.
The problem nobody mentions to clinics
This one deserves its own section because it is a genuine legal exposure and it is almost never raised in a sales conversation.
When somebody rings a dental practice, an aesthetics clinic or a physiotherapist, they explain why. They do it unprompted, in the first fifteen seconds, and in detail. "I've chipped a tooth." "I've had a lump for a few weeks." "It's my back again."
That is health data. Under UK GDPR it is special category data, and processing it needs a lawful basis under Article 9 in addition to the ordinary one. If that call is recorded, transcribed, and stored on a platform, all of that is processing — and the platform provider is your processor, which means you need a signed data processing agreement with them before a single call is taken.
None of that makes it impossible. It makes it something to arrange first: a decision on whether calls are recorded at all, a defined retention period, the agreement signed, and the practice's privacy notice updated to say what happens. Doing it in that order costs an afternoon. Doing it afterwards, because somebody asked, costs a great deal more.
The commercial trap: uncapped minutes
Voice AI is billed by the minute somewhere in the stack, whatever the front page says. A quiet month looks cheap. Then you run a Facebook campaign, or a storm takes half the roofs in Godalming off, and your call volume triples.
Insist on a cap in the contract and a stated rate for anything beyond it. Ours is capped with the overage written in. It is not a generous gesture — it is the only version of this product that does not eventually produce an argument.
Should you have one?
If your phone rings out regularly and the callers are new customers, yes, and it will pay for itself quickly at £595 to set up and £299 a month.
If you have somebody who answers the phone competently and is not overwhelmed, no. It will be a downgrade, and we will tell you so on the call rather than sell it to you.
And if you are a clinic, sort the data protection out first. That is not us being cautious for the sake of it — it is the difference between a system that quietly improves your week and one that becomes a problem in a year when somebody makes a subject access request.
Questions we get asked
What can an AI receptionist actually handle?
The routine majority of inbound calls: opening hours, location and parking, what you charge for common jobs, whether you cover a particular area, taking a message with a callback number, and booking or moving a straightforward appointment in a connected diary. Roughly seven calls in ten for a typical local service business.
When should an AI receptionist hand over to a person?
On complaints, on anything clinical or medical, on questions about money owed or disputed, and with anyone who sounds distressed or vulnerable. A well-built agent is instructed to stop and transfer rather than attempt an answer. An agent that improvises in those situations is a liability, not an asset.
Will callers know they are talking to a machine?
Most will, and it should not pretend otherwise. Being straightforward about it — a brief line at the start — costs almost nothing in call quality and avoids the far worse experience of somebody realising halfway through that they have been misled.
Is an AI receptionist legal for a dental practice or clinic?
It can be, but it needs care. Callers to a clinic routinely volunteer health information without being asked, and health data is special category data under UK GDPR requiring a lawful basis under Article 9. You need a data processing agreement with whoever runs the system, a clear retention period for recordings and transcripts, and a decision about whether calls are recorded at all.
What does an AI receptionist cost?
£595 to set up and £299 a month, with the voice minutes capped in the contract and any overage stated up front. Uncapped minute charges are the single most common unpleasant surprise in this product category.