How to set up an AI receptionist in 5 steps

Setting up an AI receptionist takes five steps: decide which calls it takes, choose how your number forwards to it, hand over your services and rules, test it through your real phone line, and go live on part of your traffic before all of it. With BotsDontSleep the whole sequence takes about one week, needs two to three hours of your time, and costs $0 setup. After that it answers 24/7 at $0.60 CAD per answered minute, billed by the second, with no contract and no monthly minimum. Your number, your carrier and your caller ID stay exactly as they are.

What are the five steps to set up an AI receptionist?

Each step gets its own section below.

1. Decide which calls it takes. Pick the calls that cost you most when they go unanswered, usually after-hours and overflow, and list the calls that must always reach a person.
2. Choose how your number connects. Forward your existing line after hours, on no answer, or all the time, or port the number if you want the provider to hold it. Forwarding takes about ten minutes at your carrier.
3. Hand over your services, hours, prices and rules. Send what you already have: price list, hours, intake questions and who gets interrupted for what. The call flows, wording and calendar connection are built from that.
4. Test it through your real phone line. Call your own number from a mobile, let it ring out, ask something it cannot know, and confirm every transfer and summary arrives where it should.
5. Go live on part of your traffic, then widen it. Start with after-hours or overflow, read the first week of transcripts, correct what is off, and move more calls over when it is doing the job.

The order matters more than it looks. Owners who start at step three, writing scripts before deciding what the agent is for, end up with a long document and an agent that tries to do everything a little.

Which calls should an AI receptionist take first?

The ones you are already losing. For most small businesses that means calls outside business hours and calls that ring out while everyone is busy, not the calls you currently answer well.

Start by listing where calls go today when nobody picks up. If the answer is voicemail, that is the gap. A plumber on a job at 2 p.m. and a clinic front desk with a patient at the counter are losing the same call for different reasons, and both are easy first targets.

Then make the second list, which is the one people skip: calls that must always reach a person. A regular customer who expects the owner. A supplier with a delivery problem. A caller in real distress. For a veterinary clinic that list is short and absolute, which is why our AI receptionist for veterinary clinics starts every setup with the rule for a pet that cannot breathe, before anything about booking.

Everything between those two lists is a judgment call you can revisit after week one. Leave it with your staff at first. An agent that does three things reliably on day one is worth more than one that does ten things unevenly.

How does your phone number get connected?

By forwarding in almost every case. Your carrier or phone system sends calls on to the AI receptionist's number under the conditions you choose, and your customers keep dialling the number they already have.

Most carriers and business phone systems offer three forwarding conditions: always, when the line is busy, and when nobody answers after a set number of rings. The exact menu and ring count depend on your carrier, so we confirm them with you on the setup call rather than guess. Landlines, VoIP systems and mobile lines all work. Setting it up takes about ten minutes, and reversing it takes the same ten minutes.

Porting, meaning moving the number itself to the provider, is the other option. It gives the provider full control of routing but ties the number to them while it is there. We only suggest it when a phone system cannot forward the way you need. For nearly everyone, forwarding is the better choice because nothing is locked in.

Your forwarding choice decides what the agent sees, so it is the real scope decision:

A heating company in January and a dental office in a quiet month need different columns, and nothing stops you moving between them. A sensible path is to begin in the left column, add overflow once you trust it, and stop there if that covers the gap.

What do you need to hand over, and how long does it take?

About two hours of material you mostly already have, plus a thirty-minute setup call.

The short version: your service list with what each job involves, your hours including holidays and seasonal changes, your prices and the jobs nobody may quote by phone, the questions you ask before a booking is worth having, and your escalation rules. We cover each of those in detail, with the mistakes that come up most, in what you have to do to train an AI phone system. What the provider does with the material afterwards is in how an AI answering service learns your business.

Two setup decisions are not in either of those posts and belong here.

The greeting. Decide what callers hear in the first five seconds: your business name, and whether the agent says it is an AI. Disclosure is on by default on our service and you can change it, but decide deliberately. A caller told up front knows what they are talking to; a caller who works it out halfway through is having a different conversation.

Where summaries go. Every call produces a transcript and a summary. Decide who receives them, by text or email, and on which phone. A summary sent to an inbox nobody checks on weekends is a voicemail with better formatting.

How should you test it before it goes live?

Through the real path your customers will use, not only on a test line. The agent can be perfect and the setup still fail at the forwarding, the transfer or the summary.

Run these five checks yourself, from a mobile that is not on your business account:

• Call your number during closed hours and confirm the agent answers, with the greeting you approved.
• Call during open hours and let it ring out to confirm overflow picks up at the ring count you expect, not after the caller has already given up.
• Ask for something that must go to a person and confirm the transfer reaches the right phone, and what happens when that phone does not answer.
• Ask something it cannot possibly know, like your last invoice number. It should say it does not have that. If it produces a number, stop and fix it before launch.
• Check the summary arrived on the phone you chose, within a minute or two of hanging up.

Then have whoever answers your phone most call in with the worst call of their week. For a dental clinic in Montreal that might be a patient switching between French and English while describing a toothache. The agent handles 90+ languages and switches mid-sentence, but you want to hear it on your own call, not take our word for it.

You can run the "ask something it cannot know" test before buying anything. Our demo agent, Maryann, answers at +1 437-494-9110 at any hour.

What does the first week after launch look like?

Short daily reads of transcripts, and a handful of small corrections. Expect some; a first week with no changes usually means nobody read the calls.

The corrections tend to be small and predictable. A greeting a few words too long. An intake question callers cannot answer on the spot, so calls stall in the same place. A job booked into a slot fifteen minutes too short. An urgency rule set too sensitive, so someone is paged at 11 p.m. about a scheduling question, or not sensitive enough. Each one is a message to us and is usually changed the same day. What an agent does when a caller asks something it was never taught is covered in what happens when an AI receptionist can't answer.

At the end of the week, look at two things: which calls it transferred, and which calls it finished alone. If transfers are mostly calls it should have handled, the rules need widening. If a finished call should have reached you, they need tightening. Then decide whether to move to the next forwarding column. For a plumbing company in Vancouver, going from after-hours to overflow usually means the daytime burst-pipe calls stop going to voicemail while the plumber is under a sink.

When should you not set up an AI receptionist yet?

Four cases, and it is better to name them now than find them in week three.

When nobody will own the rules. Prices change, staff change, services get added. An agent working from last season's price list is confidently wrong, which is worse than voicemail. If no one will spend twenty minutes a month keeping it current, wait until someone can.

When your phone setup cannot forward the way you need. Some phone setups can only forward every call, not just the unanswered ones. That still works, but it means starting in the all-calls column, which is a bigger first step than most businesses should take. Sort out the phone system first if you can.

When you take very few calls and answer nearly all of them. Under about twenty calls a month that you already answer, the phone in your pocket is doing the job. Setup would take an afternoon of your time to fix a problem you mostly do not have.

When every caller needs a human voice. An AI receptionist answers, screens, books and hands off with a summary. It does not calm an angry customer the way a good receptionist does, and it does not negotiate. If a person on every call is the requirement, a staffed answering service is the better purchase, and we would say so on the setup call.

What does setting up an AI receptionist cost?

Nothing up front. Discovery, forwarding help, call-flow building, calendar connection, test calls and the first week of corrections are all included at $0 setup. There is no onboarding fee and no charge per language.

After launch you pay $0.60 CAD per answered minute, billed by the second. As an illustration, 150 answered minutes in a month is $90, and 300 minutes is $180. A two-minute booking call costs $1.20. There is no contract and no monthly minimum, so if the first month shows it is not for you, you unforward the line and stop paying. The full sequence, from first call to launch, is laid out on how our setup works.