AI Receptionist
How your AI sounds and behaves on calls — name, voice, greeting, hours, team transfers, and the rules it follows.
The Receptionist tab is where you set up how your AI comes across to callers. Voice, greeting, hours, who it transfers to, what it captures, when it falls back to voicemail — all configured here. The page is split into sections in a left-hand rail.
What this tab is
The Receptionist config has nine sections, each its own rail item:
- Greeting & ID — the business name and receptionist name your AI uses when it answers, and the greeting itself: the first sentence callers hear. Keep it short and human ("Hi, this is the office at <business>").
- Personality — the tone, pacing, and signature phrases your AI speaks with (warm, professional, casual).
- Voice — pick from a curated set. The default Standard tier covers every voice; the Premium and Cloned tiers are previewed in the UI but currently locked. Listen to a sample before you commit; voice is the single most influential thing about how callers feel about the call.
- Hours — when your AI takes calls. Three layers: business hours (the umbrella), booking-window hours (when bookings can be offered), and per-team-member hours (when each person is bookable). The Hours editor here shows all three stacked so you can see exactly what your AI will offer.
- Pronunciation — how the AI should say tricky business names, services, and team-member names. The guide pre-lists your business name, receptionist name, and team members because those are the ones owners forget about.
- Team — who the AI can mention, book to, or transfer calls to. The Team editor here is the canonical roster; Bookings and Messages read from it. Each member has hours, time-off, and an optional direct calendar (Google or iCal).
- Routing — what happens when a call needs to leave the AI: transfer targets and the order they're tried.
- Caller info — what details your AI captures from callers (name, phone, reason for calling, and any custom fields).
- Call Behavior — how the AI conducts the call: pacing, when it hangs up, recording, and returning-caller recognition. When recognition is on, your AI matches the caller's number against your contacts and greets them by name, skipping the "what's your name?" step.
Booking, SMS, and voicemail behavior — whether your AI may book appointments, send confirmation texts, or fall back to voicemail after-hours — are toggles surfaced within these sections; off by default until you opt in.
How to use it
- 1Set business name, receptionist name, voice, tone, and greeting first. These compose the identity your callers experience and most other surfaces (KB pronunciation guide, brand tagline) reference them.
- 2Set hours to match when you're actually available. Your AI will only book within these hours and falls back to voicemail outside them if you've enabled the voicemail trigger.
- 3Add the people on your team. Anyone the AI might mention, book, or transfer a call to needs a row in Team. Empty roster is fine if you're solo — the system degrades to a single-bay setup with no transfer offer.
- 4Test by calling your number yourself. Listen to how your AI opens, how it sounds, what it says. Adjust the greeting or tone if it's off.
- 5Turn on the features you actually want — bookings, SMS confirmations, returning-caller recognition. Off by default until you opt in.
- 6Re-test after every meaningful change. Don't assume — listen.
Receptionist vs. Knowledge Base
The Receptionist tab controls HOW your AI sounds and what it's allowed to do. The Knowledge Base controls WHAT it knows about your business. Both matter — most "my AI sounds wrong" issues are tone (Receptionist), most "my AI gave the wrong answer" issues are knowledge (KB).
Voicemail is a system fallback, not an AI verb
Your AI itself never "sends you to voicemail" mid-call. Voicemail is what happens when the system can't take the call — after-hours with voicemail mode on, the human-then-voicemail routing target, the per-team-member voicemail fallback, or the concurrent-call cap being hit. If a caller in the middle of a conversation asks to leave a message, your AI takes it as a text relay instead.
Common questions
I changed the voice and the next call still used the old one.
Voice changes apply to the next call your AI takes, not calls already in progress. A call that was live when you saved finishes on the old voice; the next new call uses the new one.
Why are the Premium and Cloned voice tiers greyed out?
They're locked — we're not currently selling the ElevenLabs add-on those tiers require. The Standard tier covers every voice your AI can use today. If you need a voice not in Standard, tell us; we adjust the lineup based on demand.
My AI keeps trying to book appointments when I haven't set up booking yet.
Turn booking off on this tab if you don't want it. If it's on but no booking types are configured, your AI will try to book and have nothing real to schedule — either turn it off until you're ready, or finish setup on the Bookings tab.
How do I hear what my AI sounds like before I go live?
Use the test-bot panel on the Receptionist tab — it speaks back to you using the same prompt your live AI uses. Or just dial your business number and try it.
Can my AI take calls in a language other than English?
Spanish is supported and seamless — if a caller starts in Spanish, your AI continues in Spanish. Switching mid-call works in either direction without an extra confirmation step. We add languages as we get the voice quality up to par — let us know which one you need.
My AI transfers to the wrong person.
Transfer targets come from the Team editor. If the AI rang the wrong line, check that team member's row — wrong number, wrong hours, or "transferable" toggled off all cause this. The Activity log shows which target was picked and why.
I changed the tone from "professional" to "warm" and callers say it's still stiff.
Tone is a strong nudge but the greeting itself does most of the work. If your greeting is "You have reached <business>, please state the nature of your call," it sounds stiff regardless of the tone setting. Try "Hi, this is the office at <business>, what can I help with?".
Knowledge Base
What your AI knows. Pair this with the Receptionist tab for full setup.
Bookings
If your AI is going to book appointments, configure types and rules here.
Related articles
Knowledge Base
Everything your AI knows about your business — services, hours, pricing, policies. A state model the AI consults, not a doc store. The more you fill in, the more your AI answers confidently.
Bookings
Where every appointment your AI books shows up, plus the calendar settings that decide what your AI can offer callers.
Still stuck? Email support — we usually respond within a business day.