An AI receptionist in Newcastle, NSW: every call answered, day or night.

Software that answers your phone in a voice, understands what the caller is asking, and either answers it, books something, or takes a message and passes it to you. It runs on the number you already use.

It sits on your existing business number. A call comes in, it is answered straight away, and the caller has a normal conversation rather than a menu of options.

What it handles

• Answering. On the first ring, at any hour, without the caller waiting through a recorded list.
• The ordinary questions. Your hours, your area, whether you do a particular job, what happens next. The things asked on most calls.
• Booking. Into your calendar, with a confirmation and a reminder afterwards.
• Taking the details. Name, number, suburb and what the job is, in a message that reaches you rather than a voicemail nobody plays.
• Handing over. Transferring to you or to somebody on your team when the call needs a person.

The missed call is the other half of it. A call that goes unanswered gets a text back within a minute offering a time. That piece is automation, which means a job that runs without anybody remembering, and it is the cheapest version of this.

Most small businesses cannot answer the phone during the hours people ring. The call that goes to voicemail is competing with the next business on the map, who picked up.

Watch a trade or a clinic through a working day. The phone rings while somebody is under a house, mid appointment or driving, so it goes to voicemail. The caller does not leave one. They are looking at a map with two more businesses on it.

That is not a failure of effort. It is a business with no free hands between eight and five, which describes most of the businesses we work with here.

The other half is the hours nobody is working at all. Enquiries arrive in the evening and on Sunday, and a business that answers then is answering while everybody else is shut.

Prices, availability it cannot see, and anything about a specific job. An assistant that guesses confidently is worse than no assistant, so the limits are written before it answers a single call.

This is the part that decides whether customers like it, and it is the part that gets skipped. What ours are allowed to say is written down and checked before they go live.

The limits we set

• No prices. Every business has a job that looks standard and is not. A number given on a call becomes a number the business has to honour.
• No availability it cannot see. If it is not reading the real calendar, it does not offer a time.
• Nothing it has not been told. It answers from a written set of facts about your business. Anything outside that set goes to a person.
• It says what it is. Ours introduce themselves as an assistant. Callers take that fine, and what they do not take is finding out afterwards.

The federal government's AI ethics principles land in the same place in more formal words, and being upfront is the part worth taking from them.

The difference between one customers like and one they hang up on is the wording and the facts behind it. Both come out of an hour with the owner rather than out of the software.

Every one of these we have set up has come down to the same two things: what it knows about the business, and how it says it.

What goes into it

• The facts. Hours, area, what you do and what you do not, what happens after a booking. Written down once, and it is the list that stops it guessing.
• Your words. Real examples of how you answer the phone. Short sentences if you are short on the phone.
• The handover. Who a call goes to, when, and what happens if that person does not pick up either.
• The follow up. What is sent afterwards, and when it stops. An assistant that keeps texting somebody who said no is a complaint waiting to arrive.

Ours runs on our own line, which means we are the first ones to hear it when the wording is wrong.

Start with the missed calls, write down what it is allowed to say, put it on the real number, read every call and message for a fortnight, then let it start booking.

1. Start with the calls you miss

A text back within a minute on any missed call. It is the smallest piece, it goes live quickly, and it is usually where the first recovered job comes from.

2. Write down the facts

Hours, area, the jobs you do, the jobs you do not, and what happens after somebody books. An hour of work, and it is the whole difference.

3. Write down the limits

Prices, availability, anything job specific. Written before it answers a call, not after somebody complains.

4. Put it on the real number

Not a second number nobody rings. It goes on the line customers already have, with the calls it cannot handle transferring to you.

5. Read everything for a fortnight

Every call and every message. This is where the wording actually gets fixed, and it is a few minutes a day.

6. Then let it book

Once it sounds right and its limits hold, give it the calendar. Booking is the part with the most to go wrong, so it goes last.

The missed-call text back goes live quickly. A voice assistant takes longer, and most of that time is writing what it knows and reading what it said rather than any setup.

The order it happens in

• The missed calls get answered. A text back on every unanswered call. Live early, and it is the piece that pays for the rest.
• The facts and the limits get written. The list it answers from, and the list it refuses. Nothing is answering by voice yet.
• The voice goes on the real line. Read every call for a fortnight, correct the wording, then hand it the calendar.

A business that wants something the software cannot do is asking for a piece of custom work rather than a setup. That is worth naming as a separate job so nobody is surprised by it.

Ask whose number it runs on, whether you can read every call, what it is forbidden to say, and what happens if you stop paying. The number question is the one that decides how easily you can walk away.

We do this work in Newcastle, so we are not neutral. These are the questions we would want asked of us.

• Whose name is the phone number in? The business's. Ours are set up that way, because a number in an agency's account is the hardest thing to get back.
• Can I read every call and message? Yes, and easily. If you cannot see what it said, you cannot tell whether it is working.
• What is it forbidden to say? A written list, before it goes live. Prices and availability are on ours.
• What happens if I stop paying? The number and the customer details stay yours. What stops is the answering.
• Am I locked in? Ours runs month to month and always has. Any arrangement you cannot leave at the end of a month is worth a second look.

A business with somebody on reception already has most of this covered, and the piece still worth having is the after hours half.