Productized service
AI Receptionist Software for Small Business
Missed calls cost more than the receptionist does. Our AI Receptionist answers your phone 24/7, books appointments into your calendar, sends instant follow-up, and quietly hands off the calls that genuinely need a human. Built in Canada. Shipped to live operations. No per-minute billing.
The receptionist conversation is the same one in every industry we work with. Trades, clinics, salons, law firms, restaurants — at some point the owner does the math on a missed call. One missed install quote in HVAC. One missed table on a Saturday. One missed intake call at a dental clinic. The single missed-call cost is almost always larger than a month of a working AI Receptionist. That math is what makes this a productized service instead of a custom build. The shape of the problem doesn't change much. The configuration does.
This page is the honest version: what the AI Receptionist does, what it doesn't do, what it costs, who it's a good fit for, and the integrations we already ship into. If you make it through this page and decide it's not for you, that's a fine outcome — we'd rather you know now than learn it on month three.
What it does
Six capabilities, none of them speculative — we ship all of these into production today.
Answers calls 24/7
After-hours, weekends, holidays, and overflow during business hours when your team is already on another line. Pick a routing rule per scenario.
Captures lead info
Name, contact, intent, and any qualifying questions you want asked. Structured fields written straight into your CRM, not free-text voicemail transcripts.
Books into your calendar
Live availability check, slot hold, caller confirmation, calendar write-back. Calendly, Google Cal, Outlook, GHL, Jane App, Acuity, OSCAR EMR — your tool, not ours.
Instant SMS & email follow-up
Booking confirmation, intake forms, directions, prep instructions, and a polite nudge to add the appointment to their own calendar. Triggered within seconds of the call.
Routes complex calls to a human
You define the rules — VIP customer, emergency keyword, second clarification miss, foreign language, request to speak to the owner. The AI hands off without dropping the caller.
Same-day missed-call recovery
If a call dies before the AI picks up or a caller hangs up mid-flow, the system fires a callback SMS within a minute. Most never reach "missed" in the first place.
How it works
Three layers, all proven tech. We are not inventing anything novel here — the work is in the configuration, the voice scripting, and the integration with the tools you already use.
Forward calls to a dedicated voice number
Your existing business number stays where it is. We provision a Twilio Voice number, then set forwarding rules on your current phone (after-hours only, on no-answer, or all calls — your choice). No porting, no provider switch, no downtime. The forwarding setup is a 10-minute call to your phone provider.
AI voice agent handles the conversation
Modern speech-to-text on the inbound, an LLM (OpenAI or Anthropic depending on your data-residency needs) reasoning over a knowledge base we build from your existing FAQs and SOPs, and neural TTS on the outbound. Barge-in supported. Pauses tuned. Voice tested on real phone-line compression, not headset audio.
Writes into your CRM and calendar
Structured outputs land in HubSpot, GoHighLevel, ServiceTitan, Clio, Jane App, Airtable, Notion, or wherever your team already lives. Bookings hit Calendly / Google / Outlook / GHL / Jane App. Notifications fire to Slack, Teams, SMS, or email depending on who needs to know what.
Escalates the ones that need a human
Your rules, configured at setup. Warm-transfer to a mobile during business hours, callback request with priority flag, or voicemail-to-text. The AI never pretends to be a person, never invents an answer to keep the call going, and never silently drops a caller. Every escalation is logged.
Pricing
Specific numbers, not vague ranges. The variance below is real — a single-calendar, FAQ-only deployment for a 4-person clinic costs the bottom of the range. A multi-location operation with ServiceTitan write-back, three escalation paths, and Spanish QA costs the top of the range. We will tell you which end you land on inside the scope call, not after a proposal.
More on how we think about pricing: how AI is priced for small businesses →
Who it's for, who it isn't
We have shipped this enough times to know the fit signals. Honest answers below — if the "not for" column describes your operation, we will tell you on the scope call and we will not pitch you.
Good fit
- Trades — HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, landscaping
- Restaurants — reservations, large-party requests, catering inquiries
- Salons & spas — booking-heavy, high after-hours interest
- Clinics — dental, physio, chiro, optometry, vet, family practice
- Law firms — intake-screening, conflict-checks, callback queue
- Accountants & bookkeepers — seasonal call spikes around filing deadlines
- $500K – $5M revenue SMEs where the phone is the front door
Not a fit
- Operations where every inbound call is high-touch sales requiring a named human relationship from second one
- Businesses with under 5 calls/week — the implementation math doesn't pencil out
- Pure transactional retail with no booking or intake component
- Companies looking for a 3-month pilot with no commitment to the underlying telephony — we're not the right shape
- Teams who want a SaaS dashboard and no human partner — there are products for that, ours is built differently
What we don't do
Equal time. The AI-receptionist category has more marketing than it has working product. Here is what we will not promise, on principle.
Common integrations
Named tools, not categories. If yours isn't on the list, ask — we will check the API and tell you honestly whether it is a 2-day add or a 6-week problem. We do not say "sure" to integrations we have not actually shipped.
Track record
Two examples below — both client implementations, both still running. We will only put a case study on the site after the system has been in production long enough that we know what its sharp edges are.
Khalas Kitchen — automated front-of-house comms
Restaurant ops where the after-hours phone line was leaking reservation requests and large-party inquiries every weekend. We deployed an AI Receptionist tuned to the menu, hours, allergen FAQs, and reservation rules. Confirmed bookings landed in the host stand's tablet. Escalations for catering or media inquiries went straight to the owner's SMS.
Read the Khalas Kitchen case study →AI Footprint — multi-channel intake at scale
A multi-channel intake operation that was bottlenecked on phone screening — qualifying inbound leads against a fairly complex set of fit criteria before passing to a human. The AI Receptionist did the first-pass screen, captured intent, and queued only the qualified prospects to the sales team. Pipeline quality up, time-to-first-touch down.
See all case studies →Common questions
How quickly can the AI receptionist be deployed?
Typical timeline is 2–3 weeks from kickoff to live calls. Week 1 is discovery, voice scripting, and integration setup. Week 2 is build and internal testing on a sandbox number. Week 3 is supervised live cutover with your existing forwarding rules. Simple deployments (single calendar, no CRM write-back) can ship in under 10 business days.
Can it handle Arabic, French, or other languages?
English is standard. Arabic is available for /sa/ deployments (Riyadh office) and French-Canadian for Quebec markets, both with native-speaker QA on the voice scripts. Spanish, Punjabi, and Mandarin are supported when there is real call volume to justify the script-tuning work — we will not ship a language we have not QA'd.
What happens if the AI doesn't know the answer?
You define the escalation rules. The default we recommend: if the caller asks something outside the agent's scope twice, the AI offers to take a callback request (name, number, reason) and route it to a named human on your team via SMS or Slack within 60 seconds. No silent failures, no fake answers, no "let me check on that" followed by silence.
Will it sound robotic?
Voice quality is realistic — modern neural TTS with natural prosody, pause handling, and barge-in support so callers can interrupt. We test on actual phone lines (not headset audio) because compression matters. You choose male/female voices and we tune pace, warmth, and brand-voice cues. Some callers ask if they are talking to a person; most don't notice within the first 20 seconds.
Can it book directly into my calendar?
Yes — Calendly, Google Calendar, Outlook 365, GoHighLevel, Jane App, Acuity, and OSCAR EMR are all supported. The AI checks real availability, holds the slot during the call, confirms with the caller, and writes the event with notes. If you use a less common tool we will check the API and tell you upfront whether it's a quick add or a longer build.
Does it integrate with my existing phone?
Yes. You keep your existing number. We set up call forwarding (after-hours, on no-answer, or all calls — your choice) to a dedicated Twilio number that runs the AI. No phone provider switch, no number porting required. If you later want full control we can port the number, but most clients never need to.
What if a call needs a human?
Three escalation paths, configurable per call type: (1) warm transfer to a mobile phone if it is during business hours, (2) take a callback request with priority flag for your team, (3) drop to voicemail with transcription sent to email/SMS. You decide the rules per scenario — emergencies, VIP customers, after-hours, foreign-language callers — at setup.
Can BDC LIFT fund this?
Yes — under Track A (AI implementation projects). Implementation and first-year operations are typically eligible. We have shipped LIFT-funded receptionist deployments. See /programs/bdc-lift/ for the application checklist and what we need from you to put a proposal together.
Want to see what an AI Receptionist would do for your phone line?
30-minute scope call. We'll look at your call volume, the tools you already use, and the cost of a missed call. If the math doesn't work, we'll tell you on the call — not after a proposal.