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What is the AI Receptionist?

An AI receptionist is a voice agent that answers your inbound calls. She greets callers, answers questions about your business from the knowledge you give her, and — depending on the tools you switch on — books appointments, takes messages, or transfers callers to your team. If transfer isn’t set up, she offers to arrange a call back instead when a caller asks for a person. You’ll find her under Inbound Calls → AI Receptionist in the sidebar. Under the hood, every receptionist is a normal inbound call script — she just gets a much simpler editor. That dual identity is worth understanding:
  • Opened from the AI Receptionist page, a receptionist uses the simplified receptionist editor described on this page — a plain-language view built around a name, a greeting, tool toggles, and FAQs.
  • The same receptionist also appears on the Call Scripts page, marked with an AI Receptionist badge. Opening her there loads the full script editor, where you can see and extend the underlying call flow.
The two editors are safe to mix. Saving from the receptionist editor rebuilds only the steps it manages and carries everything else through untouched, so customisations made in the full editor survive — see Configuring Your Receptionist for the details.

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Quickstart: from zero to Ready

  1. Open AI Receptionist in the sidebar and click New receptionist.
  2. In the Create New Receptionist dialog, keep Generate with AI selected, click Create, and fill in the generation form (below). Click Generate and watch the progress log; when it finishes, click Open Receptionist.
  3. On the Overview tab, work through the setup checklist until every step shows Done and the badge flips to Ready.
  4. Click Test in the editor header to place a test call from your browser or your own phone and hear her answer.
  5. Share the assigned number — or forward your existing number to it — and she’s on the front line.

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The AI Receptionists list

The AI Receptionist page lists your team’s receptionists under the heading AI Receptionists, with a count badge. The toolbar gives you:
  • Filter tabs — All, Inbound, and Outbound, each with a count. Receptionists are always inbound, so in practice everything sits in the first two tabs.
  • Search — matches names, descriptions, and objectives.
  • All voices — filter by the voice each receptionist speaks with.
  • Sort — Last updated, Last used, or Name (A-Z).
  • Card view / List view toggles, and the New receptionist button.
Card view shows each receptionist with her name, type, voice, when she was last updated, her description, four stat tiles (Calls, Booked, Success, Avg time), and a Calls · last 24 days bar chart of daily call volume — hover a bar for the exact count on that day. A dashed New receptionist tile at the end of the list (“Build from scratch or generate with AI”) is another way to create one. If your filters match nothing, the list reads No receptionists match the current filters. Clicking a receptionist opens her in the receptionist editor.

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Creating a receptionist

Click New receptionist. The Create New Receptionist dialog offers three methods (there is no template option — receptionists are generated rather than templated):
  • Generate with AI (the default) — “Describe your receptionist and let AI generate it for you”.
  • From Existing — copy one of your existing receptionists as a starting point.
  • New Receptionist — start from scratch with a blank receptionist.
Pick a method and click Create.

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Generate with AI

The Generate Receptionist form collects just enough to build her: Click Generate. The modal switches to Generating Receptionist, streaming a progress log as the build runs. You can close it at any time — generation continues in the background and the new receptionist appears in the AI Receptionists list when ready. When it completes, the Generation Complete view confirms “(name) is ready” with an Open Receptionist button.

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The receptionist editor

The editor header has a Back button, three tabs — Overview, Settings, and Calls — plus Test and Save buttons. An Unsaved Changes badge appears whenever you have pending edits, and Save stays inactive until there is something to save; Test saves pending edits first so the test call always uses your latest configuration. If someone else changed the receptionist while you had her open, saving warns you to reload before trying again.
  • Overview — the status hero, setup checklist, stats, and recent calls (detailed below).
  • Settings — the configuration cards: Your phone number (see Receptionist Number & Call Forwarding), Your receptionist (name, voice, greeting, and instructions), What (name) can do (the Book appointments, Take a message, and Transfer to a human tool toggles — see Configuring Your Receptionist), Post-Call Summary (automatic Email/SMS summaries), and What (name) knows (guidelines and FAQs — see Receptionist Knowledge & Post-Call Summaries).
  • Calls — every call she has handled, under the heading Calls (name) handled. Filter with search, status chips (All, Completed, Voicemail, Hang-up, Rang out, Dropout, Failed — see Call Statuses), and a date range (Today, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, This month, All time, or a custom from/to range); the active chip shows the matching call count, and long lists page with a Load more button. If your filters match nothing, the list reads “No calls match your filters.” Selecting a call opens the same detail pane as the Call Log, with the summary, transcript, and recording.
If you clear the name field, she falls back to the default name Ava.

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Setup checklist and Ready status

The Overview tab opens with a status hero. Until setup is complete it’s headed Finish setting up (name) with a Needs setup badge and the note “Add a voice and a greeting in Settings so she can start answering.”, a progress meter (e.g. 2 of 5 done), and the checklist itself: Completed steps show a Done badge; incomplete ones show a Finish setup button that jumps you to the Settings tab. When all five are done, the hero becomes “(name) is ready to answer your calls” with a Ready badge — “Your receptionist is configured and will handle inbound calls.” — and the checklist disappears. Below the hero, three summary tiles show Type (always Inbound), Voice (Selected or Not set), and Tools (how many are on); clicking any of them opens Settings.

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Stats and recent calls

The Overview tab’s Last 24 days card — “How (name) has handled your calls.” — shows four tiles: A Recent calls card underneath previews her latest calls — “(name) handled these for you” — with each row showing the caller, a one-line summary, the call status, and when it happened. Click a row to open the full call detail, or See all calls to jump to the Calls tab. Before her first call it reads “No calls yet. (name)‘s calls will show up here.”

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Next Steps