The AI receptionist blog
One guide per trade — what decides a bookable slot in that line of work, what the receptionist has to ask, and a real recorded call you can play. 17 of them, and yours if it is not here.
Questions worth answering before you buy anything
What does a missed call cost a small business?
Not the round, scary number from an ad — yours. Three numbers you already roughly know, one multiplication, and a range you can trust more than anyone else’s guess about a missed call.
A missed call is a booking that went somewhere else. A two-minute worksheet for restaurants, salons and trades to price their own missed calls.
Read the articleHow to stop missing calls during business hours
The calls you miss during business hours are a coverage problem, not a staffing problem. Five scenarios, what each one was worth, and the one fix they share.
Five ways small businesses miss calls during work hours — and what each one was actually worth. A practical checklist for restaurants, salons, and trades.
Read the articleHow do yoga studios handle phone bookings?
A phone answering service for yoga studios that counts the places left in each class, holds mats on the call, and books private sessions into the teacher’s own diary.
A phone answering service for yoga studios that counts the places left in each class, holds mats on the call, and books private sessions.
Read the articleShould I hire a receptionist or use an answering service?
Hire the human if your calls mostly arrive during staffed hours and a front desk earns its keep in person. Use an answering service if they arrive outside those hours — for restaurants, salons, and trades, they overwhelmingly do.
Receptionist or answering service? Compare coverage hours, cost, consistency and languages, then decide with your own numbers in a two-minute worksheet.
Read the articleHow to choose the best AI receptionist for a small business
The best AI receptionist for a small business is the one that books against your real calendar, survives its own outages, and costs a number you can predict. Every one of those can be tested before you pay — here are seven tests, and what each one should look like when it passes.
How to pick the best AI receptionist for a small business: seven tests to run before you pay — real bookings, languages, failover, pricing at your volume.
Read the articleBilingual answering service: five questions to ask before you sign
A bilingual answering service should answer in the caller’s language without making them press a key, keep up when they switch mid-call, and text the confirmation in the language they actually spoke. Most of what is sold as bilingual does one of those three. Here is how to tell which.
What a bilingual answering service should actually do: answer in the caller’s language, follow a mid-call switch, and confirm in it. Five questions to ask.
Read the articleHow it answers the phone in your line of work
Restaurants
It counts seats, not bookings.
Every table has a size, so a party of six is never offered a two-top — it does that arithmetic before it opens its mouth.
Read the guideTakeaway & pizzeria
It takes the order, prices it, and reads the total back.
This is an order, not an appointment — there is no slot to hold and no diary to check. It reads your menu, builds the basket and prices it.
Read the guideHair & barber
It knows who does what, and how long it really takes.
A perm with Tony is three hours; a trim is thirty minutes. Durations are set per stylist, not per service, because they genuinely differ.
Read the guideNail salons
Two services in one visit, and it works out when the second one starts.
A manicure and a pedicure in the same visit are two appointments back to back — it works out that the second starts when the first ends, rather than double-booking the same hour.
Read the guidePet grooming
It asks about the dog before it books the slot.
Breed and rough weight come up in conversation, not on a form the caller would abandon.
Read the guideGyms & studios
Classes count places. One-to-one books the coach.
A group class holds a headcount cap and the receptionist says how many places are left — callers decide faster when they hear a number.
Read the guideLocksmiths
It answers “how soon can you get here?”, not “which slot?”
These callers are standing outside right now, so it asks where they are and what happened — never which day would suit them.
Read the guidePlumbers
It quotes the call-out, checks the address, and leaves travel time.
It says the call-out price out loud before anything is booked — the caller asking “what will this cost me” is the question that decides whether they book at all.
Read the guideElectricians
It says how long the job takes and what it costs, in the same breath.
Named jobs carry their own length and price — a socket replacement and a full rewire are not the same call-out with a different label.
Read the guideCleaning services
It finds out how big the job is before it offers a time.
A standard clean and a deep clean are not the same afternoon — which one it is comes out in the conversation, before any time is offered.
Read the guideDental practices
It books the chair — and refuses to give clinical advice.
A check-up and a cleaning in the same visit hold the length both of them actually take, not one generic appointment.
Read the guideMedical clinics
It books the practitioner the patient asked for, and guesses at nothing.
A patient asking for a named practitioner gets that person’s own diary, not the next free body in the building.
Read the guideAuto repair shops
Two jobs in one call are two bookings, not one guess.
Somebody who rings about the brakes and adds an oil change gets both written down — each with its own length, in the same visit.
Read the guideTattoo studios
It books the consultation, not a guess at how long the piece takes.
A custom piece cannot be quoted over the phone, so it books the consultation — free and thirty minutes, if that is how you run it.
Read the guideDriving schools
The person booking is usually not the person driving.
A parent booking for their teenager is the normal case, and the lesson is written against the learner, not the caller.
Read the guidePhotographers
It will not guess where the shoot happens — it takes a number instead.
Where a session happens is not something to infer. When it has not been told, it takes the caller’s number and their exact words rather than assuming your studio.
Read the guideEvery other trade
Your trade’s rules get written from the paragraph you type, not from a list we maintain.
You read back what it worked out, and change any of it in a sentence, before anything goes live.
Read the guideNot sure which one is yours?
Describe your business in a paragraph and the rules get worked out from it. You see them before anything goes live.