AI receptionist buyer's guide for UK small businesses

Step 1: Count what you are missing

For two normal weeks, record every call you did not answer, when it came in and what the caller wanted. You are looking for a pattern: lunchtimes, evenings, the first hour of the day, or busy job sites.

Step 2: Put a value on a booked job

Take your average job value and how often an enquiry becomes a job. Multiply by the missed calls you could realistically recover. If that is small next to the subscription, better call routing or a voicemail promise may be enough.

Step 3: Decide what it may and may not do

• May do: answer opening hours and prices, take a message, book into named calendar slots, send a confirmation text.
• Must hand to a person: complaints, emergencies, anything involving health, money or legal matters, and any caller who asks for a human.

Step 4: Check data handling

Ask every supplier where call recordings and transcripts are stored, for how long, who can access them and whether they can be deleted on request. Callers should be told they are speaking to an automated system, and the set-up must fit your UK GDPR obligations.

Step 5: Test with real calls

Run a pilot on one line or one time window. Listen to recordings every day for the first week. Measure answered calls, bookings and handoffs against your two-week baseline.

Step 6: Keep the human handoff fast

The best AI receptionists know when to stop. Every handoff should reach a person quickly, with a summary, so the caller never repeats themselves.

Questions to ask suppliers

1. How does it handle accents, background noise and callers who interrupt?
2. Can we write and change the rules ourselves?
3. How does it hand over to a person, and how fast?
4. Which calendars and CRMs does it connect to?
5. What does it cost per month and per minute, and what happens if we leave?

Questions we are often asked