AI receptionist or a telephone answering service?

What each one is

A telephone answering service, also called a call handling company or outsourced reception, is a team of receptionists who answer calls for many businesses. When your number rings, one of them sees a screen with your details, answers in your name, takes a message and sends it to you by email or text.

An AI receptionist does the same job with a voice assistant in place of a person. It answers in your name, asks the questions it has been set up with, and texts you the result.

From the caller's side the two are closer than you might expect. Both are polite, both take a message, and neither can do your job for you. The differences are in the detail.

Where a staffed service is better

People are better at some things, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.

• Unusual calls. A person copes with a caller who is confused, upset or rambling in a way software still finds harder.
• Judgement. A good receptionist notices when something is off: a vulnerable caller, a complaint that needs careful handling.
• Doing things in your systems. Some services will book into your diary software, look up an order or process a payment.
• Callers who dislike machines. A minority of people would simply rather talk to a human, and some will hang up on anything else.

If your calls are complicated, sensitive or need someone to act inside your own systems, a staffed service is the better choice.

Where an AI receptionist is better

• It always answers at once. There is no queue, no hold music and no busy period. It can take several calls at the same moment.
• The same quality every time. It asks the same questions at three in the morning as at three in the afternoon. No new starter reading your notes for the first time.
• It knows your trade's questions. A shared receptionist handling a solicitor, a dentist and a plumber in the same hour takes a general message. A receptionist set up for a recovery firm asks whether the vehicle rolls.
• Cost that doesn't climb with every call. Staffed services are usually priced per call or per minute of a person's time. Software is cheaper to run, so the allowance tends to go further.
• Languages. A Kallorix receptionist switches to the caller's language and still texts you in English.
• Extras during the call. She can text the caller a link to share a location or a photo, which lands on a page you can open from your job text.

Cost

We won't quote other companies' prices, because they vary and change. What is worth understanding is the shape of the pricing.

Staffed services usually charge a monthly fee plus a price for each call or each minute, and night and weekend cover is often extra. That is fair: you are paying for people's time. But it means a busy month costs more, and the bill is hard to predict.

Kallorix is a flat monthly price with an allowance of minutes: £39 for 250, £99 for 500, £149 for unlimited with a fair-use ceiling. Nights and weekends are the same. If you use the allowance up, your phone still rings as normal, callers you miss hear that you will ring back, and we text you their number. You are never billed for going over.

When you compare, take your own figures: how many calls you miss in a month and roughly how long each lasts. Ask each provider what that month would cost, including out-of-hours.

Hours and set-up

Check a staffed service's hours carefully. Some are open around the clock; many cover office hours with reduced cover or a surcharge outside them. For a trade whose best-paid calls come at night, that matters.

An AI receptionist is the same at any hour. Set-up is also quicker: we read your website and draft what she should know, you check it, and you can hear her in about two minutes. A staffed service typically needs a briefing and a script, which takes longer but lets you explain things in more depth.

Accuracy and honesty

Either can get a message wrong. A person may mishear a postcode at the end of a long shift. Software may mishear a name on a bad line. A Kallorix receptionist reads phone numbers back to check them and asks callers to spell unusual names.

The more important question is what happens when the caller asks something that isn't in the notes. A good human receptionist says they will get someone to ring back. A badly set up AI might invent an answer. Ours is told never to: if she does not know, she says so and takes a message. Ask any provider, of either kind, what theirs does.

On being honest with callers: a Kallorix receptionist answers as your business and sounds natural. If someone sincerely asks whether they are talking to a real person, she says she is your virtual receptionist.

Which to choose

Choose a staffed answering service if your calls are complex or sensitive, you want someone to work inside your booking system, or your customers would be put off by anything but a person.

Choose an AI receptionist if your first calls follow a pattern, you need them answered instantly at any hour, you want a predictable bill, and what you need from each call is the details, quickly.

Most trades are in the second group. But you don't have to take our word for it: build a free demo from your own website, ring it, and judge for yourself whether your customers would be happy. It takes two minutes and needs no card.