How It Answers Calls
What a caller hears, and what it does while they talk.
On this page
Your receptionist doesn’t read a menu and doesn’t follow a rigid script. It has a conversation, and the shape of that conversation is the same every time.
The shape of a call
The greeting
It answers with your greeting and your business name, asking an open question rather than offering options. Then comes the fixed disclosure: it says it’s an AI assistant, that the call may be recorded, and that the caller can say stop at any time to opt out.
The disclosure is not optional
Finding out what they need
It listens to the answer in the caller’s own words — “there’s water under the sink”, not “press 2 for plumbing”, and asks follow-up questions to narrow it down. Which questions is up to you, in Call Behavior.
Answering their questions
Callers ask things back: prices, hours, whether you cover their area, how soon someone can come out. It answers from your services, hours, FAQs and knowledge, and only from those.
Collecting the details
Woven through the conversation, not fired off as a form: name, best callback number, service address, and whatever else you’ve asked it to collect.
Closing
It ends the call one of three ways:
- Books it
- Offers real open slots and puts the chosen one on your calendar.
- Transfers it
- Puts a caller who asks for a person through to your team, if transfers are on.
- Promises a callback
- Captures everything and tells them someone will follow up.
How it handles real callers
Real calls are messy. A few of the situations it’s built for:
- They interrupt. It stops talking and listens, the way a person does.
- They ramble. It picks the job out of the story and carries on.
- The line is poor. It asks them to repeat rather than guessing at half a house number.
- They ask for a person. It transfers if you’ve set that up, or takes a message and marks it urgent.
- They hang up mid-call. Whatever it captured is still saved — a half-finished call is still a lead.
- They’re angry. It stays calm, doesn’t argue, and escalates rather than trying to win.
An interruption, handled
Sample call
What it is doing while you listen
Underneath the conversation, four things run at once:
- Working out what the job actually is, and whether it's work you take
- Judging urgency, so an emergency is handled differently from a tune-up
- Filling in the details you need before anyone drives out
- Checking your live calendar, so any time it offers is genuinely free
That last one matters more than it sounds. An offered slot is a real slot — it never promises a time you’re already booked.
Yes. Tone, the questions it asks, what it collects and when it books are all set in Call Behavior. The disclosure (AI identity, recording notice and opt-out) is the only fixed part.