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Answers

Straight answers,
including the
inconvenient ones.

The four questions people actually ask before deciding whether to do this at all. Each is answered in full on its own page — including where the honest answer is that you should buy something else, or nothing.

What is an AI receptionist?

An AI receptionist is software that answers your incoming calls, texts and web enquiries in your business's name, works out what the person needs, and either books them in or hands them to a human with the details already captured. It is not a phone menu and not a chatbot bolted onto a website: it holds a conversation, and the useful ones are connected to the calendar and the client record so a booking made at 9pm is really in the book at 9am.

Read the full answer · 5 min

What is the difference between an AI receptionist and an answering service?

An answering service is people, usually off-site, taking messages and passing them on. An AI receptionist is software that holds the conversation and completes the task — booking into your calendar rather than promising somebody will call back. The practical differences are cost shape (per-minute versus a build), consistency (a person has good and bad days, software does not vary), and capability (a message is not a booking). An answering service is genuinely the better choice for low call volumes and for calls needing real human judgement.

Read the full answer · 5 min

How much does an AI receptionist cost?

There is no single price, because there are three different pricing models. Per-minute or per-call services charge for usage and scale with your call volume. Per-seat subscriptions charge monthly whether you use them or not, and stop working when you stop paying. A built system costs more up front, runs cheaply afterwards, and is yours. Which is cheapest depends on your call volume and how long you keep it — and anybody quoting a figure before knowing either is guessing.

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Is an AI receptionist legal and private in Canada?

Yes, it is legal, and it brings obligations that do not disappear because software is doing the talking. Personal information collected on your behalf is still yours to account for under PIPEDA — or under provincial health privacy law, such as Ontario's PHIPA, where health information is involved. The follow-up email a system sends is governed by CASL. In practice that means four questions worth answering before you deploy anything: what is collected, where it is stored, who can read it, and how long it is kept.

Read the full answer · 6 min
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