AI Receptionist

The AI Receptionist is a paid add-on that answers your business phone 24/7 in a natural voice, tells callers it’s an AI assistant, answers questions from your business profile, captures new leads, and files requests for your team to follow up on. This article walks through choosing a plan and setting it up. For the inbox where those calls land, see Receptionist Inbox.

What it does (and does not do)

On a call, the AI Receptionist:

Answers 24/7 in a natural voice on a dedicated business number.
Identifies itself as an AI assistant and tells the caller the call may be recorded and shared with service providers. This disclosure is required; you can edit its wording, but it must always say those three things.
Answers caller questions using your business facts, your services list, and any documents you’ve uploaded.
Captures new leads (name, phone, address, service wanted, timing, and notes) into your Leads module, tagged with source “AI Receptionist.”
Files requests, such as a reschedule ask, a callback, a message, or an emergency, into the Receptionist Inbox for your team.
Transfers live calls to a route you define (a phone number and a plain-language condition, such as “emergency” or “existing customer”).
Follows the business hours you set. After hours it takes a message; only routes you have marked available after hours (typically your emergency line) can still transfer.

What it deliberately does not do:

It never books, promises, or commits to an appointment time. It records the caller’s preferred day and time as a request; your team schedules the actual visit.
It never quotes a price.
It never gives chemical, fertilizer, or treatment advice.
It never turns a caller away for being outside your service area.
It doesn’t send or answer text messages. There is no two-way texting today, only voice.
It doesn’t store call recordings. Only a transcript is kept.
There’s no calendar or booking integration. Say “your team schedules the visit,” not that the AI books one.

Where to find it

The Receptionist group in the sidebar has four pages: Inbox, Setup, Settings and Usage & Billing. Until the add-on is active, only Setup is listed in the sidebar, because that is where you choose a plan. The same four pages also appear as tabs across the top of each receptionist page.

Before you start

The AI Receptionist is a paid add-on to your plan, and it comes in three plans. Each includes a number of conversations every calendar month; conversations beyond that are billed at the plan’s rate for extra conversations, up to a safety ceiling of twice the included amount.

Receptionist plan	Price	Conversations included each month	Each extra conversation	Safety ceiling
Basic	$39/month	30	$0.75	60 a month
Plus	$69/month	75	$0.65	150 a month
Max	$109/month	150	$0.55	300 a month

A receptionist that was set up before these plans existed shows as “Included with your account” and keeps its original allowance.

The AI Receptionist is available on every plan. It needs an active paid subscription, so it can’t be started during the free trial (click Subscribe now on Settings > Plan & Features to end the trial early). Only the account owner can choose, change or cancel the receptionist plan; other users see “Only the account owner can change this.”

You’ll need:

Your existing business phone, which you’ll set to forward unanswered calls to a new dedicated number the AI Receptionist answers on.
Your business details ready (hours, the towns you serve, your top services, and any answers you want the AI to give callers).
A few minutes to write a greeting, read aloud by your chosen voice, and place a test call before you go live.

Choose a plan

The AI Receptionist plans page is where you pick, change or compare plans.

Open it from any of these places:
- Receptionist > Setup, step 1, Choose a plan,
- Receptionist > Usage & Billing, Choose a plan or Change plan, or
- Settings > Plan & Features, on the AI Receptionist card in Add-ons.
Use the What would you pay? slider to set how many calls you expect in a month. Each plan card shows what that many conversations would cost on it, and the cheapest plan for that number is marked Best value.
Click Choose Basic, Choose Plus or Choose Max. The plan is added to your subscription and charged today, prorated for the rest of the billing period. If your card is declined, nothing changes.
Go back to Receptionist > Setup to finish the remaining steps.

The page also explains how conversations are counted and when you are charged (see Usage and extra conversations and Change or cancel your plan below).

Setup: five steps

Receptionist > Setup is a checklist that marks each step Done or To do:

Activate: choose a plan (above). The other steps stay locked until the add-on is active.
and 3. Business facts and Answering & alerts: these live on the Settings page. Click Open receptionist settings and fill them in (see the next section).
Connect your phone: get your receptionist number, then forward your calls to it.
Try it: call your new number from your cell. The AI answers, and the transcript appears in your Inbox as soon as the call ends. This step is marked done after the first real call.

Step 4: connect your phone

Get your number. Enter an area code and click Find numbers, then pick a local US number and confirm Get this number. The number is included in your add-on; there is nothing extra to pay.

Forward your calls. You keep your existing business number. Set up conditional call forwarding (no answer) on that phone, so your phone still rings first and only calls you don’t pick up roll over to the AI. Pick your carrier (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile or Other) and the page shows the exact code to dial, with your receptionist number already filled in, plus the code to turn forwarding off later. For an office phone system, look for a “no-answer forwarding” or “ring timeout” setting and point it at your receptionist number.

Once you’ve dialed the code, switch on I’ve set up forwarding. This marks step 4 done. If you change carriers or turn forwarding off, switch it off again.

Calls to your receptionist number are not answered by AI until Answer my calls with AI is on in Settings (see below). Until then, a forwarded caller hears a short message that their call has been noted, and the call shows in your inbox as a callback request so you can call back.

Receptionist Settings

Receptionist > Settings is one page with four sections. Jump links at the top take you to each one, and each section has its own Save. Changes apply to the next call. You can fill everything in before you activate the add-on.

A What your receptionist knows panel on the side summarizes what the AI will use: your top services, your business facts, the basics, how it sounds, and usage this month. If something there is wrong or missing, the AI won’t invent it; it tells the caller that your team will confirm.

Business facts

The information the AI answers callers’ questions from: Business hours, Towns & areas you serve, Top services (the only services the AI will offer callers; it never reads your invoice items in Products & Services), Licenses & certifications, Years in business, Residential or commercial, Seasonal offerings, What customers praise most, Website, and Anything else your receptionist should know (for example payment methods, a visit minimum, or how fast you send estimates). You can also enter your website address and have it read to fill these in, instead of typing them by hand.

Keep this current: the AI only knows what’s written here, in your services list, or in an uploaded knowledge document.

Answering and alerts

Answer my calls with AI: the master switch. Nothing in Setup turns this on for you. If the page says answering is switched on but not connected yet, turn it off and save, then turn it on and save again, or contact support if it stays that way.
Voice: choose one and use the preview to hear it before you commit.
Agent name: the name the AI uses when it introduces itself.
Who follows up: who callers should expect to hear back from (for example “our team” or “Mike”).
Greeting: what callers hear first. It must include the mandatory disclosure: that it’s an AI assistant, and that the call may be recorded and shared with service providers. You can edit the wording around those facts, but you can’t remove them.
Notification email: where new leads, requests and escalations are emailed. Switch on Email me every new lead to get the first lead or request from each call right away.
Smart answering: four switches. Service intake questions (asks the right qualifying questions per service before saving a lead), Seasonal awareness (leads with the season’s services), Existing-customer answers (recognized customers can hear their next visit and program status, never balances or prices) and Storm mode (during an active storm event, expects emergencies and escalates faster).
Backup line for missed calls at your monthly limit: a number we dial only for a call that comes in after your monthly limit is reached with extra conversations off, and only when the AI line is down at the time. It is not where live transfers go; those use your routes.

The Escalation keywords field only applies to texts, so it has no effect on calls. On a call, the AI decides from the conversation when to file an emergency request, and you are alerted right away when it does.

The time zone the receptionist uses for your business hours is your company time zone from Settings > Company Settings.

Call routing and hours

Call routing. Click Add a route to add up to 8 routes. Each route has:

A label (for example “Emergency” or “Existing customer”).
A phone number to transfer to.
A plain-language condition describing when the AI should use that route.
An available after hours switch, off by default, that lets this specific route keep transferring outside your business hours.

The AI transfers callers with a spoken heads-up. Anything that doesn’t match a route, it takes a message and captures the lead. Use routes for anything you want transferred live rather than filed as a request, most commonly emergencies and existing-customer callbacks.

Business hours. Set your hours for each day of the week and click Save hours. After-hours calls get an after-hours greeting and message-taking. Leave a day closed to treat the whole day as after hours.

Knowledge documents

Upload brochures, service sheets or an FAQ for the AI to answer from: PDF, Word (DOCX), text, HTML or EPUB, up to 20 MB each, up to 15 documents in total. Or use Or type it in: give it a name, paste your text, and click Save text. Use this for anything not covered by your business facts or services list, such as detailed service descriptions or policies.

Usage and extra conversations

Receptionist > Usage & Billing shows your plan, your receptionist number, how many of your included conversations you’ve used this month, any extra conversations already added to your next invoice, and the Allow extra conversations switch.

Extra conversations are on by default. Each conversation past your included amount is billed at your plan’s rate on your next invoice, and the receptionist keeps answering.
Safety ceiling. Even with extra conversations on, the line stops taking conversations at twice your included amount for the month: 60 on Basic, 150 on Plus and 300 on Max. It then pauses until next month, or until you move to a bigger plan.
With extra conversations off, the line pauses once your included conversations are used.
While the line is paused, new callers hear that their number has been noted and that your team will call them back, and the call ends. Those calls are not counted or billed, and each one shows in your inbox so your team can return it.
We email you when you reach 80% and 100% of your included conversations.

Each call the AI answers counts as one conversation, however many questions the caller asks, so someone who calls twice counts twice. Only the account owner can turn extra conversations on or off. Your monthly plan price is billed with your subscription; extra conversations are added at the end of the month.

What is not counted or billed

Hang-ups, silent calls and robocalls that capture nothing. A call under 15 seconds, or one where the caller never spoke, with no lead or request saved, is not counted toward your included conversations and is not billed.
Repeat calls from an unknown number. If a number the receptionist does not recognize calls more than 5 times in an hour, the caller hears a short message that the number has been noted, and the AI does not answer further calls from that number that hour. Those calls are not counted or billed. Existing customers, and callers who withhold their number, are not affected.

Call length

One call is limited to 5 minutes. After about 3 minutes the receptionist wraps up on its own: it saves a callback request, says who will call back, and ends the call. If a call reaches the 5-minute limit before anything was saved, your inbox gets a callback request with the transcript.

Change or cancel your plan

Only the account owner can change or cancel the plan. Open the AI Receptionist plans page from Usage & Billing (Change plan) or from the AI Receptionist card on Settings > Plan & Features.

Moving up (Upgrade to) is charged today, prorated for the rest of the billing period, and the bigger allowance applies at once. If your card is declined, nothing changes.
Moving down (Switch to) takes effect at your next billing date. You keep your current plan until then, nothing is charged now, and the pages show “Moving to … on” the date. To cancel a scheduled move, choose Keep on your current plan.

Deactivating

On Usage & Billing, click Deactivate and confirm. The receptionist stops answering immediately, the plan is canceled now, and the unused time is credited to your next invoice. Your number stays reserved and your setup is kept, so you can reactivate any time. Before you deactivate, turn off call forwarding on your business phone (or point it elsewhere), because the AI will no longer answer.

If your subscription lapses (the trial ends without a card, a payment fails, or you cancel and the period ends), the receptionist pauses along with other automated features until billing is fixed. The receptionist pages show Payment past due with an Update billing link. See Plan & Features.

Receptionist Inbox: where requests, conversations, and transcripts land
Plan & Features: your subscription, add-ons and billing
AI receptionist for landscaping companies: the product overview and what it does and does not do