A florist is wrapping a wedding order when the phone rings. The owner cannot stop, the call goes to voicemail, and the caller rings the next florist on the list. Small businesses live this moment many times a week, and each one is a customer who did not get an answer.
An AI receptionist closes that gap. It answers the phone, talks to the caller and does the first part of the job a person at the front desk would do.
What an AI receptionist actually does
A good AI receptionist handles the routine parts of a call so your team handles the rest. It greets the caller with the opening line you wrote, asks for their name and listens to what they need.
From there it works from your instructions. It can answer common questions about opening hours, services and how you work. It can book an appointment, take a message or pass the caller to a person.
In BaseCloud the AI receptionist is called AI Voice, and it sits inside the same call flow that routes your other calls. You add it as one more step, next to your greeting and your ring group.
Why small businesses feel missed calls most
A large company has a reception desk and a call center behind it. A small business has the owner, who is also the technician or the stylist.
Three situations come up again and again.
The first is the busy hour, when everyone is with a customer and nobody can reach the phone. The second is the evening, when an enquiry comes in after closing time. The third is the lunch break, when the one person who answers is away from the desk.
An AI receptionist covers all of these without a rota, and it answers up to 10 calls at the same time. You decide where in the call flow it sits. Put it first for nights and weekends, or after a ring group so your team gets the first chance to pick up.
What it can do on a call
AI Voice follows the instructions you write, and you have room to be specific. The instructions box holds up to 8,000 characters, and a separate opening line sets the first thing a caller hears.
On the call it can:
- Answer questions from the instructions you wrote
- Greet known callers by first name and add first-time callers as new clients automatically
- Remember each caller’s past calls, emails and texts
- Offer real open times and book the appointment
- Text the caller their booking details
- Move or cancel a booking it made
It answers from the business facts you write in and knows each caller from their client record, past calls, emails and texts, and their Dispatch job. Before it shares anything, it confirms who is calling, and it keeps staff notes and anything marked sensitive private.
Booking appointments without a person
Booking is where an AI receptionist earns its place. A caller asks for Thursday afternoon, the assistant checks the calendars you chose, offers the times that are open and confirms one.
By default it books Monday to Friday, 8 to 5, with at least an hour’s notice. You change those hours in the instructions. If your business runs on jobs rather than appointments, it can create Dispatch jobs instead, and your technicians see them on the board.
Whoever is booked gets a note in their inbox, so nobody learns about a new appointment by surprise. The booking also lands on your CRM calendar like any other.
Handing the call to your team
Some calls need a person. A long-standing client with a delicate question, or a caller who simply asks for the owner, should reach a human quickly.
The assistant puts callers through to up to 10 named people or call flows, and it checks first whether the person is away or busy. Whenever a caller needs more, the call carries on to the next step in your flow, such as a ring group or voicemail, so nobody is ever cut off.
Your team can also step in during a live call. Anyone with an extension and the Manage Phone & Messaging right can take over from the Calls column, so the caller goes from the assistant to a person without hanging up.
What your team sees afterward
Every call the assistant handles shows in Call History as answered by the AI assistant. When a caller leaves a message, it becomes a call-back note in the inbox of the client’s manager.
Because the call runs through the same phone system as the rest, it is recorded and tied to the client record. The next person who speaks to that customer can see what was said, using the same call recording and AI summaries as any other call.
What it costs
You pay for the calls the assistant handles and nothing else. The AI voice charge is worked out per 1,000 tokens and paid from your prepaid credit after each call, on top of your normal calling rate. Each call shows as its own AI Voice line under Billing, Credits, so you can see exactly what it used.
Current rates are listed on the pricing page.
Getting started
Setup takes a few minutes. Go to Settings > Telephony/Texting > Call Routing, open a call flow, add an AI Voice step and pick a template to start from: Front desk, Heating and cooling, Home services, Appointments or After hours. Then edit the instructions so they sound like your business, choose one of the 10 voices and make a test call. You can also ask Claude or ChatGPT, connected to BaseCloud, to set it up for you.
The full receptionist page shows everything the AI Voice step can do. If you want to see it answer a call on a live account, book a demo and we will walk you through it.
