What happens when an AI receptionist can't help?

A caller wants a price you haven't given it, or asks about a service you don't offer. Your receptionist doesn't guess. It says plainly that it can't help with that, takes a message with a good time to call back and flags it for you.

It never makes up an answer, and it never pretends to be you.

You decide what counts as urgent for your business, and what should happen when a call meets that description. Your receptionist doesn't make that judgement itself. It listens to what the caller says and applies your rules.

For example, a plumber might set calls about water coming through a ceiling as urgent. A letting agent might do the same for a tenant locked out of their home.

When a call matches your rules, your receptionist follows your escalation instructions. On Professional and Premium, those can include transferring the caller to someone in your team, set up the way you choose.

In an emergency, your receptionist stops asking its usual questions, gives the caller your emergency instruction and texts you straight away.

If you haven't set an emergency instruction, it tells the caller it's marking the call as urgent and that the team will ring them straight back, and it texts you. It doesn't tell callers to ring 999 unless they describe an immediate danger to life.

999 isn't the right number for every emergency. By default, if a caller reports a smell of gas, your receptionist gives them the official gas emergency number for their area: 0800 111 999 (National Gas Emergency Service) in Great Britain, or 0800 002 001 (Northern Ireland Gas Emergency Service) in Northern Ireland. It tells callers to call 999 only when they describe an immediate danger to life.

A receptionist isn't an emergency service and shouldn't act like one. Its job is to point the caller to the right help and get the message to you fast.

Callers are told at the start of every call that they're speaking to an automated receptionist. If a caller asks whether it's a person, it says it's the automated receptionist for your business and carries on helping.

If they want to speak to someone, what happens next depends on your plan. On Basic, it takes the details and passes them to you. On Professional and Premium, it can transfer the caller or route them to the right person in your team.

Your receptionist doesn't give medical, legal, financial or tax advice, and it doesn't try to diagnose a fault. If a caller needs that, it takes the details and passes them to you, or follows your instructions for that type of call.

Every call is checked afterwards. Within three minutes of the call ending, a separate check looks at what happened. Did it escalate when it should have? Did it tell the caller it's automated? Was the caller left with a way forward? If something went wrong, the call is flagged for you.

You also get the recording, the transcript and a summary, so you can see exactly what was said. Read more about the check report.

A few decisions make these moments go smoothly:

1. 1What counts as urgent for your business.
2. 2What should happen with an urgent call, and who should be told.
3. 3Your emergency instruction, including the right numbers for the calls you get.
4. 4On Professional and Premium, who calls should be transferred to, and when.