AI Voicemail Assistant That Talks to Your Callers

What does an AI voicemail assistant do?

An AI voicemail assistant answers the call instead of playing a beep, has a short conversation with the caller and sends you a summary of who called and what they need. With Ringzel, every call also comes with the recording, the transcript and a check report.

It greets callers in your business name. Ringzel tells them they're speaking to an automated receptionist and never pretends to be you.

It asks your questions. You decide what it needs to find out, like the address, the job or the best time to call back, and it gets those details before the call ends. A voicemail only gets whatever the caller thinks to say after the tone.

It follows your rules on urgent calls. You decide what counts as urgent and what should happen, and it escalates the way you told it to.

You see how each call went. After every call you get an email, and the recording, transcript and summary are in your inbox. Within three minutes, a separate check reviews the call and tells you if anything needs your attention.

On Professional, at $179 a month, it can also book appointments into your Google Calendar and transfer calls to you or your team. For the full picture of what Ringzel does, see our AI answering service page.

Are AI voicemails a thing?

Yes, and the term covers 3 different things. Before you pick one, work out which of them you actually want.

• AI features on your own phone. Google Pixel's Take a Message answers calls you miss or decline and shows a live transcript, and iPhone's Live Voicemail shows a transcript while the caller leaves a message. Both still take a message.
• AI voicemail greetings. Tools that turn a script into a recorded greeting in an AI voice. The caller still hears a greeting and a beep.
• AI that answers instead of voicemail. An assistant picks up, talks to the caller, asks your questions and sends you the details. Ringzel, Upfirst and Voice Mate work this way.

For a business line, the third kind is the one that changes what you get back. You get a summary of who called and what they need, not a recording to listen to. If you're weighing up whether voicemail still works at all, our guide on whether anyone leaves voicemail anymore covers what callers do instead.

How to replace voicemail with an AI assistant on your business number

You keep your number and forward the calls you don't answer to Ringzel instead of to voicemail, and setup takes under 5 minutes.

1. 1Build your receptionist. Enter your business name, and in about two minutes you have a receptionist you can talk to in your browser.
2. 2Set what it asks. Add the questions callers should answer and your rules for urgent calls.
3. 3Forward unanswered calls. In your phone or carrier settings, forward calls when you don't answer, when you're busy or when you're closed. This is the setting that sends callers to voicemail today, so you're pointing it somewhere else.
4. 4Get the details. After each call you get an email with the summary, and the recording, transcript and check report are in your inbox.

Customers keep calling the number they already know, and you still answer the calls you can take. Our guide on how to forward business calls walks through the forwarding settings, and the after-hours answering service guide covers evenings and weekends.

Is there a free AI phone answering app?

Yes, if you have the right phone: Google offers Take a Message at no charge on Pixel 6 and later phones in the US, and iPhone has Live Voicemail and Call Screening built into the Phone app where your carrier supports them.

Both are built for your personal cell. They take a message or ask an unknown caller for a name and reason. They don't ask your business's questions, and they only work on that one phone.

The apps that answer and talk to callers for a business are paid after a trial. Voice Mate gives you 14 days, then $9.99 a month on the US App Store. Upfirst and Ringzel give you 14 days with no card.

The Ringzel app for Android is on Google Play, and the iPhone app is coming soon. It shows your calls, summaries and messages. The answering itself runs on a Ringzel plan from $99 a month, which you can try free for 14 days.

Can AI create a professional voicemail greeting?

Yes. AI voice tools can turn a short script into a recorded greeting, but that's a different tool from Ringzel: the caller still hears a greeting and a beep.

If a recorded greeting is all you want, an AI voice generator or your own phone will do it. On a Pixel, Take a Message lets you record your own greeting of up to 60 seconds, and on iPhone you can pick the default greeting or record a custom one.

Ringzel doesn't record a greeting for your voicemail. It answers the call instead. It greets the caller in your business name, tells them it's automated, then asks your questions and takes the details.

If you keep voicemail, our guide on whether anyone leaves voicemail anymore has greeting wording you can adapt.

AI call screening on your cell vs on your business line

AI call screening on a Pixel or iPhone answers unknown callers on your own cell and asks who's calling and why before the phone rings; Ringzel doesn't screen calls on your cell, but when spam or a sales call reaches it through forwarding, it politely declines, says goodbye and hangs up.

On a Pixel, automatic Call Screen can screen spam, possibly faked numbers and first-time callers. If it decides a call is spam, the phone hangs up; if not, the phone rings and shows how the caller answered. On iPhone, the Ask Reason for Calling setting asks unknown numbers for more information before your iPhone rings.

Ringzel works on a different set of calls: the ones you've forwarded to it because you didn't answer, were busy or were closed. When one of those is a sales call, spam or a wrong number:

• The receptionist politely declines, says goodbye and hangs up.
• The call is labeled Spam in your inbox.
• It's never flagged for follow-up.
• Spam alerts are off by default, so you don't get an email for it unless you turn them on.

The two can work side by side, with one catch from Google: it says not to use automatic Call Screen with call forwarding, because screened calls won't be forwarded. If your business calls ring on a Pixel and forward to Ringzel, leave automatic screening off for that line.