How to choose the best AI receptionist for a small business.

What an AI receptionist actually is

An AI receptionist is software that answers customer questions when you can't: hours, prices, services, availability, how to book. The name covers two quite different products, and picking the wrong kind is the most common mistake.

Start by looking at where your enquiries come from today. If nine in ten arrive by phone, a chat widget will not fix your missed calls. If people fill in your contact form at 11pm and hear back the next afternoon, a phone bot will not help either.

Seven things to test before you buy

1. Does it answer from your information, or from the internet?

A good receptionist answers from what you gave it: your hours, your prices, your service area, your policies. Ask how you teach it and how you correct it. If the answer is vague, expect vague answers to your customers.

2. What does it do when it doesn't know?

This is the test that matters most. Ask it something it was never taught, such as a price you don't publish. The right behaviour is to say it doesn't know and pass the question to a person. A confident wrong answer about your prices costs you the customer and sometimes the refund.

3. Can you see what it couldn't answer?

Every unanswered question is a gap in what you taught it. You want a log of those questions so you can fill the gap once and stop losing the same enquiry every week.

4. How does a real person take over?

Find out exactly what happens at the handoff. Does the customer get a callback promise, a form, a transfer, an email to you? Try it yourself as a customer, after hours, and see how long it takes for the message to reach you.

5. Does it sound like your business?

Read ten of its answers out loud. If they could belong to any business in any city, your customers will notice. You should be able to set the tone and the exact wording of the answers that matter.

6. What can it do beyond answering?

Booking appointments, taking a deposit or quoting a job all need a connection to your calendar, payment or job software. Ask which of those connections exist today for the tools you already use, and which are on a roadmap. Only count the ones that exist.

7. What does it cost when you are busy?

Some products charge a flat monthly fee, others charge per minute or per conversation. Work out the bill for your busiest month, not your average one, and check whether there is a setup fee or a contract term.

Questions to ask any vendor

• Can I test it with my own business information before I pay?
• Who writes and updates what it knows: me, you, or both?
• Where is my customers' conversation data stored, and can I delete it?
• Does it tell customers they are talking to an AI?
• What happens to my conversations and settings if I cancel?
• Who do I call when it gives a wrong answer, and how fast is it fixed?

Where Bizzefy fits, and where it doesn't

We build one of these, so here is the plain version. The Bizzefy AI receptionist is a chat assistant that lives on your own website. It is not a phone answering service. If your main problem is missed calls, you need a voice product, and we would rather tell you that now.

What ours does:

• It answers from what you told it. You give it your hours, prices and the questions you are tired of retyping, and it answers from that, in your words.
• It refuses to guess. Asked something it wasn't taught, it says so and hands the question to you.
• It shows you what it couldn't answer. Every unanswered question is logged, so you can teach it once.

It comes as part of our monthly plans, which start from $149/mo and run inside the client portal alongside your website, content and review replies. Features depend on your current software, permissions and selected service.