AI receptionist: what it is, what it costs in the UK, and what happens after it answers

How many calls did your phone miss last week while your hands were busy? If you do not know the number, that is the number. Nobody leaves a voicemail any more; they ring the next name on the list.

I make an AI receptionist. She is called Sarah and she answers for trades, solicitors and salons across the UK. Before writing this I read the pages that come up when you search for one, because I wanted to know what I was up against. Every one of them ends in the same place. Sends you the details. Texts you the job. Captures and texts the job. Not one says what happens to you after that.

So this page is two things. First, everything those pages cover, done properly: what an AI receptionist is, how it works inside, what it can and cannot do, what it costs in the UK right now, and then the bit they leave out. It is long, so jump to whichever part you came for:

1. What is an AI receptionist?
2. How an AI receptionist works
3. What it can do on a call
4. AI vs virtual receptionist vs answering service
5. What it costs in the UK
6. Robotic? Stuck? Replace a person?
7. Where every AI receptionist stops
8. What a tradesperson actually wants from the phone
9. What should happen after it answers
10. How to set one up
11. FAQ

What is an AI receptionist?

An AI receptionist is software that answers your business phone, talks to the caller in plain English, works out what they want, and does something about it. Books the job. Takes the details. Sends a gas leak straight to your mobile. No person on your end, no rota, and it can take several callers at once.

The name gets used loosely. A "press 1 for sales" menu makes the caller do the sorting. Voicemail with a nicer voice still gets no messages. A person in an office abroad reading a script is a call centre, however it is sold, and plenty of things called a "virtual receptionist" turn out to be exactly that in the small print.

An AI receptionist is none of those. It is a program. It listens, it understands, and it acts, on a Tuesday at ten and on Boxing Day at three in the morning for the same money. If you have ever watched your phone ring out from under a sink, that is the sentence that matters.

How an AI receptionist works

Every call runs the same loop. It is worth seeing the loop, because it shows where the good ones differ from the demos.

1. It hears. The caller's voice is turned into text as they speak, a few words at a time, while they are still talking. That is why a good one answers without a long pause.
2. It understands. A language model reads those words with a briefing in front of it: who you are, what you do, your prices, your hours, your area, your rules. The briefing is what makes it your receptionist rather than a general chatbot.
3. It decides. Answer the question, ask one of yours, offer a slot, send a text, page you, or stop and hand over.
4. It speaks. The reply is turned back into a voice. British, if you chose a British one.
5. It acts. The booking lands in the diary. The confirmation text goes out. The gas leak goes to your mobile.

The part worth understanding is where the rules live. Think of the model as a good apprentice on the phone, and the server as the boss who has to initial anything that goes in the diary. The apprentice is excellent at talking and unreliable at discipline. Anyone who has employed one knows. So in a well-built receptionist the rules do not live in the voice, and they do not live in the model's good intentions. They live on a server that checks every action before it happens. Try to book a job with no name and no number, and the server refuses and tells the model to go and ask. Try to say a price you never set, and there is no price to say.

I learned that the hard way. On 7 June this year I watched Sarah confirm a booking on a live demo call without taking a name or a number, because the prompt (the briefing from step 2 above) was the only thing telling her to. The briefing is a suggestion. The server is a rule. I wrote that one up so I would not have to learn it again.

Takeaway: ask any AI receptionist where its "no" comes from. If the answer is "the prompt", the no will eventually be a yes.

What an AI receptionist can do on a call

The list is longer than most people expect.

• Answer from your facts. Hours, area, what you do and do not do, the price of a boiler service, whether you take card. From the sheet you gave it. Nothing off the internet.
• Take the job. Name, best number, address and postcode, what needs doing, when, how urgent.
• Ask your questions. How big is it, is there access down the side, is the old one coming up. The ones you would ask, every time, in the same order.
• Book it. A real slot, confirmed by text and email, with a calendar file on the email so it lands in the customer's diary.
• Text. Confirmation, a request for a photo of the job, an on-my-way message on the day.
• Page you. A text and an email to your mobile, or to whoever is on call.
• Escalate. Certain words (gas leak, sparking, flooding) skip the conversation and go straight to your phone.
• Handle more than one at once. Several callers at half past five on a Friday, no queue.
• Speak Welsh, if you work where that matters. Mine does, on the right plan.

And one thing it must never do, which is make up a price.

Nothing worse than an automated quote! If you find it's a five minutes job, then the customer may feel overcharged. On the flip side, you could end up on a previously bodged nightmare job taking hours with repeated visits.

Screwfix Community, July 2025

He is right. The fix is simple to state and I hold mine to it: a number comes off your list or it does not come at all. A boiler service has a price before the phone rings, so the receptionist can say it. A patio does not. If you gave it a from, it can say from; otherwise it says nothing about money and books a look. If the one you are testing will happily quote a rewire from thin air, you are looking at the demo and not the product.

AI receptionist vs virtual receptionist vs answering service

Three things get sold under similar names. Here is the honest split.

Where a person wins, say so. Grief, a crisis, a complaint that needs judgement, a caller who simply does not want to talk to a machine. If your calls are mostly those, hire a person. Moneypenny and AnswerConnect sell exactly that and charge properly for it. If your calls are mostly "can you come Thursday and roughly what will it cost", keep reading.

Takeaway: a human answering service is the right buy for emotional calls. An AI receptionist is the right buy for booking calls. Most trades get the second kind.

How much does an AI receptionist cost in the UK?

Published UK prices as of September 2026, taken from each provider's own page and from Hey Jodie's UK round-up, which is the most thorough price survey I found. Mine is in the same table because that is where it belongs, and because a price you have to email for is a price you will not like.

Four things a headline price tends to hide.

1. Metering. £9.99 is often a phone line with the AI as an upsell, and per-minute or per-call charges on top. Ask what one busy month costs.
2. Setup fees. There is a £299 one in the table. Mine is from £49.
3. "AI" that only takes messages. One tier in the table cannot book at all. It is voicemail that talks back.
4. A person behind the AI. Moneypenny's page says it plainly: "when a call needs a human, a human is there." Reassuring, and it is where the money goes.

The £79 plan is the one the pricing page recommends for a one-man band, a solo plumber or a small salon. Every plan has a 30-day money-back, so the honest way to price one is to run it for a month and count what it booked.

Takeaway: price one busy month rather than the headline. The cheap end is a phone line, and a phone line was the thing you already had.

Three questions everyone asks

Does it sound robotic? Less than you think, more than a person. The voices are good now. The pauses are the tell, and they still happen. Do not take a page's word for it, including this one. Ring one. Mine is on 07782 603 274; ask her for a plumber on a Sunday night.

What if it gets stuck? The good ones hand over rather than bluff: a text to you, or a message with a promise of when you will call. Mine treats a handful of hard words as emergencies and sends them straight to your mobile, and if a caller has two unhappy turns in a row she stops and escalates rather than dig in. I am strict about this because I have seen what a model does when it is allowed to guess. I once asked one to read a job photo that was, for testing, a black square. It came back with "about 90mm of hardcore", copied from the example in its own instructions. That is a story for another post. The point stands: the one you buy should know what it does not know.

Can it replace a receptionist? On the phone, mostly yes. On the desk, no. A person who greets walk-ins, chases suppliers and knows Mrs Evans likes the morning is a different job. A part-time person on a desk also costs more than any line in the table above and covers office hours only. Most small firms never had the person. They had voicemail. This replaces the voicemail.

Where every AI receptionist stops

Go back to those pages and read where each definition ends. Sends you the details. Texts you the job. Captures and texts the job. One of the better UK pages puts its whole promise in a line: every lead is there. Name, number, what they need, when they need it.

That is where they stop. It is where the real question starts.

Does such a thing exist? I've googled and been looking at the usual suggestions but they mainly seem to take a message and relay it on.

UK Business Forums, 2018

Eight years later, same forum, a reply to someone asking for a recommendation:

Receptionist takes a message → it sits in an inbox → you ring back 4 hours later → prospect already booked someone else.

UK Business Forums, May 2026

Think about what a receptionist that only answers has actually done for you. Before, you missed, say, six calls a day and never knew. Now you have six names, six numbers, six people to ring back, six quotes to write, six yeses to chase, six invoices at the end of it. It answered every call. Well done to it. Your evening got longer.

I should say that I started this page with a different ending. The line I had was a boast about closing jobs rather than collecting numbers. It is a sales line. I binned it after an hour, because the true version is blunter and has nothing to do with us. The solution is never an AI that throws more office work under your nose. It is not about getting more jobs. It is about how the jobs get handled.

In the last post I quoted a man who, in 2007, told his wife to say he was not in when the phone rang at tea time. He was not short of calls. He was drowning in the work that came after them. Hand our friend a receptionist that only answers and you have handed him more of the thing that broke him.

So the measure of an AI receptionist is how much of the before, the middle and the after it took off you, and answering was only ever the first part of that.

What a tradesperson actually wants from the phone

Ask anyone who runs a trade what they want from a new enquiry and, stripped down, it is four things.

Go and look at it. Come back knowing what it costs. Hear yes, and see some money land before you start. Build it.

Everything else is office work. The call before: the ringing back, the "is Thursday any good", the "roughly how much". The quote in the middle: the writing, the sending, the chasing. The invoice after: the raising, the reminder, the "did that go through". Nobody went into a trade for any of it. It gets done at the kitchen table after tea, and it is why "tell them I'm not in" has been said in more houses than anyone admits.

I spent a stretch working inside the trades before I wrote a line of this. The phone is the business. Everyone in it knows that, and everyone in it has said tell them I'm not in at least once.

An AI receptionist that moves office work towards you has failed, however well it answered. One that moves it away has done the job. That is the test. Here is what passing it looks like.

Takeaway: score an AI receptionist on what it took off your evening. Answering is the entry fee.

What should happen after it answers

It qualifies, using your questions

Every experienced trade already does this by hand, and has done for decades.

Give them a verbal ballpark over the phone and ask if they're interested. If they are, site visit.

Screwfix Community, 2008

Eighteen years on, a building firm that started charging for quotes this January said the same thing in a different order: "I would be happy to give an estimate over the phone based on our price list to then see if that works for you." That is qualifying. A few questions, a number from the list, and watch who flinches.

A receptionist that does this screens nobody out. It asks what you would ask, how big, is there access, is the old one coming up, and it is saying "from £150 a square metre" when that is on your list. A serious caller answers. A time-waster does not, and you never hear from them, which is rather the point. The list you get is shorter and every name on it is real.

Mine does exactly this. The questions are yours, written once per service. She asks them every time. She will not price a quote-required job until they have been asked, and she will not say a number you have not set.

It books against the diary you actually have

"If you can tie your app with some sort of calendar/diary" is the first thing a customer asked of a missed-call tool on the Screwfix forum last year. A calendar is the easy part. A calendar with endless empty Tuesdays is the problem, because it books work nobody can do. The receptionist should know who is free, who has the skill, who is nearest, and say "next week" when that is the truth. That is your diary and your crew, and mine checks both before it offers a slot. If nobody can cover it, she does not offer it.

It books the look instead of guessing

"You got to see what needs doing before quoting." Yes. So for the big variable job, a patio, a rewire, a loft, the right move is to book the look: half an hour in the diary as its own appointment, instead of the whole day the job would take. And because the questions were asked on the call, the look is shorter. You arrive knowing.

It drafts the quote

This is the rung the whole page is for.

The sizes, the extras, every service the caller asked for, priced from your catalogue and not guessed, waiting as a draft when you get in. Your part is two minutes. Read what she asked, pick the grade, tick the extras, send. Two minutes at tea time instead of a Sunday morning. The Tuesday post is the long version of why that matters. A quote nobody has answered in 30 days counts as lost, so the list stays honest with you.

It gets the money moving

The customer taps yes on the quote. A deposit request goes out on the same link, and the money lands before you buy the slabs. On the day, the on-my-way text went out from the van, so nobody was standing at a window. Afterwards the invoice goes from the van as well, and the pay link by text.

None of that is a second app. It is the same product, on the same job record, from hello to paid.

Takeaway: judge an AI receptionist by the size of the list it leaves you with on Sunday night. Shorter is the whole job.

The honest bit

With an empty price list, mine is a message-taker like the rest. The questions, the prices, the diary, the crew are yours to put in, once, and it takes an afternoon. Do that and she qualifies, fits, drafts and bills. Skip it and she answers nicely and texts you a list. The list is the thing I am trying to get rid of.

How to set an AI receptionist up so it earns its keep

Six things, in the order that matters. An afternoon, for most.

1. The number. Keep yours and forward it, or take a new one. Nothing changes for your customers.
2. Your facts. Hours, area, what you do, what you will not touch, how you take payment. One page.
3. Your services, with prices. The fixed ones with a number. The variable ones with a from, or with nothing and a note that they need a look.
4. Your questions. Three to six per service. The ones you ask anyway.
5. Your diary and crew. Working hours, who does what, where they start the day.
6. The emergency rule. Which words go straight to your mobile, and whose mobile.

Then ring it yourself, from a different phone, and ask it something awkward. That is the only review that counts. There is a setup guide if you want the long version.

Frequently asked questions

After the answer

Answering is the easy bit now. They all do it. The question to ask of any AI receptionist, including mine, is what it did after: was the caller qualified or just recorded, did the slot exist, is the quote half written, is the deposit on its way. I would rather you found the gap than a customer did, so ring 07782 603 274, ask for a patio, and see what she asks you back. The two posts that go deeper are the quote you did not send on Tuesday and why she will not book a job without a name.