AI receptionist · For businesses evaluating 3CTel
What should I not let the AI receptionist handle?
Do not let the AI give medical, legal or financial advice, take card numbers, resolve complaints, make promises about pricing or outcomes, or handle emergencies. Those belong with a person, and your escalation rules should send them there straight away. The AI is well suited to answering factual questions you have supplied, booking appointments, taking accurate messages and routing calls.
Keep these with people
- Emergencies. The AI should immediately transfer to your urgent line or tell the caller to dial 9-1-1, never try to help itself.
- Advice. Anything a caller might act on: symptoms, legal positions, tax questions, whether a repair is covered. The AI can book a time with the right person instead.
- Money. Do not have the AI collect card numbers or bank details, and do not let it quote prices unless you have given it a fixed price list.
- Complaints and disputes. An upset caller wants to be heard by a person. Set frustration as an escalation trigger.
- Commitments. Delivery dates, guarantees, exceptions to policy. The AI should say it will have someone confirm.
Give it a narrow, well-defined job
The AI performs best when its answers come from a short list of facts you maintain: hours, address, parking, services, what to bring, how to pay, cancellation policy. Keep that list accurate and it will rarely be wrong. Ask it to improvise beyond that list and it may fill gaps with plausible but incorrect detail.
For anything not on the list, the right behaviour is to say so and offer a transfer or a message. That is a setting, and it is the default a 3CTel specialist will configure with you.
Review the transcripts
Every call produces a transcript. In the first few weeks, read them. Look for questions the AI could not answer, places it guessed, and topics that should have gone to a person sooner. Each one is a script change, not a reason to abandon the AI. Businesses that spend fifteen minutes a week on this end up with a receptionist that handles most calls cleanly.
Privacy considerations
Calls handled by the AI are recorded and transcribed so that messages and summaries can be produced. Canadian practice generally expects callers to be told about this, and the greeting does so. Decide who on your team can see transcripts, and keep sensitive fields such as health details out of what the AI is asked to collect unless you have a reason to collect them.
Related questions.
Can the AI be wrong about my hours or services?
Only if the information you gave it is out of date. Its factual answers come from your list, so update the list when something changes, such as holiday hours, and the AI updates with it.
What if a caller tries to trick it?
It follows its script and escalation rules, does not disclose information outside its list, and does not take actions it was not given. When a call goes somewhere unexpected it transfers or takes a message.
Is a human receptionist still worth having?
Often, yes. The AI takes the first minute of every call and the after-hours load, which lets a receptionist spend their time on the callers and visitors who need a person.
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