12 questions to ask before you buy an AI receptionist

1–3. Booking and availability

1. Does it write a confirmed booking, or request one?

This is the question. A system that captures a preferred time and drops a task in someone's inbox has moved the work rather than removed it, and the marketing language for both is identical.

Receva: it writes a confirmed booking into the connected calendar or field service system during the call.

2. Where does availability come from, and when is it checked?

Ask specifically whether availability is read live, or synced periodically. A system working from a cache that refreshes every fifteen minutes will eventually offer a slot that is gone.

Receva: availability comes from the connected calendar or field service system, filtered by each technician's working hours, and the slot is re-checked at the moment of booking. If it has gone between the offer and the confirmation, the next one is offered rather than writing the conflict.

3. Does it know each technician's working hours, or just the business's?

A part-timer who does not work Fridays will get booked on Fridays by any system that only knows your opening hours.

Receva: working hours are per technician, and availability is filtered by them.

4–6. What happens on a call

4. What does it do with a caller outside my service area?

The wrong answer is "books them anyway". The other wrong answer is "hangs up" — that caller is still worth knowing about.

Receva: service area is a hard gate, checked against your postal codes and drawn polygons before any slot is offered. Out-of-area callers are captured as a lead but never booked, and never billed.

5. Can it transfer to a person, and how?

Ask whether transfer is on every plan or an upgrade, and whether it is warm or blind. Warm transfer briefs whoever picks up, so the caller does not repeat themselves.

Receva: warm and blind transfer, on every plan. If a caller asks for a person, they get a person.

6. What happens with an emergency?

Two things to check: whether urgency is actually captured as a distinct outcome, and whether emergencies can bypass your normal hours. Then check what the vendor claims about response — anything promising an arrival time is overselling, because they do not control your vans.

Receva: urgency is captured on every call and emergencies bypass the working-hours mask to escalate to whoever is on call. It gives immediate practical guidance where safe, then hands to a human. It is not an emergency dispatch service.

7–8. Integrations

7. What does "integrates with" actually mean here?

The word covers everything from full two-way sync to emailing a summary. Ask them to show you a booking appearing in the system, and ask what happens to a job created in the other direction.

Receva: Google Calendar and Outlook on every plan; Jobber and Housecall Pro from Pro, reading availability and writing bookings. ServiceTitan support is built and being readied for release but is not something you can turn on today. There is no HubSpot integration.

8. What happens when an integration disconnects?

Tokens expire. The question is whether your phone stops working when they do.

Receva: you get an alert, and bookings continue on the internal calendar in the meantime. Anything booked while an integration was down syncs when it reconnects.

9–10. Money

9. What makes the bill go up?

More useful than the headline price. Per-minute and per-call billing rises in your busiest month. Ask whether outbound is metered separately, whether there is a setup fee, and what happens if you exceed an allowance — a review conversation and a hard cut-off are very different products.

Receva: $199, $349 or from $599 a month plus a flat fee per booked job of $10, $8 or $6 by tier, whatever the urgency. No per-minute or per-call charge in either direction.

10. What exactly counts as a billable outcome?

If any part of the bill is per-lead or per-booking, the definition of that word is the whole contract. Ask for it in writing, ask what is excluded, and ask how you dispute a charge.

Receva: five conditions must all hold, and the full definition with every exclusion is published. Fees appear as individual lines on a weekly statement, each traceable to its call, and every line is held for a review window before the statement is charged.

11–12. Trust and control

11. What can I see afterwards, and what can I change?

Ask what exists after a call ends. A recording alone is not enough — you want to know why the system decided what it decided, otherwise you cannot fix it.

Receva: every call keeps a recording, a transcript, the qualification result and the reasoning behind each decision. Exceptions surface as items to handle rather than failing quietly.

12. Are callers told they are being recorded, and who can hear it?

Disclosure rules vary by where you operate and the obligation sits with your business, not your vendor. Ask about consent, access, export, deletion and retention, and get the answers before you go live rather than after a complaint.

Receva: callers are told at the start of the call. Recordings and transcripts are visible only to users in your account, and you can export or delete them. Retention is configurable. The detail is on the privacy page.

Red flags

• No published pricing. In a category where most vendors gate the number behind a demo, the ones who publish are easier to compare for a reason.
• A precise statistic with no source. "Businesses miss 62% of calls" and "we recover 40% of missed calls" both need a sample size and a method. Ask for them.
• A demo that only ever succeeds. Ask for the out-of-area caller, the human-please request, and the call the system could not handle.
• "It sounds just like a human." Ask what it says when a caller asks whether they are talking to a person. The right answer is the truth.
• No answer to "what do you do badly?" Every product has a wrong customer. A vendor who cannot name theirs is either not paying attention or not telling you.

These are judgement calls drawn from what this category's marketing currently looks like, not measured findings. They are offered as things to check rather than as evidence about any particular vendor.

Frequently asked questions

What is the single most important question to ask an AI receptionist vendor?

Does it write a confirmed booking into my live calendar, or does it request an appointment for someone to confirm later? Everything else is secondary. A system that only requests appointments has moved the work rather than removed it, and the difference is rarely obvious from a demo.

How can I tell if a demo is showing me the happy path?

Ask to see a call that failed. Specifically ask for an out-of-area caller, a caller who asks to speak to a human, and a request the system could not handle. Any product demos the booking that works. How it behaves when it cannot help is what you will live with.

What should I ask about pricing?

Ask what makes the bill go up. Per-minute and per-call models rise in your busiest month, which is exactly when you can least predict them. Ask whether outbound calls are metered separately, whether there is a setup fee, and what happens if you exceed any allowance — a review conversation and a hard cut-off are very different answers.

Should I ask about call recordings and consent?

Yes, and it is not a formality. Ask whether callers are told the call is recorded, who inside your account can access recordings and transcripts, whether you can export or delete them, and how retention is configured. Disclosure rules vary by where you operate and the obligation sits with your business.

How long should setup take?

Ask for the specific steps rather than a number of days. On Receva it is five: business profile, one branch, one technician with working hours, a service area, and a phone number. Most owners complete that in one sitting, and the agent answers as soon as the number is provisioned.