Online Essentials has launched AI Receptionist, so the calls and messages you cannot get to still get answered. For a small business, an AI receptionist turns every missed call into a captured lead instead of a lost customer.
For a small business, every missed call is a missed customer. You are paying to get the phone ringing, and then it rings while you are up a ladder, under a sink or with someone else. It goes to voicemail, and most people who reach a voicemail do not leave a message. They call the next business on the list.
The same thing happens on your website. An enquiry arrives at nine at night and sits there until you open your laptop in the morning. By then they have found someone else.
AI Receptionist fixes both.
What is an AI receptionist?
It is a receptionist that answers your phone and your website chat, around the clock. It greets the caller, answers their questions about your business, works out what they need, and takes their details so you can follow up. Every conversation is recorded, transcribed and summarised, and lands in one place with the rest of your customer history.
It runs on your existing number. You forward your line to it and nothing about how your customers reach you changes.
Two ways to use it
Some businesses get found on the phone. Others get found on their website first. You can cover either, or both.
- Chat: Answers enquiries on your website and by SMS, 24 hours a day. You set it up yourself in a few minutes with no verification to wait on.
- Chat and Voice: Everything in Chat, plus WhatsApp and a dedicated number that answers your calls in an accent that you choose. We set it up with you and support you afterwards.
Both levels share the same AI and the same inbox, so you can start on chat and add voice later without setting anything up twice.
What an AI receptionist actually does for your small business
- Answers every call and every chat, whatever the hour
- Holds a natural conversation. No phone menus and no press one for sales
- Answers questions about your services, opening hours and location
Takes the caller name, number and reason for calling, and creates the contact for you - Records, transcribes and summarises every call
Books the appointment where your booking system is connected, and records the time the customer asked for where it is not - Saves every caller as a contact in your own CRM, with the conversation history attached
- Brings every channel into a single inbox against the same customer
- Lets you step in and take over any conversation yourself
How it learns your business
It reads your website, up to a hundred pages, and builds what it knows from that, along with your business details. So when a customer asks what you charge for a callout or whether you work weekends, it answers from your business rather than guessing.
When your website changes, it refreshes itself. You do not have to log in and retrain it.
One thing worth knowing. If your website is light on detail, that shows up in the answers. It is usually a good prompt to add the pages your customers keep asking about — a free Digital Health Check will show you where the gaps are.
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Chat is self-serve. Check your business details, confirm your website address, then copy one line of code onto your site. Send yourself a test message and you are live.
Voice takes a little longer, because phone providers require proof of your business before a number can be issued. Have your business ID, proof of registration and proof of address ready and it usually comes back within a day. After that we set it up with you on a call, choose the voice, and stay with you while you forward your line.
Hear it for yourself
We have put real recorded calls on our AI Receptionist page so you can hear how it handles an after hours enquiry, a booking request and a question about price. The chat box on that page is an AI Receptionist too, trained on our own business the same way yours would be trained on yours. Ask it anything.
