How to make an AI receptionist

An AI receptionist is a phone agent that picks up your business calls, answers questions about your business, puts callers through to your team when they need a person, and passes on the rest. Making one comes down to a single decision: do you assemble the parts yourself, or do you set up a service where the parts already work together? Both routes are real options. This guide describes each one plainly and then follows the second route from an empty account to a live phone number.

On the first route you build on developer voice platforms. You choose a phone provider and rent a number. You choose a speech-to-text service that turns the caller's words into text, a language model that decides what to say, and a text-to-speech voice that speaks the reply. Then you write the code that joins them. That code has to take turns with the caller, notice when the caller speaks over the agent, find the right facts for each question, keep the model to your business, transfer calls, and store transcripts. You host it, watch it, and update it when one of the parts changes. The reward is full control over every piece, and the cost is development time and upkeep.

On the second route you configure rather than code. With Asyntai, the hearing, the answering and the speaking are already joined into one voice agent. Your work is the content, the rules and the phone number. To make the steps concrete, picture a small music school. Parents call to ask about lesson fees, adult beginners ask about trial lessons, and students ask about term dates. The school wants those questions answered, trial requests passed to the office, and callers who ask for a person put through in the afternoons, when the office is staffed.

The first three steps give the receptionist its knowledge. Create an Asyntai account and add the school's website; Asyntai reads it page by page, and the pages are read in a few minutes. Upload what the website leaves out, here a sheet with lesson fees and term dates, as a PDF file or pasted text. Then write the AI Instructions in plain English. The school writes two: never promise a particular teacher to a new student, and for a trial request, ask for the student's age, the instrument and any experience before taking a callback request. Documents and instructions take effect on the next call.

Steps four and five happen on the Voice Agent page. Write the greeting, short and with the school's name in it. Every call opens with the agent saying it is an AI assistant, followed by that greeting. Then make the free test call in your browser. Ask what a parent would ask: how much are guitar lessons, when does the spring term start, is there a sibling discount. Ask for something not covered, and listen for the offer of a callback. Each weak answer points to a document or an instruction that needs one more line.

Steps six to nine connect the phone. Phone calls need the Standard plan or higher and a paid Twilio account with a voice-capable number; a Twilio trial account cannot be used, and Twilio may ask for business verification first. On the Phone Calls page, paste the Twilio Account SID and Auth Token, and Asyntai lists the voice-capable numbers on that account. Press Import next to the number you want answered. Add a transfer number, the office line in international format, turn on Escalate to Human and set a start and end time for each weekday, for the school Monday to Friday from 2 to 8 pm and Saturday morning. Finally, decide how calls arrive: publish the Twilio number, or forward the school's existing line to it. The voice agent guide describes each setting.

Steps ten and eleven are where the receptionist becomes yours. Call the real number four times: ask a question from the fee sheet, ask for a person during the office hours and again outside them, and give a callback number to hear the agent read it back digit by digit and wait for your yes. Inside the hours, the transfer rings the office with the caller's own number on the screen; if nobody answers within 20 seconds, the caller comes back to the agent, which apologizes and takes a callback request. Then open the dashboard. Every call is stored there with the full transcript, and each callback request is in your escalation email. Read them, fix thin answers at the source, and have Asyntai read any changed web page again.

Which route suits you depends on what you want to own. If you have developers and want to choose every model, voice and line of code, route A gives you that, together with the hosting and the upkeep. If you want the receptionist working on your own content, and want to spend your time on the answers rather than on the technical parts, route B is shorter. On both routes the content work is the same: a clear website, documents with the facts callers ask about, and plain rules for the cases that need judgement. That content is what makes the receptionist sound like your business, whichever route carries it.

Running costs on this route are a monthly plan plus the phone charges. Standard is $139 a month with 200 voice minutes and 2 calls at the same time, and Pro is $449 a month with 1,500 voice minutes and 5 calls at the same time. Each answer the agent gives counts as one AI reply on the plan, and Twilio bills the number and the call minutes on your own account. If you also switch on the voice button in your website chat, visitors can talk to the same agent from the same knowledge. For what a finished receptionist does on a typical day, see the AI receptionist page.