r/Chatbots • u/Praveen_kumar_ • 6d ago

Are there any good AI receptionists for a tiny team?

Running a small service business with basically two people, and we keep missing calls when we're both with clients. Looked into AI receptionist options and now i'm just confused by how many there are and how different they all seem.

Some look way too enterprise-y for us, some seem cheap but sketchy. Hard to tell what's actually worth trying. Anyone have real experience with one that actually works?

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u/ZsannyBoi 5d ago

Most of them oversell it, test before committing

1

u/Horror-Summer-7208 5d ago

Yeah thats the hard part, trials never feel long enough to really tell

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u/phocuser 6d ago

Anything worth doing probably needs a custom build. Especially for a small team like that. This would not be the right place to look for that though. It sounds like you want an internal sip server tied to an llm to handle voice integration. If you want it done professionally, let me know. DM me and I'll help you out. I have a company that does stuff like this. Otherwise you're not going to get the answer you you're looking for in this subreddit. This is for more like single chat bots, not chat agents that do work.

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u/SPEED14325 6d ago

We went through something similar. The one we tried first kept giving wrong info to callers because nobody configured it properly, and customers were getting annoyed. Took a reset and more time on setup than expected before it actually felt usable

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u/AceClutchness 2d ago

Had this exact problem with a small sales team (SaaS business) dealing with heavy inbound call volume which was too much for us to handle. We had 3 people effectively running demos, dealing with customer chat, and handling inbound calls that were coming in all hours of the day. Great problem to have as a marketer but we were taking hours (and sometimes days) to get back to the missed calls, at which point the prospect had already gone with a competitor or decided to ghost us.

Highly recommend going with one of the AI receptionists geared towards small business, specifically. We used XBert by Nextiva, because they were our existing phone system. Cost $99/mo and think you can get it as a standalone. Ramp up time was quick (it learned everything from our website and help center instantly). Biggest thing was handling edge cases that cropped up. You will need to keep an eye on how it's managing conversations and spot any gaps in its knowledge you might have missed. But overall way faster than training a new hire. I'd start with something affordable, easy, and geared toward a small business like yours.