How to set up an AI receptionist for your business

Set up your AI receptionist

An AI receptionist (also called an AI phone assistant, virtual receptionist, or AI answering service) answers your business line with a natural voice — it books real appointments on your calendar and answers questions about your services, prices, and hours, around the clock. With Scheduley, setting one up takes minutes, not a hiring process.

What an AI receptionist does

Every call gets answered on the first ring — while you’re with a client, after hours, on holidays. The AI greets callers in your business’s voice, checks your real availability, books the appointment, and texts the client a confirmation. You see the recording and transcript of every call in your dashboard.

Step 1: Get your number

In the Agent tab, choose a local phone number — pick the area code you want and Scheduley provisions the number for you. Put it on your website, Google profile, and business cards, or forward your existing line to it — not sure which? See which number your clients should call.

Step 2: Choose how calls are routed

• AI answers all calls — the agent picks up every call to your Scheduley number
• AI answers, can transfer to you — the agent handles the call, and when a caller asks for a person it transfers them live to your number. Can’t pick up? The agent takes a message and texts it to you.
• You answer first, AI as backup — keep advertising the number you already have. Turn on conditional call forwarding with your carrier (the Agent tab shows the exact dial codes) and any call you can’t get to rolls over to your agent — so every call gets answered.

Step 3: Make it sound like your business

Under Greeting & Instructions, set how the agent introduces itself and any standing instructions. Pick its voice under Agent Voice — choose from 20 natural voices, including American, British and Spanish-speaking options. Tap any voice’s icon to hear a sample and pick the one that fits your brand.

Serve callers in their language

Serving clients in more than one language? Under Agent Voice, pick your agent’s default language — English, Spanish, or any of 16 languages. Then turn on Multi-language support and tap the other languages your callers use: the agent auto-detects which one a caller is speaking and continues the whole conversation fluently in it — booking, prices, hours, everything — and answers in your default language otherwise. Tip: pick just the languages your callers actually use — a shorter list keeps speech recognition sharpest. Save, and it’s live on the very next call. For the full list and how detection works, see Languages your AI speaks.

Always up to date — automatically

Your agent stays current on its own: edit your services, prices, hours, team, policies, or business details anywhere in the dashboard and the agent knows within seconds — including the greeting it speaks when it picks up. Rename your business and the very next call opens with the new name. No re-sync button, nothing to remember.

Bookings the agent makes always land with a team member too — when the caller asks for someone, they get that person; otherwise the agent assigns an available staffer whose schedule fits.

Trade business? Your agent books jobs

With Jobs & Field Service mode on, your agent handles calls the way a great dispatcher would: it asks what’s going on, captures the problem and symptoms, always collects the service address, and books the job — treating emergencies (a burst pipe, no heat in winter) with same-day urgency or a transfer to you. The job details land on your job board before the call ends.

Choose your answering hours

By default your agent answers 24/7 — a late-night caller books themselves in for tomorrow while you sleep. Want it on a schedule instead? Under Agent → Answering Hours, pick:

• 24/7 — every call, day or night (the default)
• Business hours — the agent answers during your business hours; outside them, callers hear a brief closed message
• After hours — the agent covers only when you’re closed — perfect when your team takes calls during the day
• Custom — set exact answering hours for each day of the week

Choose your channels

Under Agent → Channels, pick exactly which channels the AI handles — useful if you want texts automated but prefer answering your own phone, or the other way around:

• Inbound phone calls — switch off and callers are transferred straight to your phone (if call transfer is set up) or politely invited to text instead. The agent never handles the call.
• SMS text messages — switch off and texts still land in your Inbox marked Needs Attention — you reply yourself, the AI stays silent.
• Take messages when it can’t help — voicemail, upgraded: the agent offers to take a message and it lands in your Inbox with the transcript. Switch off and callers it can’t help are asked to call back instead.

There’s also a master Disable button next to the Agent Live badge — one tap pauses the AI on every channel (texts keep landing in your Inbox for you to handle).

What the AI can do on a call

• Book, reschedule, or cancel appointments — using your real availability and booking rules
• Answer follow-up calls about existing bookings — it looks up the caller’s actual appointment and reads back the date, time or arrival window, who they’re booked with, and (in Jobs mode) the job status and quote state
• Take notes for the team mid-call — “the gate code is 1234”, “I’m running late” — attached to the appointment and texted to whoever’s assigned
• Recognize returning clients by number, greet them by name, and know their usual service
• Answer questions about services, pricing, hours, and location
• Handle mobile-service bookings: collect the address and mention your travel fee
• Offer the waitlist when a day is full — and when a spot opens, waitlisted clients get a text with your booking link automatically
• Text links mid-call — the caller’s personal manage link, or your booking page for clients who’d rather browse
• Flag emergencies instantly — urgent calls get a red badge in your calls inbox and can text you an alert mid-call (Settings → Notifications)
• Transfer to you when a caller needs a human

Know about every call

After each call your agent handles, you get a short summary texted to your phone and a notification in your dashboard — who called, what they wanted, how it ended. The summary text has its own switch under Agent → SMS Auto-Replies, and every recording and transcript lives in your calls inbox. Each morning, your Concierge rolls it all up into a daily briefing in your inbox — today’s schedule, yesterday’s bookings and calls, and your waitlist.

It stays in sync automatically

Change your services, hours, team, or settings and the agent knows on its very next call — nothing to retrain. To give it deeper knowledge, see Teaching your AI about your business.

Step 4: Call it yourself

Call your new number and book a test appointment. You’ll see it appear on your Calendar, and the full call recording and transcript in your dashboard.

Agent quiet when it shouldn’t be? See Troubleshooting. For stepping into chats yourself, see Taking over from your AI.