Setting up an AI receptionist in an afternoon, a practical checklist

Most of the time it takes to set up a receptionist, human or otherwise, is spent finding the information it needs. The software part is short. So this checklist is mostly about the gathering, with the setup steps in the order that avoids backtracking.

It is written around Vestibo, because that is what we know, but the gathering half applies to anything you might put on your phone.

Before you sit down: gather these

Have them in one document. Thirty minutes here saves two hours of "hang on, what do we charge for that".

• Your hours. Including the exceptions: half days, the lunch closure, the day you do not take walk-ins.
• Your services, in the words a customer uses. Not your internal names. If callers say "a clean" and you say "prophylaxis", the desk needs both.
• Prices you are willing to say out loud. Some businesses quote on the phone, some never do. Decide which you are, and for what.
• The five questions you answer most. Parking, whether you take a particular insurance or card, how far you travel, whether you do same-day, what to bring.
• The things you never do. The service you do not offer, the advice you are not licensed to give, the customers you refer elsewhere.
• Who gets the call when the desk cannot help. One phone number, belonging to a person who will pick up. This is the most important line on the list.
• Your website address, if you have one. It is the fastest way to give the desk most of the above.

Step 1: pick the template for your trade

Start from the template closest to your business. It comes with the vocabulary and, more importantly, the boundaries for that trade: what a law office desk must never say, what a clinic desk refers to a person, what an auto shop desk needs to ask before quoting. You will edit from there, but you are editing rather than inventing.

If nothing matches your trade exactly, pick the nearest and adjust. The boundaries transfer better than you would expect.

Step 2: teach it your business, then read what it learned

Point the desk at your website, or paste the document you gathered. It sorts what it finds into hours, services and policies.

Then read every fact it lists. This step is not optional. A page on your website from three years ago may still say you are open Saturdays. Fix it in the Knowledge tab, delete what is wrong, add what is missing. Everything the desk believes about your business is visible here, and you can change it at any time later without starting over.

Step 3: choose the voice and the manner

Pick a voice, and a personality preset that decides how it phrases things: the greeting, the sign-off, how formal it is. Listen to a sample. Then ask yourself one question: would I be comfortable if a customer thought this was my front desk? If the answer is yes, move on. Do not spend an hour here. You can change both later.

Step 4: set the calendar

If you take appointments, decide how they get to your calendar. Vestibo ships its own scheduler, so it is the booking system if you have nothing connected. Subscribe your Google, Apple or Outlook calendar to the private feed so bookings appear where you already look. The link is yours to revoke.

Check the hours the scheduler will offer against the hours you actually want booked. Open until 6 does not mean you want a new appointment starting at 5:55.

Step 5: give it your number for handoffs

Enter the phone that rings when a caller asks for a person. On a call, pressing 0 or asking for a human dials that number before anything else happens. If nobody picks up, the desk takes the caller's name and best number and alerts you at once.

Make sure it is a phone somebody carries. A desk line that rings in an empty office is the same as no handoff at all.

Step 6: rehearse before it answers a real call

The setup flow rings your own cell so you can meet the receptionist, and it offers rehearsals: realistic scenarios for your trade that you run before going live. Do them. Then add your own. Ten calls is a good number:

1. Ask your hours, including one of the exceptions.
2. Ask for a service using the customer's word, not yours.
3. Ask for a price you decided not to quote.
4. Book an appointment. Confirm the time is read back before it is booked.
5. Call again and try to take the same slot.
6. Interrupt it mid-sentence. It should stop and listen.
7. Ask something outside its brief: legal, medical, or none of its business. It should decline and offer a person.
8. Ask for the owner. Your handoff phone should ring.
9. Ask one of your five common questions.
10. Ask a question you did not give it an answer to. Listen to how it handles not knowing.

Anything that goes wrong is a knowledge fix, a boundary fix, or a reason to reconsider. All three are cheaper to find now.

Step 7: forward your calls

Keep your existing number. From your business phone, dial one forwarding code and your carrier sends calls to the desk. You choose what gets sent: only the calls you miss, or every call. Most owners start with missed calls only, so nothing changes about how they answer today and the desk steps in when they cannot. You can switch to every call later, or turn forwarding off with another code.

Check it. Ring your business line from a friend's phone, let it ring out, and listen to the desk pick up.

The first two weeks

Read the transcripts. Every conversation is in your inbox. You will find questions you did not anticipate, a fact you forgot to add, a phrasing you would put differently. Each fix takes a minute and the next caller gets the better answer.

By the end of the second week the desk knows your business about as well as a good new hire would, with one difference: you have a written record of everything it has said.

If you get stuck

Email support@vestibo.com and say which step you were on. A person reads it.