AI receptionists for small businesses: what they do and what they cost

An AI receptionist answers your business calls in a natural voice, works out what the caller needs, then passes the call on, takes a message or answers a simple question. We wouldn’t use one to replace a receptionist. Used well, it makes sure calls aren’t missed when your team is busy and gets each caller to the right place. Set up badly, it just puts a new obstacle between your customers and your people.

This guide explains what an AI receptionist does, how it compares with a phone menu or an answering service, what it costs in the UK, and how to set one up so callers can still reach a person when they need one.

What is an AI receptionist?

An AI receptionist, also called an AI voice agent or AI call answering, is software that answers incoming calls on your business line. It uses three pieces of technology one after another. Speech recognition turns what the caller says into text. A language model works out what they want and chooses a reply from the information you’ve given it. A synthetic voice then speaks the reply.

A typical call might go like this:

1. The assistant answers with your business name and says it’s an AI assistant.
2. The caller says they need to move an appointment.
3. The assistant takes their name, number and the day that suits them.
4. It sends a summary to your bookings team by email or text, or transfers the call if someone’s free.

Most can answer calls, ask the reason for the call, take a message, answer a short list of approved questions, transfer calls to the right team or number, and send a summary after each call. Some can handle appointment booking straight into a Google or Outlook calendar, or log the call in a CRM (customer relationship management system), if they’re connected to it. Many can answer several calls at the same time, which a person can’t, though some plans limit how many.

What it shouldn’t do is guess. An assistant that makes up an answer to fill a silence can give a caller the wrong price, the wrong date or the wrong advice, and callers tend to treat what they hear on your phone line as official. It needs a clear list of what it can say and a clear point where it stops and hands over.

AI receptionist, phone menu or answering service?

Businesses already have two other ways to deal with calls nobody can pick up. A phone menu, or IVR (interactive voice response), asks callers to press a number for each option. An answering service uses people, usually in a call centre, who answer in your business name and take messages. Both are sometimes sold as a virtual receptionist, which is why that term is confusing.

A short phone menu still works well when callers already know which team they want. Many businesses end up using more than one: a menu for the main choices, people for the calls that matter most, and AI for overflow or out of hours.

Where an AI receptionist helps a small business

It’s most useful when it has one clear job to do, such as picking up the calls your team can’t get to in time.

Take a restaurant. The host is still the best person to take a booking or answer a question about the menu. But when they’re seating guests and the phone rings, a good AI receptionist can pick up and handle the call for them. AI receptionists are good, but we’ve found people like to buy from people, so the aim is fewer missed calls, not fewer people.

• Busy periods. When everyone’s already on a call, the assistant picks up instead of leaving callers in a queue or on voicemail. Ofcom found that 7% of calls to the UK’s main broadband and landline providers in 2024 ended before the caller spoke to anyone, and those are businesses with large call centres. Our guide to cutting call wait times covers the other fixes worth making first.
• Out of hours. In the evening and at weekends it can answer simple questions and take proper details, where a voicemail box often gets a hang-up or a half-finished message.
• One type of call. Routine calls such as appointment changes, delivery questions or opening hours are good candidates, because the questions repeat and the answers rarely change.
• A mixed main line. It can ask “what’s your call about?” and route the caller to the right team, which callers often find quicker than listening to a menu.

It’s a poor fit when most of your calls are complicated, emotional or sensitive, when callers may be vulnerable, or when the call is the service itself, such as advice or support that needs a person’s judgement. If your team already answers almost every call, the money may be better spent elsewhere.

What does an AI receptionist cost in the UK?

Expect three costs: a monthly plan, usage beyond the plan’s allowance, and someone’s time to set it up and keep it right. Published UK plans we checked in November 2026 ran from £39 to £99 a month before VAT.

1. The monthly plan. Self-serve services usually charge a monthly fee that includes a set number of calls. One UK hosting company’s plans, checked in November 2026, were £39 a month for 30 calls and then 49p a call, £69 for 100 calls and then 39p a call, or £99 for unlimited calls, all before VAT and with no fixed term.
2. Usage. AI receptionists added to a business phone system are often billed by the minute. BT, for example, sells RingCentral’s AI Receptionist in bundles of 100 minutes, from 100 to 14,000 minutes a month, on a monthly rolling contract. Extra minutes beyond the bundle are charged at a higher rate, and BT leaves that switched off unless you turn it on.
3. Setting it up and keeping it right. Someone has to write the approved answers, set up the call routes and the handover rules, test it, and then read the call summaries to see what’s going wrong. Some providers charge a setup fee for this. Others leave it to you. A self-serve service can be answering calls the same day, but writing and testing the answers properly takes longer. Either way, plan for time every month to update the answers when your prices, hours or services change.

Also check whether your phone provider charges to forward calls from your existing number to the assistant, which is how many self-serve services connect.

The fairer comparison isn’t with a full-time receptionist, who does far more than answer the phone. It’s with the calls you’re missing now and what a missed new enquiry is worth to you.

Telling callers it’s AI, and the rules on their data

Say it at the start. Something as short as “You’re through to the AI assistant for Smith and Co” is enough. Callers who know they’re talking to software are less likely to feel misled, and some will ask for a person straight away, which is fine.

There’s also a legal side, because the assistant collects personal data: names, numbers, the reason for the call and often a recording.

• Tell people how you use their data. Under UK GDPR (the UK General Data Protection Regulation), you must give people privacy information at the time you collect their data from them: what you collect, why, who receives it and how long you keep it. On a phone call, a short spoken notice that points to your full privacy notice online is a common way to do it. The UK regulator is now the Information Commission, which replaced the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on 30 September 2026, and its guidance on AI and data protection covers being open and fair with people.
• Recordings and transcripts. Most AI receptionists record or transcribe calls to produce their summaries. Tell callers, decide how long you keep recordings and transcripts, and delete them when that time is up.
• Where the data goes. Ask the supplier where recordings and transcripts are stored and processed, who can access them, and whether they’re used to train the supplier’s AI models.
• Callers in the EU. If your assistant takes calls from people in the EU, the EU AI Act has required since 2 August 2026 that they’re told they’re talking to an AI, unless it’s obvious. The duty sits mainly with the company that provides the assistant, but your opening message is how it’s met in practice.
• Outbound calls. If a supplier offers outbound calling, check the PECR rules (the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations) before you use it for marketing. Marketing calls made by a dialling system that plays a recorded message need the person’s specific consent, and general marketing consent isn’t enough.

Keep decisions that matter to a caller, such as turning down a booking or a refund, with a person. This guide is general information, not legal advice, so check anything specific to your business with a data protection adviser.

Setting up the handover to a person

This is the part that decides whether callers like it or not. Agree four things before it goes live.

• When it hands over. Straight away if the caller asks for a person. Also for complaints, urgent problems, anything about payments or sensitive information, callers who seem vulnerable or upset, and any question it can’t answer after a second try.
• Where the call goes. A named team, a group of phones that ring together, a call queue, a mobile, or a promised callback with a time attached.
• What goes with it. The caller’s name, number and reason for calling should reach the person taking over, by text, email or your CRM, so the caller doesn’t have to explain everything twice.
• What’s urgent out of hours. Decide what the assistant should do with a genuine emergency at 10pm, and give it a number or instruction to pass on.

Then test it with the calls you really get: unclear requests, background noise, strong accents, wrong numbers, people who talk over it, and people who just want a human. Listen back to the first few weeks of calls and adjust.

Questions to ask before you choose one

1. Can it answer on my existing number, or do calls need forwarding to a new one?
2. How does it hand a call to a person, and does the call summary go with it?
3. Can it connect to my phone system, calendar and CRM?
4. Where are recordings and transcripts stored, for how long, and are they used to train AI?
5. What does each call or minute cost beyond the allowance, and is there a setup fee or minimum term?
6. Who updates the answers when something changes, and how quickly?
7. Can I hear test calls before it goes live?
8. Does my phone ring first? Setting it to answer only when nobody picks up, or when you’re closed, keeps your team as the first voice callers hear.
9. What happens when the minutes run out? On some plans the assistant stops answering at the end of the allowance unless you’ve switched on extra minutes.

How Chrome helps

We’re a phone provider first, and we don’t sell an AI receptionist of our own yet. What we can do now is start with your calls. We’ll look at how many you miss, when and why, and the questions people ring about most, then tell you plainly whether an AI voice assistant would help or whether a change to your phone system would do the job.

Often it’s the phone system. If you use ChromeX, our cloud phone system, hunt groups can ring a second set of phones when the first aren’t answered, time-of-day routing can send evening calls to a mobile, and on ChromeX Pro+ queue reports show when callers give up. If an AI receptionist still makes sense, we’ll help you check a provider against the questions above and make sure it works with your number and passes callers to a person when it should. If you’re working out where AI fits across the business more widely, our AI readiness and governance service is a good place to begin.

A sensible place to start

Look at last month’s calls. Find out when calls are being missed and list the five questions people ring about most. If the missed calls bunch up at the same times, overflow or out-of-hours answering is a good first job. If the top questions are simple and the answers rarely change, an AI receptionist can deal with them, and your team gets more time for the calls that need them.

If you’d like to look at it with us, talk to our team about AI voice assistants, or call us on 03333 212 707.