How to Choose an AI Receptionist: 12 Questions to Ask Any Vendor

Why a feature list does not help much

Every AI receptionist page promises 24/7 answering, natural voice and calendar booking. Those promises do not distinguish one product from another. The real differences show up in the details: what happens when the caller mumbles an address, how an emergency reaches your technician, what you pay when volume spikes and whether you can leave without losing your data.

This checklist is deliberately vendor-neutral. Use it on us, too.

Twelve questions to ask

1. Can I hear real, unedited call recordings, and can I test it myself with my own scenarios? Curated demos hide weaknesses.
2. How does it handle things it does not understand? The right answer is “it confirms, asks again or takes a message,” not “it rarely fails.”
3. How does an emergency reach a person, and how fast? Ask for the exact mechanism and who is notified.
4. What information will it give out, and who decides? You should control what it says about prices, availability and policies.
5. What does it integrate with, specifically? “Integrates with your CRM” can mean anything. Ask for the exact systems and whether each is native, via webhook or custom work.
6. What do I get after each call? Summary, transcript, audio, structured fields. Can I search them?
7. How are minutes counted and what happens beyond my plan? Ask whether ringing, holding and spam calls consume minutes, and what the overage rate is.
8. What is the setup fee, the minimum term and the cancellation process? Get it in writing.
9. Who tunes it after launch? Speech and wording usually need adjustments in the first weeks. Is that included, and who does it?
10. Where are recordings and transcripts stored, for how long, and who can access them? See our guide to call recording and privacy.
11. How does it behave when something breaks? What happens to calls if the AI service is down: a fallback number, voicemail or nothing?
12. Can I keep my phone number and leave with my data? Portability is a sign of a vendor that expects to earn your business.

Red flags

• Claims of perfect accuracy or “never misses a call.” No phone system never fails.
• No way to listen to calls or read transcripts.
• Pricing that is only available after a sales call, with no way to compare.
• Long lock-in terms without a trial or a clear scope.
• Customer logos, statistics or testimonials that cannot be verified. Ask for something you can check.
• No clear human fallback for emergencies.

A test-call plan you can run in one afternoon

Before committing, make at least these calls and write down what happens. Repeat the difficult ones.

1. A normal booking request with clear audio.
2. The same request from a noisy place or a speakerphone.
3. An address with an unusual street name, and a surname that is hard to spell.
4. An urgent problem, described vaguely (“it’s making a weird noise and smells funny”).
5. A caller who interrupts, changes their mind and answers a different question from the one asked.
6. A request for a price. Does it follow your pricing rules?
7. A question it should not answer (a legal or medical question, or a request for something your business does not do).
8. “Am I talking to a real person?”
9. A frustrated caller who wants a human.
10. A call where the caller just hangs up in the middle. What gets recorded?

Score each call from 1 to 5 on accuracy of details, tone, correct routing and quality of the record you receive. Any score of 2 or below is a conversation to have with the vendor before you sign, not after.

Our own answers, briefly

We would rather be checked than trusted. Our plans, extra-minute rate and setup terms are published on the pricing page. We connect to Google and Outlook calendars and to any CRM with an API or webhook; other systems are scoped and quoted separately. You can talk to Aether, our own AI voice assistant, on the home page, and every live receptionist is tested with you before it takes real calls. If any answer to the twelve questions above is missing from our website, email ahmed@aetherflow.pro and we will answer it in writing.