07 Use case

AI Receptionist

A voice AI agent at your front desk: it greets every caller in your business's name, answers their questions, takes the calls your team cannot and filters what can wait. Try it on your own website below.

01 In short

What is an AI receptionist?

An AI receptionist is a voice AI agent that answers your line the way a front desk would: it greets the caller in your business's name, answers questions about your hours, services and prices, books an appointment or takes a message, and puts the call through to your team when a person is needed.

You may also hear it called an AI phone assistant, a virtual receptionist or an AI secretary: the job is the same. It does not replace the people at the desk. It takes the calls they cannot, at peak times, in the evening and at weekends, and the routine requests, so that they keep the calls that need them.

593overflow calls answered in 7 weeks at an OnAir Fitness club
100%of inbound calls handled without a human for Dalia's 100 dentists
x2calls handled end to end by the AI at Sofratel, with the memory of collective incidents

Updated 28 October 2026

02 Try it

Your AI receptionist, generated from your website.

Enter your website: in about ten seconds the agent knows your hours, services and contact details. Then call it from your mobile and talk to it as one of your customers would.

Free personalized AI
No sign-up

03 What it does

What the receptionist does on each call.

Greets every caller in your business's name, in French, English, Spanish, Dutch or Portuguese.
Answers from what you give it: opening hours, services, prices, directions, your FAQ.
Books the appointment in your calendar, or takes a message with the fields you define.
Spots what is urgent by your rules, and puts the call through to a person, cold or warm.
Recognizes returning callers: it remembers the summaries of their last five calls.
Answers several calls at once: no caller waits for a free line.
Sends each call's summary to Slack, by SMS, by webhook or through the API.

04 How it works

From your number to your first call.

A template is ready at once; a custom agent goes live in about a month on average, with an engineer.

Describe your business. Start from a template and give the agent your hours, services, prices and FAQ, and the greeting it opens with.
Connect your number. Keep your current number: forward the calls nobody picks up, or all of them, to the agent, or connect your line through a SIP trunk or Twilio.
Set the rules. Opening hours, what counts as urgent, who takes a transfer, what to collect and what to book.
Review the calls. Every call leaves a recording, a transcript, a summary and your fields: read them, adjust the instructions, repeat.

05 Benefits

What changes at the front desk.

No missed call and no hold music: every call is answered at once, evenings and weekends included.
Your team keeps the calls that need a person, with the context, instead of the routine ones.
Callers get the same answer every time, in your words.
Every call is documented: no more sticky notes, no voicemail to listen to.
Peaks no longer call for extra staff.

06 Compared

AI receptionist, voicemail or answering service?

	Voicemail	Answering service	AI receptionist
Who answers	No one: the caller leaves a message	A person, during the service's hours	Your agent, at any hour
Questions about your business	Unanswered	Answered from a script	Answered from your hours, services, prices and FAQ
Appointments	A callback to book	Depends on the service	Booked in your calendar during the call
Several calls at once	Messages pile up	As many as people on duty	10 lines included in every plan, more on request
After the call	A recording to listen to	A message	A summary, a transcript and your fields

07 Who it is for

Front desks it already runs.

Sector	What the receptionist does	Seen at
Gyms and fitness clubs	Takes the calls the club's team cannot, answers prospects about the trial and the prices	OnAir Fitness, 100 clubs
Dental practices	Answers patients and books their appointments straight in the calendar	Dalia, 100 dentists
Car sales	Picks up every call, qualifies the buyer and books the follow-up	Bonnie&Car, from 55% missed calls to about 0%
Social housing and contact centers	Filters the calls, handles the routine requests and passes emergencies to an agent	Sofratel, 200 social housing operators
Networks of clubs, agencies or branches	One agent for every site, each with its own details	OnAir Fitness

Roll out one agent across a network

08 Overflow

When the desk is busy: OnAir Fitness.

OnAir Fitness, a franchise of 100 clubs, sends the calls its club teams cannot pick up to a CallShift agent, seven days a week. The agent answers the prospects, sends them a trial by SMS, and puts the calls that need the team through to it.

At OnAir Maisons-Alfort, from 1 September to 22 October 2026, it answered 593 overflow calls: 121 prospects asking for a trial or the prices got an answer instead of voicemail, 131 calls came in at weekends, and 219 calls were put through to the club's team.

Read the OnAir Fitness case

09 Filtering and memory

Filter the calls, remember the incidents: Sofratel.

Sofratel's contact center answers the on-call line of 200 social housing operators. The agent answers first and filters: it handles the routine requests end to end and passes urgent and sensitive calls to an agent, with the context.

Its memory of collective incidents sets it apart. Once an incident is known for a building (a lift out of order, no heating), the agent recognizes it when the next tenants call, tells them it is in hand, and no longer passes each of those calls to an agent. With it, the number of calls the AI handles end to end, with no agent involved, doubled.

Read the Sofratel case

10 Cost

What an AI receptionist costs.

Starter is €40 a month with 100 minutes, Professional €350 a month with 1,000 minutes, and Scale is priced on your volume. Starter and Professional are monthly, with no setup fee, and every plan includes 10 concurrent lines.

See the plans

11 Data

Your callers' data stays in the EU.

Our HQ is in Paris, and hosting, storage and voice processing run on providers in France and Germany. CallShift is GDPR compliant, with ISO 27001 and health-data hosting (HDS) available. Your agent tells callers they are talking to an AI, as the EU AI Act requires.

12 Questions

AI receptionist, answered.

What is the difference between an AI receptionist and 24/7 AI call answering?

They overlap. 24/7 AI call answering is about when the agent picks up: around the clock. An AI receptionist is about the role it plays: your front desk, which greets, answers, books, filters and transfers. The same CallShift agent does both: see 24/7 AI call answering.

Is an AI receptionist the same as an AI phone assistant or a virtual secretary?

Yes, the names vary and the job is the same: a voice AI agent that answers your calls in your business's name, books, takes messages and puts callers through to your team.

Does an AI receptionist replace my front desk?

No. It takes the calls your team cannot, at peaks, in the evening and at weekends, and the routine requests, and puts the calls that need a person through to your team. At an OnAir Fitness club, 219 of 593 overflow calls were put through to the team.

Can I try it on my own business?

Yes, on this page: enter your website, and in about ten seconds the agent knows what your site says. You then call it from your mobile. No sign-up.

How does it know about my business?

From what you give it: your hours, services, prices and FAQ, in its instructions. For the demo on this page, it reads them from your website.

What if it does not know the answer?

It answers from what you give it. For anything else, you decide in its instructions what it does: take a message for your team, or put the call through.

Can I keep my phone number?

Yes. Forward the calls nobody picks up, or all your calls, to the agent, or connect your line through a SIP trunk or Twilio.

How many calls can it take at the same time?

Every plan includes 10 concurrent lines, and you can add more: no caller waits for a free line.

How much does an AI receptionist cost?

From €40 a month with Starter (100 minutes), €350 a month with Professional (1,000 minutes), with no setup fee: see the plans.

Where are my callers' data hosted?

In the EU: hosting, storage and voice processing run on providers in France and Germany. CallShift is GDPR compliant, with ISO 27001 and HDS available.