What Your AI Receptionist Should Say First (With 12 Greetings That Work)

"Hi! How can I help you today?"

That line is on a huge number of websites, and it is not wrong, exactly. It is just asking the visitor to do all the work. They have to decide what their question is, whether a chat box is the right place to ask it, and whether the thing on the other end will be any use. Plenty of people decide it is easier to close the tab.

Your AI receptionist greeting is the one message every visitor who opens the chat will read. It sets expectations, signals what the receptionist knows about, and makes typing a first reply feel easy or awkward. Small wording changes here do more than most settings you will touch later.

Why the first line does so much work

A visitor opening a chat window is in a hurry and a little sceptical. Past chat boxes have given them canned nonsense, so they are looking for a quick signal that this one understands where they are.

A good greeting does two things. It tells them what they can ask, in concrete terms, and it makes the first reply short. "Do you cover my area?" is easy to type. "Please describe your enquiry" is not.

It also helps to remember what the greeting is not for. It is not the place for your mission statement, your awards or three sentences about response times. Those belong in answers, when someone asks.

Weak greetings and what to write instead

The pattern in the right-hand column: name the likely questions, say what happens next, and keep it short.

Twelve greetings, sorted by business type

Adapt these rather than pasting them. Swap in your own services and the real questions people ask.

Trades and home services

• Plumber or heating engineer: "Hi, I can help with quotes, the areas we cover and what to do if something is urgent. What's going on?"
• Roofer: "Hello, need a repair looked at or a quote for new work? Tell me roughly what you're seeing."
• Cleaning company: "Hi, I can give you an idea of prices for regular, one-off or end-of-tenancy cleans. Which do you need?"
• Removals: "Hello, planning a move? Tell me the rough date and where from and to, and I'll help you get a quote."

Clinics and appointments

• Physiotherapy clinic: "Hi, I can explain what a first appointment involves, prices and how to request a booking. I can't give medical advice, but the team can."
• Dental practice: "Hello, are you a new patient, an existing patient, or looking for information about a treatment?"
• Salon: "Hi, looking to request an appointment or checking prices for a treatment?"

Professional services

• Accountant: "Hello, I can tell you which services we offer, how our fees work and how to get started. Are you a business or an individual?"
• Solicitor: "Hi, I can explain the areas of law we cover and take some details so the right person can get back to you. I can't give legal advice."

Shops, venues and memberships

• Independent shop: "Hi, got a question about an order, delivery or a product? Ask away."
• Wedding venue: "Hello, congratulations if you're planning a wedding. I can check what we offer, rough pricing and how to request a viewing."
• Gym: "Hi, I can help with membership options, class times or booking a free visit request."

Notice that the clinic and legal versions say plainly that the receptionist gives information, not advice. That line belongs in the greeting for any health, legal or financial business, because it prevents the most awkward conversations before they begin.

What a good opener leads to

Here is the kind of exchange a specific greeting tends to produce on a heating engineer's pricing page:

Assistant: Hi, I can help with quotes, the areas we cover and what to do if something is urgent. What's going on?

Visitor: boiler service price? im in Didsbury

Assistant: A standard annual boiler service is listed at £85, and Didsbury is within our area. Would you like me to take your details so the office can offer you a date?

The visitor's first message was seven words, because the greeting had already told them those words were welcome. Compare that with a generic opener, where many visitors type nothing.

Page-by-page and proactive greetings

One greeting across the whole site is a compromise. If you can set different openers for different pages, do it at least for your two or three highest-intent pages: pricing, contact and your main service page.

Proactive greetings, where the message appears without the visitor clicking, are useful but easy to overdo. A short delay and a quiet appearance on a pricing page is helpful. A bubble that jumps up on every blog post within a second is not. Exit-intent greetings, shown when someone moves to leave, work best as a low-pressure offer: "Before you go, want me to answer anything about prices?" There is more on timing in proactive greetings: when to nudge.

Suggested prompts sit alongside the greeting as tappable buttons. Use them for the questions you see most, written the way a customer would type them. They take pressure off the greeting to mention everything.

Choosing and testing your AI receptionist greeting

1. Read through your last 30 enquiries and write down the three or four most common first questions.
2. Draft a greeting that names two of them and fits in one or two sentences.
3. Add the rest as suggested prompts.
4. Leave it alone for two or three weeks, then compare the number of conversations started with the previous period.
5. Change one thing at a time. A new greeting plus new prompts plus a new colour tells you nothing about which change mattered.

If you want to see how a greeting and prompts feel from the visitor's side, the demo shows a working receptionist, and the features page lists the customisation options. For the broader question of earning trust in that first exchange, read building trust in the first message.