The job advert for a receptionist usually lists a dozen duties, and the sales page for an AI receptionist usually promises to cover all of them. Neither document is a good basis for a decision. The useful comparison is task by task: for each thing a front desk does, who does it well, who does it badly, and who cannot do it at all.
This article goes through those tasks one at a time, for a small business deciding between hiring a person and paying for software.
Two kinds of AI receptionist, and why it matters here
Before the comparison, one distinction that gets skipped. Products sold as AI receptionists come in two kinds.
The first works on the phone line. A caller rings, software speaks to them in a synthetic voice, takes a message or a booking request, and passes it on. If your enquiries arrive mostly by phone, that is the kind you are comparing against a person.
The second works on your website. A visitor types a question into a chat window and the assistant replies from your own pages. SpideyChat is this kind. It does not touch the phone line at all, so it is a candidate for the website half of the reception job and nothing else.
The table below keeps both kinds separate. Where your enquiries actually start is worth reading first if you are not sure which channel that is.
The reception job, task by task
| Task | A person on the desk | Phone AI | Website assistant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Greeting someone who walks in | Yes | No | No |
| The phone line | Yes, one caller at a time | Yes, within its script | No |
| Typed questions on the website | Only during the shift, if at all | No | Yes, at any hour |
| The same price question for the fortieth time | Yes, with fading patience | Yes | Yes, identically every time |
| Collecting a name, email and phone number | Yes | Yes | Yes, in chat |
| Confirming a slot in the diary | Yes | Some systems | No, it takes a booking request for a person to confirm |
| Opening a support ticket | Yes, if trained on the system | Rarely | Yes, numbered |
| Replying in the customer's language | Only if they speak it | Depends on the product | Yes |
| Calming an upset customer | Yes | Poorly | No, it should hand over |
| Judgement calls and exceptions | Yes | No | No |
| Post, parcels, the printer, the kettle | Yes | No | No |
Two rows need expanding, because the yes and no hide the interesting part.
The phone line. A person covers it one call at a time, and when they are at lunch nobody does. A phone AI covers it around the clock but only within what it has been scripted to do. A website assistant does nothing here. If the phone is where your business lives, the real choice is between a person, a phone AI and an answering service.
Confirming a slot. A person opens the diary, finds a gap and writes the appointment in. A website assistant does not have the diary. What it does is take a booking request: the day and time the visitor wants, their contact details and what the appointment is for, so the person on the desk can confirm it in the morning. Useful at 10pm, but not the same as confirming.
What still needs a person
The bottom third of the table is the part software vendors would rather you skimmed. These tasks need a human, and no plan at any price changes that.
- Anything physical. Visitors, deliveries, the waiting room, the alarm code.
- Anything upsetting. A patient in pain, a client who has been overcharged twice, a family arranging a funeral. Software should recognise the situation and bring a person in, not attempt the conversation.
- Anything that commits the business. Agreeing a discount, waiving a fee, promising a date. An assistant can only repeat what you have published.
- Anything unwritten. The regular who always wants the late slot, the supplier who is late every Friday.
- The phone, if you choose a website assistant.
If most of your reception work is on this list, you are hiring, and the only software question is whether something small can take the website enquiries off the new person's plate.
What software does better than any person
The top of the table is the opposite case: tasks a person can do but should not have to.
- Being there at 11pm. The enquiry that arrives after closing gets an answer, and the details are waiting in the morning.
- Identical answers. The same price, service area and cancellation policy every time, with no drift as the week wears on.
- Several conversations at once. A busy Monday morning on the website is no harder than a quiet Wednesday.
- A complete record. Every question asked, and every one it could not answer, listed for you to fix.
- Languages. It replies in whatever language the visitor writes in.
Cost shape: a salary against a flat plan
The two costs have different shapes, which matters more than the headline figures.
A salary is a fixed annual commitment that scales with hours, not with enquiries. Say a part-time receptionist works 25 hours a week at a wage that comes to 16,000 a year. Add employer taxes, pension, holiday cover and recruitment and the real figure is higher. Those hours buy everything in the table, but only during those hours. Evenings and weekends are uncovered.
A website assistant is a flat monthly plan that scales with conversations, not hours. SpideyChat's Free plan is $0 for one assistant with about 375 replies a month, Starter is $9.99 a month for three assistants and the website crawler, and Pro is $29.99 a month for ten assistants and the support ticket inbox. The hours are all of them. The task list is the top of the table only.
So the honest comparison is not salary versus subscription. It is: what does it cost to cover the website slice of reception with a person, and what does it cost with software. Hiring a receptionist vs using software does the full costing exercise if you want the arithmetic.
A combination that works for a small business
Most small businesses end up with a split rather than a replacement. Here is one for a two-partner accountancy practice, as an illustration.
A receptionist works 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. She looks after the phone, the door, the post and the partners' diaries, and she is in the dashboard inbox during the day so that chats which need a person reach her. The website assistant takes the typed enquiries, during the day when she is on the phone and after 5pm when she has gone home. It answers fee questions from the published fee page, collects details from prospective clients and takes booking requests for initial meetings, which she confirms the next morning. Anything about a client's own tax position, it hands to her rather than attempting.
The phone after 5pm is a separate decision. If missed evening calls are a real problem, a phone AI or an answering service can sit alongside the website assistant without either getting in the other's way.
Deciding for your own desk
Keep a tally for two weeks. For each contact, note the channel (door, phone, website, email), the time, and whether it needed a decision only a person could make.
If the tally is mostly phone and door, write the job description. If it is mostly typed questions with repeat answers, test a website assistant before you advertise. If it is both, you now know how many hours the person needs to cover and what the software is for. You can see the website half in action on the AI website receptionist page, and the plans are on the pricing page.