An AI receptionist is software that does the front-of-house part of a receptionist's job: it greets people who contact your business, answers their routine questions from information you have given it, collects their details, and passes anything it cannot deal with to a person. It works around the clock, and it is sold either as a system for your phone line or as an assistant for your website. SpideyChat is the website kind.
That paragraph covers the term. The rest of this article is the detail a business owner needs before deciding whether one belongs in their business: the phone versus website distinction, what the software does and does not do, how it is set up, who it suits, and what a conversation with one looks like.
Phone or website: settle this first
"AI receptionist" is used for two different products, and vendors rarely say which they mean.
Phone AI receptionists sit on your phone line. When someone rings, the software speaks to them in a synthetic voice, works out what they want, takes a message or a booking request and passes it on. The pitch is that you stop missing calls.
Website AI receptionists sit in a chat window on your site. When a visitor types a question, the software replies in text, drawing on your own pages. The pitch is that the visitor who would otherwise have left without asking gets an answer, and you get their details.
The two are not interchangeable. A phone product does nothing for the visitor reading your pricing page at 11pm, and a website product does nothing for the caller who reaches voicemail. SpideyChat works only on the website; it does not touch the phone line. Our glossary has short definitions of the neighbouring terms (virtual receptionist, answering service, live chat, chatbot) if the vocabulary is new, and virtual receptionist vs AI receptionist compares the software with the human services that share the name.
What it does
The website kind, which is the one described from here on, does five things.
- Answers questions from your content. You give it your website pages or pasted text. A visitor asks about opening hours, prices, service areas, returns, parking or what to bring, and it replies from what you published, in the language the visitor wrote in.
- Says so when it does not know. A properly built one does not guess. It tells the visitor it has no answer and offers to take their details, and the question is logged for you to fill in later.
- Captures leads. Name, email, phone number and what the person wants, collected in conversation and delivered to your dashboard.
- Opens support tickets. A customer reporting a problem gets a numbered ticket, and your team gets the full exchange attached to it.
- Hands over to a person. When someone on your team is on duty in the inbox, the assistant can pass the chat to them. When nobody is, it takes details and the ticket or lead waits for the morning.
What it does not do
This list matters as much as the one above, because sales pages tend to blur it.
- It does not answer the phone or work in messaging apps.
- It does not confirm appointments. It takes a booking request with the day, time and contact details, and a person confirms it.
- It does not take payments or send reminders.
- It does not look up orders, stock, account balances or patient records.
- It does not write into a CRM, practice system or diary on its own.
- It does not give medical, legal or financial advice, and it should hand those questions to a qualified person.
A business that needs any of those from day one is looking for a different product, or for this product plus a person.
How it is set up
Setup for a website receptionist is shorter than people expect, because the knowledge already exists on your site.
- Choose the source. Point it at your website (the one-click setup on the Free plan reads 10 pages, and the full crawler on Starter and above reads the whole site) or paste in text such as a price list or a policy.
- Give it a name and a greeting. Something honest. Visitors should know they are typing to software.
- Set the rules. Which topics go straight to a person, what details to collect, when to open a ticket.
- Install it. One line of code in your site's template, or the free WordPress plugin.
- Test it. Twenty real questions from your inbox and five it should not be able to answer. Fix the gaps, then switch it on for visitors.
Who it suits
It suits a business whose enquiries arrive largely through the website, whose questions repeat, and whose team cannot be at a keyboard all day. Trades, clinics, salons, letting agents, schools, small online shops and professional firms all fit that description, as does any business with evening and weekend traffic it cannot staff.
It suits less well a business whose contact is almost all by phone or in person, whose enquiries are each unique, or whose customers are often distressed when they get in touch. Those businesses need a person first and software for the website slice second, which is the argument in what an AI receptionist actually does for a small business and in the task-by-task comparison with a human receptionist.
An example conversation
The exchange below is illustrative. It is written to show the shape of a good interaction, not taken from a real chat.
Visitor: Do you do emergency callouts on a Sunday? Assistant: Yes. Weekend emergency callouts run from 8am to 8pm, and the weekend callout fee is listed on the pricing page as higher than the weekday rate. Would you like me to take your details so an engineer can get back to you? Visitor: Yes please, it's a leaking stopcock. Can you get someone here this afternoon? Assistant: I can't confirm a time myself, but I can log a booking request for this afternoon and the team will confirm it with you directly. What is the best number to reach you on, and the postcode of the property? Visitor: (gives a number and postcode) Assistant: Thank you. I have logged a priority booking request with your number and postcode. The team will confirm the time with you shortly.
Notice what the assistant did and did not do. It answered the hours and pointed at the published fee. It did not invent a time or promise one. It collected what a person needs to follow up, and it was clear that a person would.
What it costs
The website kind is usually a flat monthly plan. SpideyChat's Free plan is $0 for one assistant on one website with about 375 replies a month and no card required. Starter is $9.99 a month ($8.49 on yearly billing) for three assistants and the website crawler. Pro is $29.99 a month ($24.99 yearly) for ten assistants, the support ticket inbox and removal of the branding. Phone products are priced differently, often by minutes or by call volume, so compare like with like.
Where to start
Build one from your own site before reading anything else. Try it on your website with no signup, ask it the five questions your customers ask most, and then ask it something your site does not answer. How it handles the last one tells you more than any definition.