AI Receptionist
An AI receptionist is a software system that answers inbound customer messages and phone calls using a large language model (LLM), books appointments, collects payments, and sends notifications — without human staff.
In depth
An AI receptionist replaces the front-desk role at a small or mid-sized business. Unlike a traditional chatbot (which only handles chat on a website) or a phone IVR menu (which only routes calls), an AI receptionist is conversational across channels: web chat, voice calls, WhatsApp, and sometimes Instagram DMs. It understands the customer's intent in natural language, checks your real-time availability, books appointments, sends confirmation messages, and escalates to a human when needed. For Indian service businesses, a good AI receptionist must handle at least Hindi, English, and at least one regional language (Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, etc.), plus code-mixed conversations like Hinglish or Tenglish. AI receptionists typically cost ₹500-₹10,000 per month in India (2026) and replace 1-2 front-desk salary equivalents.
Real example
A customer messages a salon at 9 PM saying 'నాకు రేపు haircut booking కావాలి'. The AI receptionist understands the Telugu + English mix, checks the next-day 10 AM-6 PM availability, suggests slots, confirms the 3 PM booking, collects a ₹100 deposit via UPI, and sends the confirmation on WhatsApp.
Related terms
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More terms in this category
Conversational AI
Conversational AI is technology that lets computers hold natural back-and-forth conversations with humans in text or voice. It uses large language models to understand intent, remember context across turns, and generate human-like replies.
Voice AI
Voice AI is conversational AI that communicates through voice instead of text. It combines speech-to-text (STT), a large language model for understanding, and text-to-speech (TTS) to reply in a human-like voice.
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