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.
What does AI Receptionist mean in practice?
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. When comparing AI receptionist pricing in India, separate the quote into setup, platform subscription, call minutes, phone number recharge, WhatsApp message cost, integrations, and monthly tuning. A low monthly subscription can still be expensive if it does not call ad leads back quickly or if the business must configure every workflow itself.
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
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.
Chatbot
A chatbot is software that holds text conversations with people. Traditional chatbots follow fixed rules or menus; modern AI chatbots use a large language model to understand free-form questions and reply naturally.
See ai receptionist working live
Our own agent answers chat and calls at app.dvaarik.com/dvaarik-ai — or describe your business on WhatsApp and we'll show you what it looks like for you.
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