What does an AI receptionist actually do for your business?

What does an AI receptionist do?

An AI receptionist answers your phone, handles the chat on your website and on WhatsApp, answers from your own knowledge base, and books appointments straight into your calendar. It runs 24/7 under your company name, and every conversation reaches you as a summary with the name, the number and the question.

That is the whole role, and nothing beyond it. It is the front of your business: pick up, talk, hand over. Whatever has to happen next (working the inbox, booking receipts, chasing quotes) is work for the AI back office assistant, a different role at a different price.

The trigger is nearly always the same. You are with a customer, on a scaffold or in a treatment room, and the phone rings. Dutch small businesses miss 23% of incoming calls on average (Voxori, research into missed calls in SMEs). At an estate agency that runs to 23 missed calls a week (NVM, market figures for estate agents), and someone who calls and gets nobody usually calls the next name on the list.

Which channels does it work on?

Three: the phone, the chat on your own website, and WhatsApp. No more than that, and that is deliberate. One brain, one knowledge base, one tone, on the channels where nearly every enquiry in the Netherlands arrives. Instagram, Messenger, Telegram and Discord are no longer sold as a standard product as of September 2026.

What a channel can draw does differ. On your own site the calendar opens inside the conversation and the price calculator counts along. On WhatsApp it cannot, so there it sends a link to the booking screen. Photos of a job or a damage claim are accepted on both. How that plays out per channel is worked through in our AI receptionist on WhatsApp.

Its first sentence always says who you are dealing with. That is not politeness but a legal requirement:

"Providers shall ensure that AI systems intended to interact directly with natural persons are designed and developed in such a way that the natural persons concerned are informed that they are interacting with an AI system, unless this is obvious from the point of view of a natural person who is reasonably well-informed, observant and circumspect."

Article 50(1), EU AI Act (2024/1689)

We solve that in the opening line, on every channel. It costs no enquiries at all: people want an answer, not necessarily a human.

What does it do in an emergency, or when it does not know?

It stops talking and hands over. On emergency words (leak, breakdown, no power, pain) it transfers straight to the number you set, without first working through the whole intake. If it is not sure of an answer, it does not guess: it takes the details and routes the conversation to you.

Those two behaviours are the difference between an AI receptionist and a chatbot. A chatbot that knows nothing keeps talking. Our agent hands over, with the full conversation attached, so you do not have to start again. The longer version is in what happens when the AI agent doesn't know the answer.

What does an AI receptionist cost?

The full AI receptionist is €795 one-off setup and €495 per month, excluding VAT, with 400 call minutes included and €0.39 per minute beyond that. Phone, website chat, WhatsApp, emergency triage and calendar booking are all in there. Separate parts exist too, from €89 per month.

| Part | Setup | Per month | | --- | --- | --- | | AI receptionist: phone, site and WhatsApp together | €795 | €495 | | Phone Agent: the phone only, 400 minutes | €595 | €349 | | ChatAgent: site and WhatsApp, 1,000 conversations | €295 | €179 | | Voicemail Agent: a missed call becomes a WhatsApp message | €195 | €89 |

Put that next to a receptionist on the payroll. In the Netherlands that job pays €2,350 to €2,800 gross per month (Indeed Salaries Netherlands 2026), and with 30 to 40% employer overhead on top an employer is quickly at €3,400 a month, for 40 hours instead of 168. Prices updated: September 2026. Price up your own mix on the pricing page with calculator.

When do you need one, and when do you not?

You need one the moment answering the phone collides with your actual trade: you are treating, fixing, building or advising and cannot pick up. You do not need one if somebody sits at a desk all day and the phone already gets answered within three rings.

If you are torn between the full receptionist and a single part, start small. The €89 Voicemail Agent only catches the calls you missed and sends the caller a WhatsApp message. If real work keeps coming out of that, move up to the phone or the full bundle. Which role to rent first is weighed up in phone, voicemail or follow-up.

What it saves in your trade varies a lot. We worked it out per sector on the industry pages. Want to run the numbers together: book a free 30 to 45-minute AI workflow scan via contact, or first read what the AI receptionist does.