Glossary
What is a virtual receptionist?
A virtual receptionist answers and handles a business's calls remotely instead of from the front desk. It can be a live remote agent, an AI voice assistant, or a mix — greeting callers, scheduling, taking messages, and routing calls.
Live vs. AI virtual receptionists
A live virtual receptionist is a remote human, often shared across several businesses and billed per minute or per call. An AI virtual receptionist is software that answers automatically, handles unlimited simultaneous calls, and costs a flat monthly rate. The trade-off is human nuance versus instant, always-on availability and lower cost.
What a virtual receptionist handles
Typical tasks are greeting callers, answering FAQs, booking and confirming appointments, capturing caller details, screening spam, and notifying the team. The setup connects to a business phone number and forwards or natively answers calls.
See also
Related terms
Ahoya is an AI receptionist that answers every call 24/7.
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