The AI Receptionist (ReliaReceptionist) answers one of your ReliaRing phone numbers with a spoken assistant. It greets the caller in a voice you choose, follows the greeting you write, and helps the caller using information you give it.
What it can do on a call
- Answer questions from your knowledge: question-and-answer items you type, documents you upload, and your website.
- Tell callers your hours, and behave differently when you are closed.
- Book, move or cancel appointments in your ReliaRing schedule, offering only times that are actually free.
- Take a message — who it is for, the caller, a callback number and how urgent it is — email it, and put it in the right person's inbox.
- Ask your qualifying questions and save the answers as a lead.
- Transfer the call to a person: a user on your account, a contact, or an outside number.
- Hand the call to your route of last resort — a person, group or mailbox you choose — whenever it cannot or should not take the call itself.
Each capability is a switch you turn on or off per receptionist. Every call leaves a written transcript, an outcome and a minute count.
What it cannot do
- It does not make outbound calls. It answers; it does not dial.
- It does not record call audio. You get a transcript, not a recording. Transcripts, messages and captured leads are kept for a year, then deleted.
- It cannot pretend to be a person. Every call opens with a short notice that the caller has reached an automated assistant and that the call may be transcribed. You cannot turn that notice off or shorten it.
- It does not transfer to international or premium-rate numbers. International transfers can be switched on by your account administrator; premium-rate numbers never can.
- A single call ends after 30 minutes, and an account can have five receptionist calls going at once; a sixth caller hears your fallback message and goes to your route of last resort.
- It does not sync with Google Calendar or Microsoft 365. Booking uses your ReliaRing schedule only.
- It does not respond to key presses. Callers talk to it; they cannot "press 1".
- It does not replace emergency (911) dialling or any other ReliaRing feature.
Who can use it in the portal
- Administrators set everything up.
- Supervisors can read receptionists, call transcripts, leads and every message, and can assign messages, but cannot change the setup.
- Everyone else sees one thing: My messages — the messages a receptionist took for them.
How it fits together
- Create a receptionist — Creating Your First AI Assistant.
- Teach it about your business — Teaching Your AI Assistant About Your Business.
- Set hours and transfers — Business Hours and After-Hours Behaviour.
- Set its limits — Minute Budget, Route of Last Resort and International Transfers.
- Give it a number and turn it on — Connecting Your AI Assistant to Your Calls.
- Review calls, messages and minutes — Reviewing Calls and Messages Your Assistant Handled and Minutes, Usage and Overage.
A note on where your call audio goes
Your call media and all records stay on ReliaRing's Canadian servers. The speech recognition, reasoning and speech synthesis behind the receptionist run on voice AI services located outside Canada — on every tier. Before a receptionist can go live you acknowledge this in the portal, so you can give your own callers the notice your privacy obligations require.
Availability
Find it under AI Receptionist → My Assistants in the portal. If you do not see the section, it has not been switched on for your account yet — ask support.