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AI Voice Receptionist: What It Can Do

The AI Voice Receptionist is a real, live, spoken conversation: the caller talks, the AI listens and responds in real time, and the exchange feels like talking to a person rather than navigating a menu of pre-recorded options. It is an optional paid add-on on top of any TelBuddy plan, not a default feature of the base membership, and it works on both Twilio and Telnyx numbers.

What "real time" actually means. The AI is not picking from a script of canned responses triggered by keywords. It processes what the caller says and generates a spoken reply on the fly, which is what allows it to handle a genuinely open-ended conversation rather than a fixed decision tree. A caller can ask a follow-up question, change the subject mid-call, or phrase something in an unexpected way, and the AI responds to what was actually said.

It knows when to hand off. The AI can transfer a call to a human when the situation calls for it, whether that is a caller directly asking for a person, or a topic the AI has been configured to escalate rather than attempt to handle itself. See AI Transfer Rules for how that is configured.

One honest carrier difference. On a Twilio number, a transfer can ring an entire team at once (a ring group), and whoever picks up first gets the call. On a Telnyx number, a transfer goes to one destination at a time. Every other aspect of the AI receptionist behaves identically regardless of carrier.

How its answers stay accurate. On its own, an AI has no specific knowledge about your business. Giving it a knowledge base (your own website content or documents) is what lets it answer real questions about your services, pricing, or policies instead of guessing. See Teaching Your AI With a Knowledge Base.

Usage is tracked precisely. Voice minutes the AI handles are metered per-second, not rounded up to the nearest minute, and count against your account's usage the same way any other voice minutes would.

Features at a glance

Real two-way spoken conversation: not a "press 1" menu or keyword script
Works on both Twilio and Telnyx numbers
Can transfer to a human based on configurable rules
Twilio transfers can reach a whole team at once (ring group); Telnyx transfers reach one destination at a time
Answer accuracy improves with a configured knowledge base
Can book appointments during the call with AI Appointment Setting
Optional paid add-on, available on any plan
Voice minutes tracked per-second

Screenshot 1: AI Console overview The AI Console showing a configured bot.

The AI Console showing a configured voice bot

## How it differs from a phone menu Both answer calls without a person, so it is worth being clear about what actually changes. A [phone menu](/docs/ivr/building-first-menu) asks the caller to translate their problem into one of your categories. It works well when the categories are obvious and few. It works badly when the caller's reason for calling does not fit any of them, which is when people start pressing 0 repeatedly or hanging up. The AI receptionist works the other way round: the caller says what they want in their own words, and the AI works out what to do with it. There is nothing to translate and no list to memorise. Neither replaces the other. A menu is faster and more predictable for a small set of well-defined routes. The AI is better when questions are open-ended, when callers need an actual answer rather than a department, or when there is nobody available to take the call anyway.

You can use both. A menu option can hand a caller to the AI, and business hours can send calls to the AI outside your opening hours. See business hours routing for the "team by day, AI by night" setup.

## Setting it up

Make sure the add-on is active
The AI receptionist is a paid add-on on top of your plan. If it is not active on your account, the AI options do not appear in Voice Settings at all.

You can add it from the Membership page. It is billed separately from your core plan and metered in messages and voice minutes.

Screenshot 2: the AI add-on on the Membership page
Create and configure your bot
In AI Console, set up the bot that will answer: its name, its personality, and the instructions that shape how it speaks. This is also where you choose the voice.

Keep the personality instructions short and concrete. "Friendly, brief, and always offers to book an appointment" produces more consistent calls than a long paragraph of adjectives.
Give it a knowledge base
This is the step that decides whether the AI is useful or merely polite. Without it, the AI has nothing real to say about your business and will either give generic answers or guess confidently.

Connect your website content or upload documents covering the questions callers actually ask. See teaching your AI with a knowledge base.
Set your transfer rules
Decide what the AI should hand to a human, and where those calls go. An AI with no transfer rules will attempt everything, including the conversations it should not be having.

See AI transfer rules.
Assign it to a number and test
In Voice Settings, pick your number, set Voice Mode to AI Voice Receptionist, and save.

Then call it. Not a scripted test: ask it the awkward things a real customer would ask, including something slightly outside what your knowledge base covers, so you can see how it behaves at the edges.

Screenshot 4: assigning the AI in Voice Settings Voice Settings with Voice Mode set to AI Voice Receptionist.

## What a good first test call looks like Most people test by asking questions they know the AI can answer, which tells you almost nothing. The useful test is the opposite. Worth trying on the first call: * **Something your knowledge base does not cover.** You are checking whether it admits it does not know, or invents an answer. This is the single most important behaviour to verify. * **Asking for a person.** Confirm the transfer fires, reaches the right phone, and that the caller experience during the handoff is not a long silence. * **Changing the subject mid-sentence.** Real callers do this constantly. * **Interrupting it.** The AI is meant to stop talking when you start. If it talks over you, the call will feel wrong no matter how good the answers are. * **A long pause.** Callers hesitate, look something up, or get distracted. Check the AI does not treat silence as the end of the conversation.

Test with a real call before pointing your published business number at the AI. A confident wrong answer to a pricing question is worse than no answer at all, and the only way to find those is to go looking for them.

## How it gets billed Two separate things are metered, and it helps to keep them apart: **AI voice minutes** are what the AI itself costs, and they are metered **per second** rather than rounded up to the nearest minute. A 40-second call bills 40 seconds. These come out of your AI add-on allowance. **Carrier minutes** are what the phone call costs, billed directly to you by Twilio or Telnyx at their published rates, exactly like any other call on that number. TelBuddy does not mark those up. Your core plan price is unaffected by either. Plans meter numbers and seats, never usage.

Because billing is per second, short calls really are cheap. A caller who asks one question and hangs up costs a fraction of a minute, not a whole one, which matters when a lot of calls are brief.

## Where it fits best **After hours** is the clearest win. The alternative is voicemail, and an AI that can actually answer a question at 11pm is strictly better than a beep. See [business hours routing](/docs/voice/business-hours). **Overflow during busy periods**, so callers who would have waited on hold or hit voicemail get a real interaction instead. **Common questions that eat your team's time.** Hours, location, pricing, availability. These are exactly what a knowledge base answers well, and every one the AI handles is one your team does not. **Booking appointments**, if you connect a calendar. The AI checks real availability and books during the call, which removes the callback loop entirely. See [AI Appointment Setting](/docs/ai/ai-appointment-setting). Where it fits worse: conversations that are emotionally sensitive, legally consequential, or highly bespoke. Those are what [transfer rules](/docs/ai/ai-transfer-rules) exist to catch. ## Troubleshooting **The AI option does not appear in Voice Settings.** The add-on is not active on the account. Check the Membership page. **The AI answers but does not know anything about my business.** No knowledge base, or one that does not cover what callers ask. This is by far the most common complaint and the fix is [content](/docs/ai/knowledge-base-rag), not settings. **It never transfers to a human.** Check your [transfer rules](/docs/ai/ai-transfer-rules) are configured and that a destination number is set. **Callers say it talked over them.** Interruption handling is part of the conversation engine rather than a setting, but a very long or rambling personality instruction makes the AI more likely to produce long monologues. Shorter instructions produce shorter turns. **Calls stopped being answered.** Check your AI voice minutes have not run out. When the allowance is exhausted the AI cannot take calls, and how that is handled depends on how the number is configured.

Teaching Your AI With a Knowledge Base