The AI receptionist
Read this before you switch it on, because the name promises more than the feature does. This receptionist does NOT answer your phone. It never picks up, never speaks to a caller, and never places a call. What it does is read a voicemail after the caller has hung up, and file a summary and an intent on the call record so nobody has to listen to the message to know what it was about. It is included on Pro and above, and both of its switches are off until you turn them on.
New, and honest about it: this has not yet read a voicemail from a real call in production, because it depends on the transcript and no real call has produced one there yet. Everything below is tested behaviour. If you switch it on and a voicemail is not summarised, tell us rather than assuming you did something wrong.
When a voicemail arrives, the receptionist reads its transcript once and files two things on the call record: a plain summary, and one intent - sales, support, booking, billing, spam or other. The person who owns that voicemail box gets a notification carrying the summary, so they can decide what to do without listening to the message first. Automations and webhooks can react to it too.
- It can file a lead, and only when all of three things are true at once: the workspace turned that switch on, the intent is sales, and the caller matches nothing in your CRM by phone number. An existing client, contact or lead is never duplicated and never quietly downgraded to a lead.
- Both switches live under Phone ▸ Settings ▸ AI receptionist and both are off by default.
- Spend rides your workspace AI budget. At the daily cap the reading pauses and picks up when the budget resets: it never discards a message it has not read.
- THE HONEST LINE, and repeat it to anyone who asks: it does not hold live conversations, it never answers or speaks to a caller, and it never places a call. It reads a recording after the caller has hung up.
- A transcript is treated as untrusted speech from a stranger. Instructions spoken into a voicemail are summarized, never followed.