We tried replacing our after-hours voicemail with an AI receptionist. Here's what actually happened.
About ten weeks ago we swapped after-hours voicemail for an AI receptionist on a home-services client's line. 1226 inbound calls came through since - every single one got picked up live, zero went to voicemail. That's the actual headline, not the booking number.
The booking number, for what it's worth: 250 of those calls turned into a scheduled visit or consultation on the spot (~11%), another 125 got a callback promised and queued, 69 got transferred straight to a human. 100 are already synced into the CRM with real job numbers attached - not just "the AI said it booked something," actual work orders.
What surprised me:
- The AI isn't magic - it's only as good as the process behind it (booking rules, what it's allowed to say, when it hands off to a human).
- The actual win wasn't "answering more calls," it was answering them consistently - no more depends-who's-on-shift variance. Same script, same booking logic, 2am or 2pm.
- The honest limitation: most calls (275 of 1226) don't end in anything trackable - no booking, no callback, no transfer. Some of that's genuine window-shopping, some might be the AI missing a capture opportunity we haven't fully audited yet. Still digging into which is which.
Not selling anything here — this is just what we learned running it for a home-services client. Happy to go deeper on the setup if useful (routing logic, what we told it not to say, etc.) — genuinely curious what others have tried.