What is an auto-receptionist?
An auto-receptionist is an automated answering system that answers incoming calls and routes them based on predefined rules. It helps your business eliminate the need for a human receptionist and manual call routing, while handling multiple incoming calls at once.
Subscription plan availability: The auto-receptionist feature is available on all subscription plans.
How does an auto-receptionist work?
An auto-receptionist answers every incoming call received by the phone number it's assigned to, greets callers with your custom greeting, and then moves the call forward based on your setup.
An auto-receptionist can greet and route calls differently during open and closed hours.
Destination options for auto-receptionist
An auto-receptionist can route calls to different destinations:
AI agent – Handle the call using an AI-powered virtual assistant.
Auto-receptionist – Forward to another auto-receptionist to create multi-level call flows.
Call queue – Place callers in a queue and connect them to the next available user.
IVR menu – Present an interactive voice menu where the caller can press keys to select routing options.
Ring group – Call multiple users at once; any available user can answer.
User – Send the call directly to a specific team member.
Voicemail – Send the caller to voicemail for later follow-up.
Auto-receptionist with the ability to dial extensions
You can create an auto-receptionist that greets callers and announces all the extensions in your phone system, so callers can dial the one they need and be routed to the right destination.
To learn more about extensions, read the Phone extensions: Overview article.
To learn how to create an auto-receptionist with the ability to dial extensions, read this article.
Access to call history and voicemails
By default, only account admins can see the call history and listen to the voicemails of a given auto-receptionist. To give non-admin users access, assign them as operators.
Learn more how to do that in the Managing auto-receptionist operators article.