How to Set Up an AI Receptionist for Your Business (Step-by-Step)
What You Need Before You Start
Setting up an AI receptionist isn’t as complicated as it sounds. You don’t need to be technical, and you don’t need to write any code. Here’s what to have ready before you begin:
- A list of your most common customer questions — think about the 10-20 questions you answer every single day (hours, pricing, availability, booking process)
- Your business hours and contact info — the AI needs to know when you’re open and how to route urgent inquiries
- Your service menu or price list — so the AI can give accurate answers about what you offer and what it costs
- Your phone number — most AI receptionists can forward calls, take messages, or integrate with your existing number
Step 1: Choose Your Provider
There are three main types of AI receptionist services:
- Phone-only AI — handles voice calls with speech recognition. Good if most of your leads come from phone calls. Examples: Smith.ai, Ruby
- Chat-only AI — handles website chat and Facebook Messenger. Good if most leads come online. Examples: Drift, Intercom
- Multi-channel AI — handles phone, chat, Messenger, and SMS from one system. This is what most small businesses actually need. Marion AI is built for exactly this
Pick the type that matches where your customers contact you. If you’re not sure, check your call logs and Facebook messages for the last month — the numbers will tell you.
Step 2: Train Your AI
“Training” an AI receptionist doesn’t mean writing code. It means giving it information about your business so it can answer questions accurately. Most providers have you fill out a form or upload a document covering:
- Business name, address, phone, and hours
- Services offered with descriptions and pricing
- FAQs (the questions you answer 10 times a day)
- Booking/scheduling instructions
- What to do with after-hours inquiries
- Any information the AI should not share (pricing for custom work, internal processes)
The better your training data, the better the AI performs. Spend 30 minutes writing thorough answers to your top 20 questions and you’ll have an AI that handles 80% of inquiries without human intervention.
Step 3: Set Up Your Phone Integration
Most AI receptionist services offer phone integration in one of two ways:
- New number: You get a dedicated AI phone number. You can forward your existing number to it, or use it as a second line for after-hours
- Direct integration: The AI answers your existing number directly (via call forwarding or VoIP integration)
For most small businesses, the simplest setup is: keep your existing number, set up call forwarding to the AI number when you can’t answer (busy, after hours, weekends). The AI picks up, handles the inquiry, and sends you a summary.
Step 4: Connect Your Chat Channels
If you have a website or Facebook business page, connect them to your AI:
- Website chat: Usually a small JavaScript snippet pasted into your site. Takes 2 minutes.
- Facebook Messenger: Connect your Facebook page to the AI provider. This lets the AI respond to Messenger inquiries instantly instead of them sitting unread for hours.
- SMS: Some providers can respond to text messages sent to your business number.
Step 5: Test Before Going Live
Before you let real customers interact with your AI, test it yourself:
- Call the AI number and ask your 10 most common questions. Are the answers accurate?
- Try some unusual questions. Does the AI handle them gracefully or get confused?
- Test the notification system. When the AI captures a lead, do you get alerted promptly?
- Have a friend or family member call without telling them it’s AI. Ask for their honest reaction.
Fix any gaps in the training data based on these tests. Most issues come from incomplete business info, not AI limitations.
Step 6: Go Live and Monitor
Once you’re confident in the AI’s responses, go live. For the first week:
- Review every AI conversation daily
- Look for questions the AI couldn’t answer well and add them to the training data
- Check that leads are being captured and notifications are working
- Ask customers for feedback (“Did our system help you?”)
After the first week, you can shift to weekly reviews. A well-trained AI receptionist will handle 70-90% of inquiries without any human involvement.