AI phone answering when the crew is out on a job

When everyone is lifting, driving or standing in someone's hallway, the office phone rings out. Some callers leave a message. Others ring the next company on the list.

Three kinds of tool try to fix this. They differ a lot in what they do and in how much can go wrong.

Three kinds of tool

Voicemail with transcription. The caller leaves a message and the system turns it into text. Services such as GotVoice, SpinVox and YouMail convert voicemails into SMS text messages.¹ You read the message when you can and call back. The tool does the least, so there's the least to go wrong.

Phone menus. Also called interactive voice response, or IVR. The caller hears a prompt and presses keys or speaks. The system uses key tones and speech recognition to interpret the caller's response to voice prompts.² Menus suit simple routing, such as "press one for a new quote".

AI receptionists. These talk with the caller, ask questions, and pass on the answers. They go further than a menu, and so there's more to test.

Why accuracy needs a close look

Turning speech into text is harder than it sounds. Noise, echoes and the quality of the recording all distort speech.³ Callers may ring from cars, streets or noisy places.

Voices differ as well, in accent, dialect, pitch, volume and speed.³ Street names, suburb names and surnames are where a transcript may slip. A wrong digit in a phone number is worse, because you can't call back.

Speech recognition accuracy is usually rated with word error rate (WER).³ Ask whether a score exists for conditions like yours, and who measured it.

Test it with your own calls

Australia's privacy regulator says customer-facing products such as chatbots should be carefully tested before use.⁴ A phone tool is customer-facing from the first ring.

A simple test:

• Ask staff and friends to ring with real-sounding enquiries, including noisy ones.
• Include a few hard cases: an unusual suburb, a long phone number, an urgent change to a booked job, an upset caller.
• Read each transcript or summary against what was said.
• Note every wrong detail and every time the tool should have passed the call to a person but didn't.

Questions to ask before trying one

• What exactly does the caller hear? Is it clear they're not speaking to a person?
• Can it be set to only take messages, and not answer questions about price or availability?
• What does it do with an emergency, a complaint or a damage report? Can it pass these to a person fast?
• Are calls recorded? Where are recordings and transcripts stored, and for how long?
• Who can read them?
• Can I get the data out, and delete it?
• What is the full monthly cost, including per-minute or per-call charges? Write down the date you checked, since prices change.
• What's the cancellation rule?
• Does it work with my existing phone number?

Recording and privacy

Callers give names, addresses and phone numbers. Rules on recording calls and telling callers about it vary between countries, and in some places between states. Don't guess. Check the official government or regulator page for your country and state. Nothing here is legal advice.

What should stay with a person

Quotes, prices, dates, and anything about damage, insurance or complaints. Let the tool collect the caller's name, number, suburb and a short reason, nothing more. A person rings back.

Start small. A setup that only takes messages, with a clear greeting, asks less of the tool than one that holds a full conversation. For the office as a whole, start from the overview. After a call, you'll likely follow up with enquiry replies.