15 Questions to Ask an AI Receptionist Vendor

Before choosing an AI receptionist, ask vendors about five things: how you're billed for real calls, what the agent can and can't do, how it hands calls to people, what happens to your callers' data, and how you'd leave. The fifteen questions below surface the differences that pricing pages and demos tend to hide.

Get the answers in writing, and test the product with your own calls before you commit.

Pricing and billing

1. How is a call billed? Per minute, per call, or a monthly allowance? How are minutes rounded? RingCentral, for example, states its AI Receptionist bills overage in 30-second increments, rounded up. Smith.ai's human receptionist plans bill per call. Rounding rules change your real cost when many calls are short.

2. What happens when I exceed my allowance or run out? Overage at a higher rate? Service pauses? Calls fall back to voicemail? Ask what callers experience.

3. What else costs money? Texts, emails, outbound calls, extra numbers, transcription, recording, integrations, setup fees, minimum terms. Ask for a full price list.

4. Can I see a bill for my volume? Give the vendor your monthly call count and average length, and ask for the total. Compare it to the formula on their pricing page. See AI receptionist pricing models explained.

Capabilities and limits

5. What can the agent actually do during a call? Answer from facts, take messages, book appointments, text, email, transfer, look up customers? Which require integrations?

6. Does it connect to my calendar, CRM or order system? If not, appointment and status questions become messages. That may be fine, but know it up front. See AI appointment booking by phone.

7. What limits apply? Maximum call length, simultaneous calls, daily call caps, number of agents, characters of instructions and facts. Ask what happens when a limit is reached.

8. How does it avoid making things up? Does it answer only from facts you provide? Can you set "never say" rules? See how to stop an AI phone agent from making things up.

Handoffs to people

9. How do transfers work, and what if nobody answers? Can it transfer to a specific person, a group, or a cell phone? What happens if the transfer fails: voicemail, a message, a retry? See setting up AI-to-human call transfers.

10. How do I see what the agent did? Transcripts, summaries, recordings, message logs? Can I search them? How quickly do they appear?

Data and compliance

11. What do you store, for how long, and can I delete it? Audio, transcripts, summaries? Retention defaults? Deletion on request? See AI receptionist privacy.

12. Which AI providers process my calls, and do any of you train on my data? The FTC has warned companies against quietly changing terms to use customer data for AI training, so get the current policy in writing and ask how changes are communicated.

13. What compliance features are built in? AI disclosure in greetings, recording notices, opt-out handling for texts and calls, calling-hour limits and consent confirmation for outbound AI calls. If you're a healthcare provider, ask whether they'll sign a business associate agreement. See AI outbound calls and the TCPA.

Control and exit

14. Who controls my phone number? Can I port it out at any time? Are there port-out fees or holds? If the AI comes with the phone system, leaving the AI might mean leaving the phone system, or not.

15. How do I leave? Contract term, cancellation notice, refund of unused credits or minutes, data export. Prepaid minutes are often non-refundable once used; ask about unused ones.

Turning answers into a comparable number

Answers to questions 1 to 4 only become useful when you run your own numbers through them. Take one month of the calls the AI would handle, for example (example figures) 200 calls averaging 2 minutes 20 seconds, and calculate each vendor's bill:

Pricing structure	How to calculate
Per minute, rounded up per call to the minute	200 calls × 3 billed minutes × rate
Per minute in 30-second increments	200 calls × 2.5 billed minutes × rate
Monthly fee with included minutes	Fee + (minutes over allowance × overage rate)
Per call	Fee + (calls over allowance × per-call rate)

Then add the extras from question 3. The cheapest headline price doesn't always produce the cheapest bill, and the comparison often changes when your volume doubles. Run both your current volume and twice that.

A scoring table

Score each vendor 1 to 3 on the answers:

Area	Vendor A	Vendor B	Vendor C
Cost at my volume
Billing clarity
Capabilities I need
Transfers and fallbacks
Visibility (transcripts, summaries)
Data handling
Compliance features
Exit terms

Test calls to run during a trial

• Ask your five most common questions.
• Ask one question the facts don't cover.
• Ask "Am I talking to a real person?"
• Ask to be transferred; let the transfer go unanswered.
• Say it's urgent.
• Try to read out a card number.
• Hang up mid-call and check what's logged.
• Read the transcripts and messages produced.

See how to test an AI receptionist before launch.

Red flags

• No published pricing, or pricing that can't be reconciled with a quote.
• Can't tell you which AI providers process calls.
• No way to read transcripts.
• Long minimum terms for a product you haven't tested.
• Vague answers on data training.
• Claims like "never makes mistakes" or guaranteed results.

Callata's answers, briefly

1–3: AI agents use prepaid minutes at $0.25 per minute (packs of 60, 250 or 1,000), counted per conversation and rounded up to the minute; AI text replies use a quarter minute; there's no separate charge for AI emails. At zero, agents stop answering and calls follow your normal routing. The phone system is $99 per month with five users included and $20 per additional user. 5–7: agents answer from your facts, take messages, request callbacks, text, email and transfer; they don't connect to external calendars or CRMs; calls are capped at 15 minutes, and you can have up to 10 agents. 9–10: transfers go to a chosen teammate or anyone available and fall back to voicemail; every AI call has a transcript and summary. 11–12: data is kept until you delete it; Callata doesn't use your communications to train AI models. 13: agents say they're AI when asked; outbound AI calls require a consent confirmation, follow 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in your time zone, and skip opted-out numbers. 14–15: month-to-month; you can port numbers out while in good standing; AI minutes are non-refundable once used.

See Callata for yourself.