Digital Front Desk is an AI receptionist. It answers your phone number with your own greeting, talks to whoever calls, knows your hours and what you have told it about your business, and sends you a summary of what each caller wanted. And at the door, a tablet signs visitors in and tells the person they came to see.
It answers calls to your number day or night, including the ones that come in while you are with a client, at lunch, or closed. Out of hours it gives your out-of-hours message and can take a message, in your own time zone.
Your opening hours are a fact it is given directly. Everything else is one box of plain writing: what you do, what you do not do, what to say to somebody asking about price. Brief it the way you would a new receptionist.
After each call you get a summary of what the caller wanted, by email or text, to whichever addresses you list. Recording calls is your switch, and so is voicemail.
By default it answers in the caller's language. A line can be set to always speak French, or another language, and it still follows a caller who speaks something else.
The greeting, the goodbye and the out-of-hours message are written by you. We set the number up with you and go through the wording together, then you can change any of it yourself. How the voice assistant works.
Part of one front desk. Each caller is added to the same client list as your visitors and form senders, with the call summary on their record. When the call needs a booking, staff book it from that record without retyping anything; the appointment then sends its own reminder and can be invoiced from the diary. How the pieces fit.
Three different ways to stop missing calls. Each is the right choice for somebody.
| AI receptionist | Answering service | Live virtual receptionist | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who answers | Software, speaking with the caller | A call-centre agent, usually from a script | A person working remotely for several businesses |
| Hours | Day or night, including after hours | Depends on the plan | Usually business hours |
| What it knows | What you write for it, and your hours | The script you agree | What you train them on |
| What you get after | A summary of every call, by email or text | A message | A message, or the call put through |
| How cost grows | With how busy the line is | Usually per call or per minute | Usually per minute or by the hour |
| Best when | Most calls are the same few questions, and you want every one answered | You only need messages taken | Calls need a human judgement, or to be put through live |
Honestly: if most of your calls need a person to decide something on the spot, a live receptionist is the better fit. An AI receptionist is for the calls that are the same few questions, and for the ones that would otherwise go to voicemail.
A receptionist you employ knows your clients by voice, makes a judgement call when a caller is upset or a request is unusual, puts a call through to the right person, and does the front-desk work that is not the phone. Ours does not transfer calls or book appointments, so those stay with a person.
It answers at any hour, including while your receptionist is with a patient, at lunch or gone home, and it gives every caller the same answer from what you have written. Each call ends as a written summary in your inbox or by text, so nothing depends on a note on the desk.
The usual pattern is to keep your receptionist and send the AI the calls they cannot get to. You forward your existing line to it with your phone provider, all the time or only when nobody picks up, and you can undo the forwarding yourself. How forwarding works.
When the owner is also the person doing the work, the phone rings mid-job. The virtual receptionist for small business answers in your name, tells callers your hours and what you have written for them, and sends you a summary of each call by email or text, so you call back the ones that matter when you are free.
The AI receptionist for a medical office takes the calls the desk cannot: hours, directions, what you have written for callers, and messages. It does not book, and it is not a place for clinical advice; write in your instructions what a caller with an urgent problem should do. Callers may mention their health, and call audio is processed in the United States (see below). In Ontario a physician's office is a health information custodian under PHIPA, responsible for personal health information its agents handle (s.17) and for reasonable safeguards (s.12); other provinces have their own health privacy laws. Weigh that before you forward a clinical line, and ask us anything. This is not legal advice.
Reception is on the phone when a patient is at the desk, and the phone rings while they are at the desk. The receptionist answers the calls that would otherwise ring out, tells callers your hours and what you have written for callers, and sends you who called and why. Check-in for dental practices.
You cannot answer the phone in session, and a client calling to cancel should not reach a full voicemail box. The AI receptionist for therapists answers, takes the message and sends you a summary; in the waiting room, clients sign in without saying out loud why they came. The therapy practice page.
New enquiries call at all hours, and a missed call is often a client who calls the next firm. The receptionist answers, takes the caller's details and what it is about, and sends them to the addresses you choose. Check-in for law firms.
It answers in your own time zone wherever you are, from a Toronto clinic to an office in Montreal, and a Quebec line can be set to speak French first. Your records are stored in Canada.
Your records are stored in Canada, and processed in Canada and the United States. Calls are carried by Twilio and the voice conversation runs through OpenAI, both in the United States; call transcripts are summarised by Azure OpenAI in Microsoft's US data zone; businesses on our older phone setup are run through VAPI, also in the United States. Summary emails go through Zoho Mail in Canada. The full list is on our subprocessors page, and the privacy policy sets out the detail.
The price depends on how busy your line is, so we quote it for your practice rather than print one figure for everybody. What any AI receptionist's price is made of (the number, the minutes answered, the setup), how it compares with an answering service, a live virtual receptionist and a hire, and the questions that keep a quote honest are in our guide, what an AI receptionist costs in Canada. For ours, tell us about your calls.
Somebody, or something, that answers your business phone without sitting at your front desk. Ours is an AI receptionist: software that answers your number, talks to the caller, and sends you what they wanted.
Yes, it answers at any hour. Outside your opening hours it gives your out-of-hours message and can take a message, and voicemail can be switched off if you would rather nobody left one.
Yes. It answers in the caller's language by default, and a line can be set to always speak French while still following a caller who speaks something else.
No. It answers questions from what you have written, takes messages and sends you a summary of each call. Booking is something your team does from that summary.
For most practices it is the calls your receptionist cannot get to: the ones during appointments, over lunch and after closing. Your team sees a summary of each one.
Stored in Canada, and processed in Canada and the United States. Call audio and transcripts are processed in the United States (Twilio, OpenAI, Azure OpenAI). Our subprocessors page lists every provider.
It depends on how busy your line is. Tell us about your practice and we will send you a price; the cost guide explains what goes into one.
Close. “AI concierge” has no settled meaning: some suppliers, us included, use it for the whole front desk (the phone, visitors at the door and reminders), others for a phone or text assistant. What an AI concierge is explains where the names differ.
It suits a business whose calls are mostly the same few questions, or whose phone goes unanswered while the owner is working. If most calls need somebody to decide something on the spot, a person is the better fit.
We set up your number with you and go through what it should say. Then it answers.
