Phone receptionist AIAI feature

Most enquiries arrive by phone, and most of those arrive when everyone is on a roof. The phone receptionist answers instead: it introduces itself, works out what the caller wants, asks your qualifying questions, and creates a request with the answers attached.

It knows when not to handle a call, too. Urgent callers can be put straight through to a person, and anything it can't deal with becomes a callback task.

Before you start

• This is available in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the UK and Italy. The receptionist speaks German, English or Italian, following your workspace's language.
• Germany is self-service; the UK and Italy are set up for you. German workspaces run the verification wizard below. In the UK and Italy your Reonic account manager provisions and assigns the number — skip to Configure the receptionist.
• For German verification, have your details ready: company name, website, registration number (HRB, HRA or VAT), full address with a five-digit postcode, a contact person with their email, and one supporting document as a PDF, JPEG or PNG — either a commercial register excerpt (Handelsregisterauszug) or a tax-ID notification letter (Bestätigung Freier Beruf Finanzamt).

Get a number (Germany)

1. Open Phone AI and click Verify your business.
2. Work through the wizard: Business details, Contact person, Document upload, then Review.
3. Submit. Verification usually takes one to three working days, and the page shows In review meanwhile.
4. When it comes back Approved, the number picker opens. Search the available numbers, pick one, and click Activate this number.

A rejection shows the reason. Fix the flagged detail and submit again.

Once a number is active, the full configuration page and the call log unlock.

Configure the receptionist

Open Phone AI and work down the Bot Configuration section:

1. Active — turn it on so the receptionist answers calls.
2. Bot name — what it calls itself. The default is Paula.
3. Voice — pick from the catalogue, filtered to your language. Each has a Test voice sample; play a few, because this is the first thing every caller hears.
4. Company name — how it refers to your business.
5. Product offerings — tick Solar, Heatpump, or both. This drives what it qualifies for.
6. Custom prompt (optional, up to 500 characters) — extra steer on how it should behave.
7. Answering questions — turn this on if it should answer general questions about your company, then fill in Company context (up to 1,500 characters) with the facts it may draw on.

Save. Changes apply from the next call.

Choose the qualifying questions

In the same section you'll find the qualifying set: building type, roof shape, roof orientation, annual consumption, living area, current heating, building year, and — when you offer solar — battery storage and wallbox.

Every question is on by default and each can be switched off. Pare the list to what you actually need to route a lead.

The let the caller skip the extra questions toggle is off by default. Turn it on and the receptionist asks once, near the start, whether the caller wants to go through the optional questions, and respects the answer for the rest of the call.

A caller who skips still becomes a request. Unanswered questions are attached to it as open items for whoever calls back.

Forwarding, office hours and urgent calls

Under Call forwarding:

1. Turn forwarding on.
2. Enter the number to forward to, in international format such as +49....
3. Set your office hours for each weekday.
4. Choose an urgency-transfer mode: Off, Office hours, or Around the clock.
5. Save.

With forwarding on, calls during office hours are transferred to your line and the receptionist takes over after hours. With it off, the receptionist answers around the clock.

A transfer rings your number for about twenty seconds after a brief "one moment, connecting you". If nobody picks up, the call falls back to the receptionist rather than dropping — a missed transfer still captures the lead.

When someone reports something urgent, the receptionist tries to put them through according to your urgency mode. If that can't connect, it creates an urgent callback task for your admins with a deadline.

Read the call log

Scroll to the Call log on the same page. Each row shows when the call came in, the caller's number (or Withheld), how long it lasted, and how it ended — completed, forwarded, caller hung up, no response, maximum duration, or error.

The Result column is where the value is: Open request jumps to the request the call created, Open task jumps to the callback task, and otherwise you get a one-line summary of what the call was about.

Hover a row to delete an individual entry.

Things to know

• Every call is logged, including the ones that led nowhere, each with a one-line summary of why.
• There's no recording and no transcript. The one-line summary is the record of what was said, so anything you need to keep, act on or write down.
• The log keeps 90 days. Older entries roll off.
• Business-to-business calls are declined and not kept, so they don't clutter the log.
• Cross-selling is automatic when you offer both solar and heat pumps.
• Two kinds of handoff exist: a live transfer during office hours or under an urgency mode, and a callback task for anyone who asks to be called back. Both can be active at once.

Last updated on September 30, 2026