AI Receptionist Script Writer
The greeting, the five call flows, the disclosure line and the hand-off rules for an AI phone receptionist, written before you sign up for one, and the $0 voicemail-and-text version to run first
The problem
The AI receptionist products are good enough now that a plumber or a clinic can have one answering by Friday. What they can't do is know your business. Left to their defaults they greet callers like a bank, book a job you don't do, quote a price you've never charged, and transfer the one call that mattered to a voicemail nobody checks. The script is the product, and the vendors expect you to write it. Most owners type a paragraph into the setup box and wonder why the calls come out odd. This skill writes the script the way a good receptionist would learn the job: the greeting, what callers want, what you can promise, when to hand off, and what never to say.
The tool
Once installed, this skill starts by asking what your phone rings for. Most small businesses have five reasons: book or reschedule, hours and location, a price question, an emergency, and "is my thing ready". It writes a flow for each, in your words, with the exact questions the receptionist asks, what it may book or promise, and the line it uses when the answer is "I'll have someone call you". It writes the disclosure line that tells callers they're talking to an automated assistant, which Ontario's dental regulator expects of its members and which keeps you honest everywhere else. And it writes the hand-off rules: which words send a call to a human now (chest pain, gas smell, water through the ceiling, "I want to cancel"), and which get a message.
It also writes the $0 version. Before you pay for a receptionist, the same flows become a voicemail greeting that makes a promise and a text-back template, so you can count for two weeks how many calls you miss and what they're about. Our guide to AI receptionist costs in Canada covers the vendors and the math; this skill writes what you'll feed any of them. The written replies the receptionist sends by text come from the same set the Support Macro Library builds.
What's inside
- A call-reasons interview and the five flows most small businesses need, in your voice
- The greeting, the disclosure line, and the after-hours version of both
- Hand-off rules: the words and situations that reach a human now, and the ones that become a message
- A never-say list: prices you haven't set, medical or legal answers, promises about timing, anything about a customer's file
- The $0 version: a voicemail greeting that makes a promise and a text-back template, for the two-week missed-call count
- A monthly review: the calls the receptionist handled badly, grouped, with the script fix for each
How to use it
- 1Click "Install skill" on this page and copy the install prompt.
- 2Paste it into your AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, anything that accepts pasted text).
- 3Answer the setup questions once: what the phone rings for, your hours, what you can book, who takes the hand-offs, and whether calls are recorded.
- 4Paste the flows into your receptionist product's setup, or run the $0 version first for two weeks.
- 5Each month, paste a handful of call summaries and ask for the script fixes.
Example
A two-truck HVAC company in Windsor is about to turn on a receptionist product and has typed "answer calls for an HVAC company" into the setup box. The skill's interview finds the five reasons the phone rings in October: no heat, a furnace tune-up booking, a quote for a new furnace, "when is the technician coming", and the gas smell nobody should be handling by text. The flows that come back book tune-ups into the two slots a day the owner opens, take the furnace-quote details and promise a call by 5 p.m., read the technician's window from a list the owner updates each morning, and send any mention of a gas smell to the owner's cell immediately with a scripted "leave the house and call the gas utility" line first. The never-say list includes every price. The owner runs the $0 voicemail version for two weeks first and counts 31 missed calls, 9 of them no-heat emergencies, which is the number that justifies the subscription.
Pro tip
Write the no-promises rule into the script before anything else: the receptionist may say "someone will call you by 5" only if someone will. A receptionist that over-promises costs you the customers it was supposed to save. And read your provincial rules on call recording before you turn it on; a recorded line needs the caller told, and a health or legal practice has extra duties on where the recording lives.
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