For UK small businesses and clinics
An AI receptionist answers your phone when you can’t, books the caller into your diary and texts you a summary. I set them up as part of Core, £297 a month, and the call minutes cost about 4p each on top. Below are the real costs, how I set one up and the calls a person should still take.
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It’s a voice on your business number. It picks up, says your business name, answers the questions you’ve given it (prices, opening hours, where to park) and books the caller into your calendar while they’re still on the line. When the call ends you get a text with the caller’s name, number and what they wanted.
Callers don’t press 1 for anything. They talk normally and it talks back.
| Cost | What you pay | Who it goes to |
|---|---|---|
| The AI’s talk time | $0.045 a minute, about 4p | HighLevel, the platform I build on |
| The phone line | $0.01 a minute for incoming calls, plus about $3.50 a month for a UK number | Twilio, the phone network behind it |
| Set-up and running it | £297 a month in Core, no set-up fee | Me |
| A part-time human receptionist, for comparison | £2,000 a month or more before NI and holiday | Payroll |
A busy week with 100 calls of 2 minutes each comes to about 200 minutes, so roughly £9 in AI and call time. Your usage is billed to your own account at cost. I don’t mark it up.
In a small clinic the person who answers the phone is often the one holding the needle, so calls ring out mid-treatment. An AI receptionist books consultations, answers “how much is it” and “is there parking”, and takes a message on anything clinical. It never gives medical advice. Anything about symptoms, aftercare or a reaction goes straight to you as an urgent text. The rest of what I set up for clinics is on the clinics page.
The AI receptionist sits inside Core, £297 a month. Core also covers missed call text back, booking reminders, review requests and reactivating your old customers, so the receptionist isn’t a separate bill. The full list is on the pricing page.
Weighing it against a person answering your phone? My comparison with Moneypenny sets the two side by side.
Yes. Tell callers they’re speaking to an automated assistant (mine says so in the greeting), and treat the call notes like any other customer data under UK GDPR.
Yes, because it says so in the greeting. Nobody is tricked into thinking they’re talking to a person.
Every call is recorded and summarised. In the first two weeks I read them with you and fix the answers it got wrong.
Yes. Your calls forward to it when you don’t answer. Your number stays the same.
About a week. Most of that is writing down your answers, not the technical part.
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