AI receptionist
The calls you miss are the jobs you never hear about.
I do not sell you an AI receptionist. I work out whether you need one, pick the right one, and wire it into everything behind it.
An AI receptionist is a software service that answers your phone, holds a natural conversation with the caller, and then does something useful with the result: books an appointment, takes a message, answers a common question, or transfers a call that needs a person. Werehouse Media does not sell the AI receptionist itself. The underlying product is a subscription the client buys and owns directly, typically £30 to £60 a month for a basic plan, £99 to £299 for the UK mid-market, and £150 to £500 where call volume is high. What Werehouse Media sells is the setup: choosing the right product for the business, designing what the call actually does, wiring it into the calendar, the CRM and the enquiry chain, testing it against real calls, and handing it over documented. That is a one-off fee of £850 to £1,800 depending on how many call paths there are and what it has to connect to. The client holds the vendor account and keeps the whole thing if they stop working with Werehouse Media. An AI receptionist is worth setting up when missed calls are demonstrably costing more than the setup and the subscription; below roughly five missed calls a week it usually is not.
The cost question first
How much does an AI receptionist cost?
Every other page about this starts with features. The thing people actually want to know is the number, so here it is, split the way it is really split, because two different people get paid.
| What | Who you pay | Typical UK cost |
|---|---|---|
| The AI receptionist subscription | The vendor, directly | £30–£60/month basic · £99–£299/month mid-market · £150–£500/month at high volume |
| Setup, call design and integration | Me, once | £850–£1,800 depending on call paths and connections |
| Watching it | Me, optional | From £49/month, cancellable, never a condition |
Why the subscription is not mine to sell
The product is somebody else's software and you should buy it in your own name. You hold the account, you pay the vendor, you can see the bill, and you can cancel it without asking me. If I resold it to you with a margin, I would have a financial reason to recommend one product over another for the rest of our working relationship, and you would never be able to tell whether I had.
That also settles the ownership question the same way the rest of this site settles it: the phone number is yours, the account is yours, the call recordings and transcripts are yours, and none of it stops working if you stop working with me.
What the setup fee actually buys
- Choosing the product. Call quality, UK number handling, how it behaves off script, what it integrates with, and whether it bills per minute or per month, which is the difference between a predictable invoice and a nasty one after a busy week.
- Designing the call. What it asks, in what order, what it does with each answer, and where every path ends. This is the actual craft, and it is why two businesses on the same product get completely different results.
- Wiring it in. Real calendar with real buffers, a record in the CRM, the enquiry chain that already runs on your enquiry automation, and a text to you when something needs a human.
- Testing it against real calls. Including the awkward ones. Ringing it fifty times with the questions your customers really ask is not glamorous and it is the difference between a working system and a demo.
- Handover. Written documentation of what it does, so you can change it without me.
The refusal
Who should not buy one.
Every company on this page's search results sells a product, which means none of them will ever tell you this. Four situations where the answer is no.
You miss fewer than about five calls a week
Setup plus subscription against five missed calls, of which maybe two would have become jobs. If your average job is £200, the numbers do not work and you should spend the money on something else. If your average job is £4,000, they work at one missed call a fortnight. This is arithmetic you can do before you speak to anybody, and I will do it with you on a call rather than after an invoice.
Your calls are emotionally loaded
Complaints. Bereavement. Safeguarding. Anything where the caller needs to believe a person is listening. Automating those saves a few minutes and costs a relationship, and it is the same principle set out on the automation page about what should never be automated.
Your callers want a specific person
If most calls are existing customers trying to reach the person who is already handling their job, an AI receptionist is an obstacle wearing a helpful voice. A properly configured phone system with sensible routing costs a fraction of it and works better.
The receptionist is part of what people are buying
Some businesses genuinely trade on the person who answers knowing every caller by name. If that is yours, keep them, and put the money into the website and the search visibility instead so more of the right calls reach them.
Where it works
Where an automated phone answering service earns its keep.
Dental and clinical practices. The clearest case there is. Reception is with a patient, the phone rings, and the caller who wanted to book a hygienist appointment rings somebody else instead. The practice already knows what a new patient is worth, which makes the decision a calculation rather than a leap of faith. There is a fuller version of this on the dental practices page.
Trades and field service. Two people under a floor cannot answer a phone, and the emergency call that goes unanswered at four in the afternoon is a job that goes to whoever picks up. An AI receptionist that qualifies the job, captures the address and texts it through is worth more here than almost anywhere. See trades and field service.
Any business whose enquiries arrive out of hours. Evenings and weekends are when a large share of domestic enquiries actually get made, and a voicemail box is a polite way of losing them.
What it should never be allowed to do
Give clinical, legal or financial advice. Confirm anything a regulator expects a named human to sign. Take a payment. Handle a complaint beyond taking a name and promising a call back within a stated time, which it should then actually trigger. Those constraints get written into the call design rather than left to the model's judgement.
Straight answers
Common questions.
Two costs, and they belong to different people. The subscription is the vendor's and you buy it directly: basic plans run £30 to £60 a month, the UK mid-market sits at £99 to £299, and high call volumes or complex routing run £150 to £500. The setup is mine, and it is £850 to £1,800 as a one-off depending on how many different call paths exist and how many systems it has to write into. There is no ongoing fee to me unless you want it watched, which is £49 a month. Anyone quoting you a single blended monthly figure is reselling somebody else's subscription with a margin on it.
If you miss fewer than about five calls a week, the maths does not work and you should not buy one. If most of your calls are emotionally loaded (complaints, bereavement, safeguarding, anything where the caller needs to feel a person is listening) an AI receptionist will cost you more in goodwill than it saves in time. If your callers are mostly existing customers who need a specific person, a decent phone system with sensible routing is cheaper and better. And if your business genuinely turns on the receptionist knowing everybody by name, keep the receptionist.
Less than you would expect and more than the demos suggest. The good products in 2026 hold a natural conversation, handle interruptions, and cope with an accent. They still fall over on unusual requests, background noise on a building site, and anything requiring judgement. The honest framing for callers is not to pretend: a system that says it is an automated assistant and then handles the call competently rates better with callers than one that pretends to be a person and is caught out.
That is the part worth designing properly, and it is most of what the setup fee pays for. Every call flow gets an explicit escape route: transfer to a mobile, take a message and text it to you immediately, or offer a callback slot from your real calendar. The failure mode to avoid is a caller trapped in a loop with no way out, which is worse than an unanswered phone because it is your brand doing it to them on purpose.
Whichever one fits, and that is the point of paying somebody who does not sell one. The market has genuine differences in call quality, UK number handling, calendar integrations, per-minute versus per-month pricing, and how well each behaves when a caller goes off script. The right answer for a dental practice booking appointments is not the right answer for a plumber taking emergency call-outs at two in the morning. Every vendor on that comparison will tell you their product suits you; none of them will ever tell you a competitor's is better.
That is normally the whole reason to do it. A receptionist that only takes messages has moved your admin rather than removed it. Wired properly, a call creates or updates the customer record, books the slot in the real calendar with the right buffer, sends the caller a confirmation, and tells you what happened. Where the CRM is bespoke or awkward, that connection is a piece of integration work and is covered on the bespoke software page.
Next step
How many calls do you miss?
If you do not know, that is the first thing worth finding out, and your phone bill already says. Tell me the number and I will tell you whether this pays.