How Do You Test an AI Receptionist Before You Pay for It?
The short answer
Test an AI receptionist with your customers' calls, not the vendor's demo script. Nine calls: listen to its greeting, ring on a bad line, ask something it was never told, ask for a price, ask for a time it should refuse, ask for a person, ring from two phones at once, decline transcription, and read the record it leaves.
Ring a vendor's demo line with the questions on its own website and you are asking the AI receptionist what it was given. That is not a test. It is a rehearsal you were invited to watch.
The receptionist you would be paying for has to take the calls your customers actually make. A tradie ringing from a ute on a windy site. Two people ringing at once. Someone asking a question nobody thought to write down. Someone who does not want the call transcribed or recorded. Those calls decide whether the thing earns its keep, and a website, ours included, can only tell you what it is meant to do with them. The calls tell you what it does.
So test it yourself, on the vendor's line, with your calls. Nine tests do it, and they cost nothing beyond the calls. One needs a weekday during business hours and one needs a second phone.
What does a demo prove, and what does it leave out?
Ask a demo line what its website already answers and you learn what the receptionist was given: hours, questions, a calendar, and any prices it publishes. What those calls cannot tell you is what it does at the edge of what it was given, and that edge is where your callers live.
Two kinds of failure sit at that edge. The first is the receptionist knowing it cannot help, so the call goes to a person or becomes a message. The second is the receptionist not knowing: it answers with confidence, and the answer is wrong. The first kind is the one a demo can show you, because it makes the product look careful. The second is up to you. When the AI receptionist gets it wrong sets out that distinction in full. The nine calls below find the second kind on a line you do not own.
Which nine calls should you make?
Make the nine calls from your own mobile, in your own words. The point is to push the receptionist to the edge of what it was given, not to read a script at it.
1. Listen to the greeting
Say nothing and listen. The greeting should tell you two things: that you are talking to a virtual receptionist, and whether the call is being transcribed or recorded. A receptionist that lets a caller believe it is a person, or that records without saying so, has made a decision on your behalf. The call recording and consent post says to take that decision to a lawyer. Durbacti's own receptionist says it is a virtual receptionist in its opening sentence, then that the call is transcribed and not recorded.
2. Make the line bad
Ring from the car with the window down, or from a site. Give a phone number and an email address the way a real caller does, quickly and half over the noise. If it offers the number you are ringing from, say you want a different one. Listen for whether it reads the number back and asks again when it did not catch something, or whether it carries on with a guess. A receptionist that guesses on a noisy line will guess on your callers' noisy lines, and a wrong digit in a callback number is a caller nobody can ring back. Durbacti's receptionist is built to ask again rather than guess.
3. Ask something it was never told
Ask something no small business would think to script: whether it integrates with a piece of software you name, or holds a certification you name. The right answer is short: it does not have that detail, and it can have someone get back to you. The wrong answer is a yes or a no. A receptionist that answers a question it was never given will do the same when your customer asks whether you service their suburb or carry a part. You will hear about it when the customer does. On Durbacti's line, a yes or a no here is a fail.
4. Ask what it costs
Check the vendor's website, then ask for a price. A figure on the website is a figure the receptionist was given. On a demo line the receptionist answers for the vendor, so ask about the vendor's pricing. One that says cost depends on what you need, and offers a real figure from a person, has been told where the line is. A price, a range or a starting figure the website does not carry is the one to take back to the vendor: ask whether anyone set it. If nobody did, it came from somewhere other than what the receptionist was given, and on your line it will do the same with your prices. On Durbacti's line any dollar amount is a fail, because no price goes on durbacti.com and the receptionist has none to give.
5. Ask for a time it should not give you
Ask to book on a Sunday, or in 10 minutes. A receptionist booking against real rules will say it cannot and offer the next time it can. One that agrees is booking against nothing. Then take a time it offers, ring back, and ask for the same time again. Booked against a real calendar, that slot is gone. If it is offered twice, the calendar it books into is not the one it reads from, which you would otherwise learn from a double-booked customer. Durbacti's receptionist offers strategy calls on weekdays inside business hours, at least two hours out, and does not offer a time the calendar shows as taken.
6. Ask for a person, twice
Ring once inside business hours and ask for a person. Then ring once outside them and ask the same. Inside hours, listen for whether it offers to put you through. Outside hours, listen for whether it pretends a transfer is possible, or takes a message and tells you when to expect a callback. A receptionist that transfers every request into a phone nobody answers is a voicemail with extra steps. One that never transfers has no path to a person. On Durbacti's line a transfer is offered on weekdays during business hours, Sydney time, and outside them the receptionist takes a message.
7. Ring from two phones at once
Get a colleague to ring the number at the same moment as you. Both calls should be answered, without either caller hearing a queue or an engaged tone. A receptionist that takes calls one at a time has a queue, and on your line the second caller gets the engaged tone. A human receptionist cannot do this, and a single demo call cannot show it. Ring 0483 982 033 from two phones and find out.
8. Say you do not want to be transcribed
Partway through a call, say you do not want it transcribed or recorded. The right response is to stop: a name and a number for a callback, nothing else, then a polite end. The wrong response is to carry on asking for your company, your email and what you wanted, whatever it said first. What it does with a caller who declines is a setting the vendor chose, and it tells you how the product treats consent. On Durbacti's line the receptionist stops collecting the moment a caller declines, saves only a name and number from then on, and keeps no transcript or summary of the call.
9. Read the record it left
When the eight calls are done, ask the vendor for the record of every one of them. Not a product summary: what you asked, what it answered, what it captured, and whether it transferred. No record, or one line saying a call happened, means a wrong answer on your line is found by your customer rather than by you. On a Durbacti build every call leaves that record, delivered where you chose on the scope call. What a caller who declines leaves behind is set with you before go-live; on Durbacti's own line it is the details for a callback and the fact that they declined, with no transcript or summary. The record of your test calls on that line is yours to ask for, and the privacy policy commits to a response within 30 days, at no charge.
What does a fail mean?
A fail on one of the nine calls is the gap to ask about, not on its own a reason to walk away. A guess on a noisy line, a price nobody set, a transfer into a phone nobody answers: on a Durbacti build each of those is a setting. On any other vendor's build, ask whether it is a setting there too, who changes it, and how long that takes.
Two fails are different. An answer to a question the receptionist was never given, and a caller left to believe it was a person, are not settings gone wrong. They are decisions about what the product is allowed to do. Ask about those two first, and listen for whether the answer is a fix or an excuse.
What Durbacti will not do
Durbacti will not build a receptionist that lets a caller believe it is a person, or that records without saying so.
Durbacti will not make these nine calls on its own line for you and report a pass. Ring it yourself. A test you did not make is a demo.
Durbacti will not tell you that another vendor's receptionist fails these calls. Ring theirs and find out.
What should you ask any vendor after the test?
Which of the nine did it fail, and what would you change to fix each one?
Who makes that change, how long does it take, and does it cost anything?
Can I read the record of the calls I just made, and how soon after each call?
What did it do with the call where I declined transcription, and where is that recorded?
When it is asked something it was never given, what does it say, and who hears about it afterwards?
Will you build one on my business, with my hours and my questions, before I pay for anything?
Durbacti answers the last one with a free proof of concept, built on your calls. How we work sets out where the paid part begins.
Where can you run the nine calls today?
Durbacti's own line, 0483 982 033, answers at any hour, and the receptionist on it is the one on the 24/7 AI phone receptionist page. Make all nine calls on it; the sixth needs one call on a weekday during business hours, Sydney time. A call it fails is one Durbacti would rather hear about from you than from a customer. For the same nine calls on a receptionist built for your business, book a free strategy call. It takes 30 minutes, and you leave with a plan whether or not you hire us.
Common questions
What should an AI receptionist's greeting tell you?
The greeting should tell the caller two things: that a virtual receptionist is answering, and whether the call is transcribed or recorded. A receptionist that leaves either for the caller to ask has made a disclosure decision on the business owner's behalf. Disclosure is a question for a lawyer, not a vendor's default. Durbacti's own greeting on 0483 982 033 says both.
What counts as a fail when you test an AI receptionist?
A confident reply where an honest gap belonged: a question the receptionist was never given, answered anyway. A price nobody set. A booking on a Sunday for a business closed on Sundays. A caller left to believe they were talking to a person. Some of those are settings a vendor can change, so the fail is the gap to ask about rather than a reason to walk away on its own. Two are decisions about what the product is allowed to do, the invented answer and the pretence of a person, and those are the two to ask about first.
Why test an AI receptionist from a noisy place?
If your customers ring from utes, sites, cars and waiting rooms, a receptionist that only hears well on a clean line has not been tested on your calls. Ring from somewhere loud, give a number and an email address quickly, and listen for whether the receptionist reads them back and asks again when it did not catch something. A guess on a noisy test call is a guess on a real one, and one wrong digit means a callback that never happens. Durbacti's receptionist is built to check a detail it did not catch rather than guess at it.
Is a vendor's demo line a fair test of an AI receptionist?
A demo line is a fair test of the vendor's script and a poor test of anything else. The receptionist on it was given the vendor's hours, questions and any prices it publishes, so asking it those proves only what it was told. Testing it means making the calls it was not built for: a bad line, a question outside its brief, a price it does not publish, a time it should refuse, a caller who declines transcription. The better test is a receptionist built around your own business before you pay, which Durbacti's free proof of concept is.
What record should an AI receptionist leave after a call?
The record should show what the caller asked for, how the receptionist answered, what it captured or booked, and whether it transferred, readable soon after the call ends. After test calls on a vendor's line, ask for the record of them and note how long it takes to arrive. A record that is only a line saying a call happened means a wrong answer would be found by a customer rather than by the owner. On a Durbacti build the record reaches the owner after each call, in the channel chosen on the call where the build is scoped.