What does an AI receptionist sound like? Three real calls

Short answer: natural enough that callers just keep talking, interrupt and misspeak, and still get helped. But anyone can claim that. That's why our site has three recordings of real calls, in three different voices, so you can hear it yourself before you buy anything. Below is what you hear in them.

Why recordings and not a live demo?

Hardly anyone talks out loud to their screen at the office or on the train, and those who do don't quite know what to ask. Listening to a recording is a smaller step, and you hear more: the pace, the silences, and how the assistant reacts when the caller says something unexpected. The recordings are one take per call. Nothing was rewritten or re-recorded; they were only trimmed, and personal details are bleeped out.

Call 1: what do you hear at the hair salon?

A caller wants a cut tomorrow around five and his roots touched up. The assistant knows the salon is closed tomorrow and offers Tuesday. It knows a cut plus root colouring takes about two hours. When the caller asks for a hairdresser who doesn't work there, the assistant says who does, and on which days Lotte is in. And it asks when the caller last had colour, because more than six months means a patch test first.

That's exactly the work a hairdresser otherwise does with the phone wedged between shoulder and ear. This call was recorded with the Clear voice, €0.35 per minute, and lasts almost two minutes.

Call 2: how does the assistant handle an emergency?

Someone calls a heating installer outside office hours: the heating has stopped and the house is cold. The assistant first asks whether young children, elderly people or people with health problems live there. There's a three-month-old baby, so it treats it as urgent. It takes the postcode and house number, states the emergency rate that applies outside office hours, and transfers to the engineer on call.

This is where an AI receptionist makes the difference for an installer: an evening breakdown doesn't become a voicemail, but an assessed report with an address that goes straight to the right person. Natural voice, €0.55 per minute, just under a minute and a half.

Call 3: can it handle a complicated booking?

At a car rental, someone wants to rent an automatic for two days from tomorrow, preferably something cheap. The assistant offers the cheapest automatic with its daily price, asks when the car will come back and whether the caller is crossing the border. It checks the driver's age and how long they've held a licence, mentions the young driver surcharge, and at the end says which documents to bring.

This is the longest call, over three minutes, with many conditions in a row. Premium voice, €0.75 per minute, our strongest language model.

Do callers notice it's an AI?

That shouldn't be the question. Since 2 August 2026, an AI receptionist must say at the start of the call that the caller is speaking to an AI, and with us no assistant can go live without that notice. What you do hear in the recordings: callers just keep talking, interrupt, misspeak, and get helped. That's what matters.

What does the assistant do when it doesn't know something?

It says what it does know. In the first call the caller asks for a hairdresser who doesn't work there; the assistant names who does. If an answer isn't in the knowledge base, it transfers to someone on your team or takes a callback request.

Which voice suits your business?

You decide by listening, not by reading a description. Clear is enough for short, predictable calls such as appointments and opening hours. Natural follows a wandering conversation better. Premium is for calls where a misunderstanding costs money or trust. You can listen to all three calls on our demo page, with the transcript to read along.