AI Receptionist

How to Build and Test an AI Receptionist

5:07 · September 24, 2026

This AI receptionist answers inbound calls for a coffee shop. It knows the shop's hours, books one of three meeting rooms straight onto Google Calendar, checks the group is under ten people, and asks one qualifying question: do you spend over $100 a week on coffee? The build is quick. The testing is where it gets good. AI models don't have common sense, so the first call almost always turns up an odd way of asking for something. After each call you open the logs to see the exact prompt, every action the agent took and the transcript, then add one line to the instructions for each thing that sounded off. Retest with a different caller attitude, like someone who won't commit to an answer, until it handles them all.

Step by step

1. 01

   Give it the business basics

   Add the business hours and connect Google Calendar so the receptionist can see which meeting rooms are free and book them during the call. Add rules like "meeting rooms are for groups under ten."

2. 02

   Add a qualifying question

   In the video it's "do you spend over $100 a week on coffee?" Decide whether it's a soft question, where the answer never rules a caller out, or a hard one, where a failed answer ends the booking and the receptionist suggests something else.

3. 03

   Pick a voice

   Choose between OpenAI live voices, which are more reactive and human-sounding, and ElevenLabs voices, which you can sample before you pick.

4. 04

   Call it, expecting something weird

   Run an inbound test call and try to book a room. The first call always shows at least one strange way of asking for information, and that's what you're looking for.

5. 05

   Read the call logs

   Open the logs to see the exact prompt the agent ran on, every action it took, and the full transcript.

6. 06

   Fix it one line at a time

   For each thing that sounded off, add a single line to the instructions, such as "don't tell the caller which meeting room, just say a meeting room." Then retest with a different caller, like one who won't commit to an answer.