Summary
You know it right that your front desk sets the tone for your entire business. Hence with an AI receptionist best workflow, you get a perfect blend of automation, accuracy, and turning the routine calls into a long lasting customer experience and connections.
Introduction
AI receptionists have become a shot in a match that’ll obviously lead you for winning the game of business. But you have to master the usage of these systems to ensure you optimize its workflow. These AI receptionists are not just a system; they are all about a comprehensive solution that needs monitoring and updates to deliver the best results.
AI receptionists can change the way of handling calls, but it needs a proper workflow that delivers right answers. Imagine if your customer is asking for business hours and you are responding about service offers. It’s unpleasant right? Hence you have to get an AI receptionist’s best workflow to excel. The success will depend on proper training and updates. Want to know how to decode the successful workflow for your AI receptionist? By the end of the blog, I’m confident you’ll know. Let’s start.
A quick recap on AI receptionists
AI receptionist is a significant shift towards the manner in which businesses handle their calls. Unlike those traditional approaches, these virtual assistants use artificial intelligence for answering calls, routing them, and even schedule appointments without need of any human assistance.
You can consider them to be your front desk staff that never is sick or on leave. They can talk to callers in a professional manner, answer to them and transfer the calls to the correct department. It can complete all of these tasks with the same polite and natural tone.
The technology behind this spectacular system is speech recognition, NLP and machine learning. It empowers AI call assistants to understand intent and respond appropriately. Hence if your business is struggling with overflow of calls and needs round the clock assistance, AI receptionists are the best choice.
How to pick the best AI receptionist as per your requirements?
If you want to get the most out of your AI receptionist it is necessary that you carefully make the choice. There isn’t just one but a number of things to think about. The very first step is to assess your business needs. Know if you are looking for a software that primarily routes calls, schedules appointments or solves complex customer interactions.
Your budget is the other important consideration. Although many providers offer basic features at entry level pricing, to gain access to sophisticated features you have to invest a higher amount. But when you compare it with traditional receptionists, the costs are significantly lighter on your pockets.
The ability to integrate must be at the highest point of your list. The best AI receptionist can have capability to integrate with calendar, CRM and messaging applications.
Choose a platform like Botphonic AI that offers best integration support and even customization options. Check user reviews and data to know the reliability of the platforms before making a final decision. And even get access to free demos from different providers before making any final choice.
Setting up an AI receptionist: Initial steps
It’s not complicated to get an AI receptionist and set it up for your business. Choosing a phone number will be the first task you must complete. There are two choices: either you can port the existing one or select a new number with your provider.
For the next step you have to create an account on the platform you have chosen like Botphonic AI and move to set up a section. Many of these platforms are easy to use and can assist you at every stage. These basic steps are:
- Putting in business information
- Choosing call handling preferences
- Selecting voice and tone
NOTE
Selecting the right voice and tone of AI receptionist
The voice of an AI assistant might not seem to be a crucial aspect but it’s going to be the voice of your business. It might leave an impression on your first-time callers. Hence selecting the right tone and personality can help you make a positive impact.
When you start to configure your system, make sure you first evaluate your brand identity. What type of business do you own? It will help you decide the tone. Make sure that the AI receptionist you have chosen is able to reflect the tone in a way you want your business to be seen. The majority of platforms like Botphonic AI offer you multiple options in terms of tone, such as gender, accent, pace and emotions.
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Developing decision trees and setting a call workflow
For effective call handling you will have to program an effective workflow. It needs to meet the caller’s needs. Compare your callflows to the roadmaps that take conversations into the right direction on the basis of how callers respond.
List out the general scenarios that businesses face in daily life. For example if you are getting an AI call assistant for a hospital, you have it for appointment scheduling, refilling prescriptions, billing queries, and emergency cases.
Consider each case and develop a separate decision tree for each possible answer. Your API receptionist will follow that particular path ensuring each caller gets the right answer. Most platforms have visual editors making creating a decision tree easier without knowledge of programming.
Training it with all relevant information
Your AI receptionist has to be the voice of your business and needs all the relevant information to attend callers. This training will convert your generic calling software into a knowledgeable and professional team member that responds promptly.
Get a complete list of FAQs and document it with everything a caller must be interested to know:
- Details of your business (location and working hours)
- The list of services and product offerings
- All the policies including cancellation and returns
- All industry specific questions and their answers
Upload all of this information on your platform with the help of a knowledge base to train it. Systems like Botphonic AI help you upload documents directly. To seek best results keep updating your information regularly.
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Integration with existing business systems
The best thing that AI receptionists providers can help you with is its integration capabilities. These integration capacities ensure that you don’t have to enter data manually and develop workflow easily.
The most common and valuable integration is the calendar. By doing so your AI receptionist can concern and schedule appointments after checking availability. It can even send confirmations without human needs.
Integration with CRM lets your businesses have access to customer records during calls to provide personalized interactions. It can even store data automatically. Hence it can create a record of customer interaction that your team can review.
These AI receptionists might also integrate with email, payment processors, raising tickets and website chats or chatbots.
Testing and quality check
It is essential that you perform testing before releasing your AI receptionist. Verify whether it acts as you would expect. The platforms, such as Botphonic, can provide you with testing environments that mimic conversations as they would be had with actual clients. Test all the paths that customers might choose.
When you run these tests make sure you go through each aspect including the technical one and conversational quality. Does AI understand the phrases? Does it respond with a natural tone? How does it work with different accents? Involve the team in testing to gain more reviews.
Launching your AI receptionist
By now you must be ready with the best AI receptionist workflow and you might want to introduce this to your customers. But you have to do it smartly. Consider rolling it out in phases and not revealing every aspect immediately.
You can start by letting AI handle the specific case or workflow during peak hours. Hence it can help you monitor cases and adjust accordingly before you scale it. If you feel any changes have to be made, communicate with the team. You can discuss and clearly instruct on topics like:
- The working of system
- When will calls be transferred to human agents?
- Providing feedback for AI performance
- How to handle calls if AI couldn’t resolve the issue?
Inform your customer or callers about the new system you have implemented. It can help you set their expectations. Keep a close eye on its performance and evaluate call recordings.
Monitoring and continuously improving
Once you have handed it over to an AI receptionist, data becomes your best friend to optimize workflow. The majority of platforms these days have analytics dashboards that give you an idea about all key performance indicators. Evaluate these indicators:
- Call volume
- Average call duration
- First call resolution rate
- Amount of calls transferred to human agents
- Customer satisfaction score
These metrics will help you know how efficiently your AI receptionist is handling calls and the adjustment to be made. For example if many calls regarding a specific topic are frequently diverted to Human Receptionist, train your AI more for that particular section.
Platforms like Botphonic AI help you generate a report to share it to departments for working together on Improving performance. AI systems are capable of improving themselves with each use by recognising patterns.
What about complex cases handling?
Although AI receptionists are exceptional at handling routine inquiries, there are still calls that require human judgements. Hence develop a protocol to deal with these situations effectively.
Make a check list of call types that has to be handled by human agents:
- Complex cases or situations
- Technical problems
- Situations that include revealing confidential data
- Emotional conversation
Train your AI to evaluate these scenarios and transfer them effortlessly to the team member. Providing a clear transfer message to the customer like “Wait, I’ll get you in touch with our customer care specialist who can assist you.” It helps you soothe customers in a better way.
Know that the end goal is not AI handling everything but letting it do what it can efficiently.
Take your AI receptionists best workflow at next level with Botphonic
Ready to transform your AI receptionist into a power pack of accuracy and efficiency? Leverage the power of Botphonic AI. We offer you an AI receptionist that serves your business needs with a customization option to fit your brand identity.
At Botphonic we combine the best technology available with a user-friendly interface, making it accessible to everyone with even limited knowledge of technology. You can develop your own AI receptionist not within months or weeks just within hours.
Sign up for Botphonic AI today and know how an AI receptionist’s best workflow can take your business to new heights. Your callers will surely admire your new receptionist.
Conclusion
Setting up an AI receptionist’s best workflow is a combination of automation and human touch. When you set it up right your business can experience a boost in efficiency, cut down costs and provide a seamless experience to each caller. Know that the secret to scaling is smartly choosing and implementing your AI receptionist. Include proper training, integration and comprehensive evaluation to your checklist while you have your AI receptionist on board.
