What does an AI receptionist do?
It picks up every call, including the ones your front desk misses at lunch, after closing and when two lines ring at once. It greets the caller, works out what they want, answers from facts you approve, takes an action such as booking a slot, and sends a WhatsApp confirmation. When the caller needs a person, it transfers the call with a summary or takes a message and alerts the right staff member.
This guide focuses on inbound reception. For outbound reminders, follow-up calls and TRAI rules on commercial calling, see our guide to AI calling agents in India.
What does it look like by industry?
| Business | Calls it handles well | Calls it should hand over |
|---|---|---|
| Clinic or dental practice | Timings, doctor availability, booking and rescheduling, fees for a first visit, directions | Symptoms, emergencies, test results, anything clinical |
| Salon or spa | Service menu and prices, stylist availability, booking, cancellations | Complaints about a treatment, bridal package negotiation |
| Real estate | Project location, configurations, starting price, site-visit booking, brochure on WhatsApp | Negotiation, loan advice, legal title questions |
| Coaching institute | Courses, batch timings, fees, demo-class booking | Scholarship decisions, parent escalations |
| Service business (repairs, pest control) | Service areas, visit charges, booking a slot, technician arrival | Disputes and warranty claims |
An illustration: a three-doctor clinic in Pune that gets around 40 calls a day might find most are about timings, availability and booking. If the receptionist answers those and books directly into the clinic’s calendar, the front-desk team can focus on patients in the room. Model your own call mix before assuming the same split.
Can it speak Hindi and Hinglish?
Yes. Current speech-to-text and text-to-speech models handle Hindi, English and code-mixed Hinglish well enough for bookings and routine questions, and Indian providers such as Sarvam focus specifically on Indian languages. Quality still varies by accent, background noise and phone line, so test with recordings of your own callers. Practical tips:
- Let the caller choose the language in the first sentence, or detect it and switch automatically.
- Keep sentences short; long Hindi sentences from a synthetic voice sound unnatural.
- Spell out how names, areas and doctor names should be pronounced in the agent’s instructions.
- Confirm critical details back ("Kal shaam 5 baje, Dr Mehta ke saath, theek hai?") before booking.
- Send the confirmation on WhatsApp so the caller has it in writing.
How does the telephony work in India?
The AI does not need a new phone. A typical setup looks like this:
- You get a virtual number from a cloud telephony provider such as Exotel, Knowlarity, MyOperator or Plivo, or a SIP trunk from a carrier.
- Your existing number forwards calls to it, either always, after hours, or when busy or unanswered.
- The provider streams the call to the voice AI platform, which runs speech-to-text, the language model and text-to-speech.
- The AI calls your booking system, CRM or Google Calendar through APIs to check slots and book.
- Transfers go back through the telephony provider to a staff phone or queue.
- After the call, a summary and recording link land in your CRM or a WhatsApp group.
Ask your telephony provider about number type, call recording rules, concurrency (how many calls can run at once) and how they connect to AI platforms, since some have native integrations and some need SIP.
How much does an AI receptionist cost in India?
There are three cost layers. Figures below are list prices as of November 2026; confirm them on each provider’s pricing page.
| Cost layer | What it covers | Indicative pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Voice AI platform | Speech-to-text, model, text-to-speech, orchestration | Bolna lists about ₹5.52 a minute pay-as-you-go (₹4 to ₹4.15 at volume). Retell AI lists $0.07 to $0.31 a minute (roughly ₹6 to ₹27) depending on model and voice. |
| Telephony | Virtual number, call minutes, recordings | Quote-based with Indian providers; ask for per-minute and rental charges in writing |
| Setup and running | Script, knowledge, integrations, testing, weekly review | At Silvane, builds from ₹50,000 and run plans from ₹15,000 a month |
To model it: multiply your monthly answered minutes by the combined per-minute rate, add telephony rental, then compare with the cost of missed calls and front-desk hours. A business answering 1,000 minutes a month at around ₹10 a minute all-in would spend about ₹10,000 a month on usage. Your rate will differ with the voice, model and provider you choose. GST applies on top.
What are the limits of an AI receptionist?
- Latency. Even good systems pause briefly before replying. Most callers accept it; some hang up.
- Noisy lines and strong accents still cause errors. Confirmation steps catch most of them.
- Emotion. Angry or distressed callers should reach a person fast.
- Advice. It must not give medical, legal or financial advice. It books the appointment with the person who can.
- Integrations. If your booking software has no API, the agent may only take messages, not book.
- Data. Calls contain personal data. Tell callers they are speaking with an automated assistant and that the call is recorded, and follow the DPDP Act, 2023 on consent, purpose and retention.
Questions to ask an AI receptionist vendor
- Can I hear recorded calls in Hindi and Hinglish from a business like mine?
- What is the all-in cost per minute, including telephony, and how are minutes billed (per second, 30-second or 60-second pulses)?
- How many calls can it handle at the same time?
- Which booking systems and CRMs does it connect to, and does mine have an API?
- Whose accounts hold the number, recordings and transcripts? Can I take them with me?
- Where are recordings stored, for how long, and who can access them?
- How fast can you change a price or timing the agent quotes?
- What happens during an outage? Do calls fall back to my staff phone?
How do you measure whether it is working?
| Metric | What good looks like | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Answer rate | Close to 100% of calls picked up | Missed calls are the main reason to deploy one |
| Resolved without transfer | Rises over the first month as answers improve | Shows how much front-desk time is freed |
| Bookings from calls | Compare with the same month before launch | The business outcome you are paying for |
| Transfer and hang-up rate | Falling; spikes point to a script gap | Early warning of frustrated callers |
| Complaints | None about being misled | Trust is harder to rebuild than to keep |
Listen to ten random calls every week for the first two months. Most fixes are small: a missing answer, an awkward phrase, a pronunciation.
Go-live checklist
- Pull a week of call logs and list the top ten reasons people call.
- Write approved answers for each, including prices and timings.
- Decide hand-over rules: keywords, emergencies, VIP numbers and repeat callers.
- Connect the calendar or booking tool and test double-booking edge cases.
- Record 30 to 50 test calls in Hindi, English and Hinglish with your team playing customers.
- Start with after-hours and overflow calls only for the first two weeks.
- Track answer rate, bookings, transfers and complaints weekly before routing all calls.
How Silvane can help
Silvane builds AI receptionists and AI voice agents in Hindi and English for clinics, salons, real estate and service businesses, connected to your telephony, calendar and CRM, with WhatsApp confirmations through our WhatsApp automation service. Start with a ₹199 discovery call and audit for founding members (normally ₹15,000). Builds from ₹50,000, run plans from ₹15,000 a month, voice and telephony minutes at cost, GST extra. You can cancel with 30 days’ notice and keep everything, because it runs in your accounts.
Sources: Retell AI pricing · Bolna pricing · Exotel pricing