27 Questions to Answer Before Your AI Receptionist Goes Live
An AI receptionist is only as good as what you tell it. Give it clear answers on your service area, your hours, how you talk about price, and what counts as an emergency, and it books jobs like your best CSR. Leave those blank and it stumbles the same way a new hire would on day one. This AI receptionist onboarding checklist is the 27 questions to settle before go-live — pulled from the decisions shops always end up making anyway, just usually too late.
Answer these once, up front, and setup goes clean. Ava's done-for-you setup runs in under 24 hours; your job is to feed it good answers.
How to Use This List
Sit down for 30 minutes with whoever knows how your phone should sound. Write a short, plain answer for each question — the way you'd tell a new CSR, not the way you'd write a policy. If you don't know an answer, that's the point: better to find the gap now than to hear it played back to a customer.
Service Area and Hours (Q1–Q6)
Get the boundaries and the clock right first — everything else hangs on these.
What ZIP codes or cities do you serve? List the ones you'll drive to, and the ones you won't.
What's your edge case? How should a caller just outside your area be handled — declined politely, or captured for a maybe?
What are your real business hours? The ones you actually work, not the ones on the door.
What happens after hours? Live answer with triage, or capture-and-callback in the morning?
Which days are you closed? Holidays, Sundays — name them so the greeting matches reality.
Do hours change by season? Storm season and summer surges may need a different mode.
Pricing Stance (Q7–Q11)
You don't have to quote exact prices on the phone. You do have to decide how price gets discussed, so callers hear one consistent story.
Do you give price ranges over the phone, or hold everything for the tech? Pick one and stick to it.
What ranges are safe to share? A "spring repairs typically run $250 to $500" framing keeps callers moving without boxing you in.
Is there a service-call or diagnostic fee? State it clearly so it's never a surprise on-site.
What's your after-hours or emergency premium? A common range is a $75–$150 add-on — name yours.
How should the "how much does it cost?" caller be handled? Capture and book first, quote at the door — decide the exact posture.
Emergency Definition and Triage (Q12–Q17)
This is where an AI receptionist earns its keep — and where a wrong answer sends a truck out at 2 AM for nothing.
What's a true emergency to your shop? Car trapped, door hanging or off track, broken spring on a door someone needs to use — spell it out.
What is not an emergency? A cosmetic dent or a noisy opener can wait for morning. Say so.
What should a caller be told to do — and never do — in an emergency? "Don't try to lift or force the door" is a standard safety line.
Who gets dispatched on a real after-hours emergency, and how fast?
What ETA language is honest? "A tech tonight between 8 and 10, or first thing tomorrow" beats a promise you'll break.
What's the threshold to wake someone up? Set it so on-call techs only get pulled out of bed for the real thing.
When something's above the receptionist's pay grade, it needs a name and a number, not a shrug.
Who is the on-call contact for a true emergency, by day and shift?
Who is the backup if the first contact doesn't answer?
How should an angry or complex caller be escalated? Capture, summarize, and hand off — decide to whom.
What should never be escalated at 2 AM? Protect your people from non-emergencies.
FAQ Bank (Q22–Q24)
The receptionist answers routine questions better when you've handed it the answers you already repeat ten times a day.
What are the top 10 questions your callers ask? Springs, openers, timing, warranty, "do you work on my brand" — write the spoken answers.
What warranty and callback language should it use? So warranty calls get sorted, not lost.
What should it decline to answer and route to you instead? Anything you don't want a scripted answer giving out.
SMS and Email Templates (Q25–Q27)
Every call ends in a summary and, ideally, a confirmation. Decide the wording once.
What should the customer confirmation SMS say? Ava sends instant SMS + email — give it your tone.
What should the owner summary contain? Name, phone, address, issue, and the booked window, at minimum.
Who on your team receives the summaries, and how? So nothing lands in a mailbox nobody checks.
What This Means for Your Shop
Answer these 27 and go-live stops being a leap of faith — it becomes a handoff of decisions you'd have made anyway. The shops that struggle are the ones that skip this and let the receptionist guess. The shops that win treat it like onboarding a great new hire: clear rules, clear scripts, clear escalation.
Run this AI receptionist onboarding checklist before you flip the switch. Twenty-seven clear answers now buys you a receptionist that sounds like your shop from the first call — instead of one you're correcting for a month.
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