What to provide for AI receptionist setup comes down to one short list: what you do, what you charge, where you work, when you run calls, and how you want calls handled. Most owners answer the whole thing from memory in a single conversation. No documents to hunt down, no IT work, no new phone system.
Here's the complete checklist, with notes on why each item matters.
Bring these to your intake conversation and setup moves fast:
An AI receptionist is only as accurate as what it's given. It doesn't guess your pricing, improvise your service area, or assume you do commercial work because the caller asks nicely. It answers from what you provided — which is exactly what you want.
The flip side: thin answers in, thin answers out. If your intake says "we fix garage doors," the AI can't tell a caller whether you handle a Wayne Dalton torquemaster setup or quote a rough range for a spring pair. Fifteen honest minutes at intake is the difference between an answering machine with a nice voice and a receptionist that books real jobs.
This is also why setup is done-for-you. You know your business cold. The setup team knows how to turn that knowledge into call flows, triage questions, and booking rules. The done-for-you setup process is built around one idea: your only job is to describe your shop. And if you're wondering how long everything takes once you've gathered the list, here's how long AI receptionist setup really takes.
Say you run a two-truck shop. You do the intake from the truck at lunch, and it sounds like this:
Springs, openers, off-track, cables — no installs. $89 service call, waived with the repair. Spring jobs quoted as a range over the phone, final number on site. Service area is three suburbs and everything inside them. Windows run 8–10, 10–12, 1–3, 3–5, Monday through Saturday. Emergencies: trapped cars and doors stuck open. Summaries to your cell and your office manager's email.
That's it. That's a complete intake, and it took maybe twenty minutes — because you weren't filling out a form, you were describing the shop you run every day.
Just as important — cross these off your worry list:
What to provide for AI receptionist setup is really just your business, written down the way you'd explain it to a sharp new CSR on their first day. Gather it in one pass, and setup is a straight line to live — most shops are answering with Ava within a day. To see what happens to your list after intake, read how your AI receptionist learns your services and pricing.
Call the live demo and have Ava call you now — hear exactly what your customers will hear when they call your shop.