Side by side
| Human answering service | AI receptionist | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per call or per minute bundle, overage on busy months | Fixed monthly plan with included minutes |
| Knowledge of your business | A short brief; usually takes a message | Everything you configure: prices, service area, rules, scenarios |
| Availability | Depends on the contract; nights and holidays often cost extra | Same behaviour at 03:00 as at 14:00 |
| Consistency | Varies by operator and by day | Identical every call |
| Languages | Depends on staffing | Dutch, Polish and English on the same line |
| Handling nuance and emotion | Strong — a real person adapts | Good for structured intake, weaker on unusual or emotional calls |
| Record of the call | Message note | Transcript, summary, structured fields and optional recording |
Where the money actually goes
Per-call pricing punishes the exact months you want to grow: a marketing push or a seasonal spike raises your answering bill in step with your call volume. A monthly plan with included minutes does the opposite — the cost per handled call falls as volume rises. Check your last three invoices and divide by calls handled before you compare headline prices.
Where a human service still wins
- Emotionally heavy calls: bereavement, medical distress, complaints that need de-escalation.
- Highly variable enquiries that cannot be reduced to a script or a set of fields.
- Cases where a person must make a judgement call on your behalf during the conversation.
- Regulated intake where your policy requires a trained human on the first contact.
Many companies end up combining both: the AI agent takes the overflow, out-of-hours and repeat questions, while a human team handles the calls your rules mark as sensitive.
- Can the AI agent transfer to a person?
- Yes. Your rules decide when: a keyword, a matter type, or an explicit request from the caller.
- Do I have to cancel my current service to try this?
- No. Point only the out-of-hours or overflow leg at Receply and compare the notes you receive.
- How do I judge quality fairly?
- Review transcripts of the first fifty calls against your intake checklist. That is a harder test than most services can show you.
Try the alternative before you renew
Configure an agent with your own script and call it yourself. It takes minutes and needs no card.
Set up your AI agent