Need help creating an AI receptionist

Hey Carlito, welcome to the community!

 

I remember being exactly in your shoes a few months ago - setting up my first AI receptionist felt a bit overwhelming at first, but once I got the hang of the workflow it became super straightforward. Here’s what worked for me:

 

Step 0: Get Your Number Sorted First
Before you dive into prompts and integrations, make sure you’ve got a phone number ready. Callin.io gives you US and Canada numbers out of the box. For anything outside that, I’ve always just grabbed numbers from Twilio.com and then imported them into Callin.io — it’s quick and reliable.

 

Step 1: Create Your Receptionist Agent
Head over to your dashboard → Agents → Create Agent. Give it a name like “Receptionist Agent.” The Prompt Wizard is your best friend here. I usually keep the greeting short and warm, something like:
“Hi, thanks for calling [Company Name]. How can I help you today?”
Pro tip: test the prompt right away with a quick call — you’ll catch little things you might want to tweak.

 

Step 2: Hook Up an Integration

This part trips a lot of people up. In your account, go to Actions → Integrations. From there you can choose:

• Make.com

• Zapier

• n8n (self-hosted, free — honestly my go-to, it gives you more control)

Just click to install and connect. Once done, you’ll unlock two really handy modules:

• Activate an Agent (lets you instantly trigger a call from your receptionist)

• Get a Transcription (captures transcripts, plus extracted fields like name, email, appointment date, etc.)

 

Step 3: Build a Simple Workflow
My first test was super basic: I used the Get a Transcription trigger to capture caller info, then pushed that into my CRM via Make.com. Worked like a charm. I also had it send me a Slack ping whenever a new caller left their details — small thing, but really useful when you’re testing.

 

Step 4: Test, Adjust, Repeat
Honestly, the magic is in testing. Call the number yourself, try giving wrong info, mumble a bit, see how the agent reacts. Then refine your prompt. In my experience, making the receptionist explicitly ask “Can I have your email so we can send you a confirmation?” boosted the success rate a ton.

After a couple of days of tweaking, my receptionist was not just answering calls but also updating my CRM automatically — and I haven’t looked back since. 🚀

Hope this helps... don’t stress if the first setup isn’t perfect.

 

Just test, adjust, and soon your receptionist will be running smoother than most human ones 😉