Receptionist salary vs an AI receptionist
This comparison is usually done dishonestly, in both directions. Software companies compare a salary to a subscription and declare victory; the people who have actually employed a receptionist know the roles are not the same. Here is the version worth reading before you decide.
What a front-desk hire really costs
Not the salary. Employer contributions, holiday pay, sick pay, pension, recruitment, and the training weeks before they are useful. A part-time front desk lands well above the headline figure, and that is before the structural problem: you are buying a fixed number of hours, and your calls do not arrive in a flat line across them.
What you are buying with each
And never the evening, the weekend or the fortnight they are away. Calls outside those hours are not covered at any price.
Including the three-o’clock Sunday call, which is exactly where the missed bookings concentrate.
The upset customer, the complicated exception, the thing that needs judgment. This is not a small category and it does not go away.
Opening hours, prices, parking, availability, booking. Which is most of the volume and none of the interest.
The honest conclusion
If your phone is genuinely busy and your customers need real conversations, a receptionist is a good hire and software is a supplement. If your volume is thirty or fifty calls a week, mostly repetitive, spread across hours a person would not be there for, then a hire is an expensive way to answer questions a document could answer — and the comparison tilts hard the other way.
The combination most places land on
Not replacement. The assistant takes the overflow, the after-hours and the repetition; the person does the front desk, the difficult calls and the customers standing in front of them. That arrangement is usually cheaper than a second hire and better than either alone.
Frequently asked
Substantially, on cost per hour covered — but they are not the same product. A person handles judgment and upset customers; software handles repetition and the hours nobody is there.
Usually not. Most businesses end up with both: the assistant takes overflow, after-hours and repeat questions, and the person does the front desk and the difficult calls.
Well above the salary once employer contributions, holiday and sick pay, pension, recruitment and the training weeks are counted — and you are buying fixed hours your calls do not arrive in.
When the phone is genuinely busy with conversations that need judgment. Repetitive volume spread across evenings and weekends is the case where a hire is an expensive fit.