With Retell, we’ve increased scheduling NPS by 38%, and filled underutilized provider capacity, allowing our team to focus on meaningful patient care instead of phone tag.
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Remote Receptionist: An AI Front Desk That Answers Every Call
5.0
ON G2
A remote receptionist that picks up every call on your existing number, books appointments, takes messages, and transfers callers to your team wherever they're working.
Trusted by over 4,000 businesses powering 100+ million calls per month.
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How It Works
Set up your remote receptionist in four steps, on the number you already use.
Build the agent
Point the agent at your website, services, hours and pricing through a knowledge base that syncs as that content changes. Lay out the call flow in the drag-and-drop builder: greeting, reason for calling, availability check, booking, message-taking and transfer rules. Connect your calendar, your CRM and any system the agent reads or writes during a call.
Test it against your front-desk calls
Run the agent through simulated calls before a customer hears it: a new booking, a reschedule, a pricing question, a caller asking for someone by name, and a caller who's upset. Each run scores accuracy and shows where the agent guessed instead of looking something up. Fix the flow, rerun, and keep the test set for every future change.
Keep your number and go live
Keep your carrier, your number and your phone system. Connect through SIP trunking with Twilio, Telnyx or Vonage, or forward calls to the agent: all of them, only the ones nobody answers, or only after hours. Verify your business, go live on one line, check your booking and transfer rates, then add more lines.
Monitor and retrain
Every call is transcribed, summarized and tagged by outcome, and every booking lands in your calendar and CRM. Track booking rate, transfers that connected, and calls that ended with nothing. Review every call, not a sample, and retrain the flow where the agent stumbles.
Use Cases
What your remote receptionist handles on every call
Answer in your business name, from anywhere
The agent picks up on the first ring and greets callers in your business name, so nobody hears voicemail, a busy signal or a phone tree. It answers questions on hours, location, pricing and services from your knowledge base, and it doesn't need a desk, an office or a staff schedule to do it.
Book, reschedule and cancel appointments
The agent checks live availability and books into Cal.com or Google Calendar during the call, then reschedules or cancels in the same conversation. Confirmations go out automatically, and reminder calls run through batch calling.
Transfer to your team, wherever they are
The agent works out why someone is calling and warm-transfers to the right person's desk line, cell phone or on-call number. It tells your teammate who's holding and why before it connects, so a distributed team can share one front desk.
Cover overflow, lunch breaks and after hours
Send the agent every call, only the ones your team misses, or only the hours you're closed. Busy Monday mornings and holiday weekends get the same first-ring answer, and the after-hours answering costs the same per minute as daytime.
Serve callers in their language
The agent supports Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, French and more, with automatic language detection, so one remote receptionist covers a bilingual front desk.
Built for Contact Centers, Not Demos
Retell is the AI Voice Platform Enterprise Contact Centers Run On
Retell lets you build, test and deploy AI phone agents that handle real call volume, so your team spends its time on the conversations that need a person.
Feature
Why businesses choose Retell as their remote receptionist
Sounds like your business
Pick from 100+ lifelike voices or clone your own, and tune tone and language so the agent matches a dental office or a law firm and greets callers in your business name, warm, human-like conversations instead of an outdated phone tree.
Books into your calendar, not just a message pad
The agent checks live availability and writes the appointment into Cal.com or Google Calendar during the call, so a captured call becomes a booked job. Pine Park Health raised scheduling NPS by 38% after putting calls through a voice agent. Results vary by setup.
Reads and writes your CRM mid-call
Connect HubSpot, Salesforce, Go High Level, Cal.com, and Google Calendar natively, or anything else through Zapier, n8n, or a webhook. The agent looks up a patient, a client, or an order while the caller is on the line, and writes the result back.
Runs on the number you already have
Keep your carrier, your number, and your phone system. Connect through SIP trunking with Twilio, Telnyx, Vonage, Genesys, or Five9, or forward the calls you want answered. Nothing about your published number changes.
Answers in roughly 600 milliseconds
End-to-end latency of about 600ms with proprietary turn-taking means callers never sit through dead air or talk over the agent. It handles interruptions and barge-in the way a strong receptionist does.
Never a missed call, never a busy signal
The agent answers every call at once, around the clock, starting at 20 concurrent calls and scaling on request. Callers who reach voicemail rarely leave one and rarely call back, and industry research puts the average missed call at about $12.15 in lost value. Results vary.
Scores 100% of calls
Every call is transcribed, summarized, and tagged by outcome through post-call analysis, and every booking lands in your calendar and CRM. Watch booking rate, missed-call recovery, and transfer rate in a dashboard, catch the questions the agent fumbles, and retrain the flow, instead of reviewing a small sample by hand.
Catch the transfers that fail
Transfers are where a front desk loses people. See which handoffs connected, which rang out, and which calls ended with nothing, then fix the routing rule behind them.
Test it before your callers do
Turn your real scenarios into a simulation suite and rerun it on every prompt change, so a fix for one caller never breaks the booking flow for the next.
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- Hubspot
- Twilio
- Vonage
- Go High Level
- n8n
- Zapier
- Salesforce
- Hubspot
- Twillio
- Vonage
- Go High Level
- 8n8
- Zapier
- Salesforce
- Avaya
- Genesys
- Five9
- Amazon Connect
- Telnyx
- Make
- Cal.com
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- Avaya
- Genesys
- Five9
- Amazon Connect
- Telnyx
- Make
- Cal.com
Pricing
Cut Costs by 90% with AI phone Agents
Pay as you go
$0 to start.
$0.07–$0.31 per minute – Pay only for what you use.
60 mins of free access.
20 concurrent calls.
10 Free Knowledge Bases.
Enterprise Plan
For companies with large volumes, data or deployment requirements, or support needs.
White glove service for your use case.
Premium support with dedicated solution engineer teams.
Custom pricing and concurrent calls based on your needs
FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
What is a remote receptionist?
A remote receptionist answers your business calls from outside your office. They greet callers in your name, answer common questions, book appointments, take messages and transfer calls to your team. Retell's remote receptionist is an AI voice agent, so it does all of that on every call at once, around the clock, without a desk or a staff schedule.
How does a remote receptionist work with a remote or hybrid team?
The agent answers on your main number and transfers to whoever should take the call, on their desk line, cell phone or an on-call number. When nobody picks up, it takes a message and posts it to your CRM, Slack or a webhook, so the whole team sees it no matter where they work.
Does a remote receptionist sound like a person?
Yes. Retell uses natural voices and a turn-taking model with about 600ms end-to-end latency, so callers don't sit through dead air or talk over the agent. You can pick from 100+ voices or clone your own.
Can I keep my existing phone number?
Yes. Keep your carrier, your number and your phone system. Connect through SIP trunking with Twilio, Telnyx, Vonage, Genesys or Five9, or forward calls to the agent: all of them, only the ones nobody answers, or only the hours you're closed.
What happens when a transfer isn't answered?
The agent follows the rules you set. If the line rings out, it comes back to the caller, takes a message, offers a booking or promises a callback, and logs the whole call to your CRM.
How much does a remote receptionist cost?
Retell charges per minute of call time, with no platform fee, no minimums and no contract, plus $10 in free credits to start. The rate depends on the models, voices and tools the agent uses, so you pay for minutes worked, not hours staffed.
Is a remote receptionist HIPAA compliant?
Retell is HIPAA compliant, and healthcare and dental teams self-sign a BAA at no extra cost before patient information goes through the agent. Retell is SOC 2 Type I and Type II and ISO 27001 certified, and PII redaction can be turned on to mask sensitive details in transcripts.
