Convert · Turn enquiries into customers
AI Front Desk: an AI receptionist for your new enquiries
An AI front desk that answers, captures and routes enquiries when people are busy.
We reply within one working day. No obligation.
The first reply is where most enquiries are lost
People rarely wait. If they fill in a form and hear nothing, they try the next business on the list. For a small team a quick reply is hard to guarantee: you are on a job, in a meeting, or it is nine in the evening.
- 01Enquiries arrive out of hours and wait until someone is back at a desk.
- 02The first reply asks for details that should have been captured the first time.
- 03Whoever sees the enquiry first deals with it, and there is no record of who did what.
- 04The autoresponder says "thanks, we will be in touch" and nothing useful.
Next step
We reply within one working day. No obligation.
What the AI Front Desk does
Replies straight away
Every new enquiry gets an immediate, useful reply in your tone. It answers common questions from information you have approved, such as services, areas covered, opening hours and what happens next.
Asks the right questions
It asks the qualifying questions your team would ask: type of job, location, timescale and anything else you need. The enquiry reaches you complete, so the first human conversation can move things forward.
Sorts and routes
It recognises new work, existing customers, suppliers and junk, and sends each to the right person or team in Outlook or Microsoft Teams.
Books the next step
Where it makes sense, it offers a callback or appointment from your real calendar, so the enquiry ends with a time in the diary.
Hands over to a person
Anything sensitive, unusual or high value goes straight to your team with a short summary, and the customer is told who will be in touch.
Keeps a record
Every enquiry is logged with its source and outcome in your CRM or a Microsoft 365 list, so you can see what came in and what happened to it.
Where it works
As standard, the AI Front Desk covers the channels where enquiries arrive in writing: website forms, website chat and email, including shared mailboxes such as enquiries@ or info@. WhatsApp can be added through the WhatsApp Business Platform.
If most of your enquiries come by phone, tell us on the consultation. We will talk honestly about what call handling makes sense for your volumes before recommending anything.
An AI virtual receptionist that knows when to stop
It works to rules you agree: what it can answer, what it must never say and when to hand over. It does not quote prices unless you ask it to, does not make promises on your behalf and is clear with people that they are talking to an automated assistant. Your team stays in charge of the relationship.
AI Front Desk, AI customer service or AI Enquiry Manager?
AI Front Desk: first contact with new enquiries from people who are not customers yet. This page.
AI customer service: answering existing customers' questions from your own knowledge. See AI customer service.
AI Enquiry Manager: triage, scoring and ownership across every channel and mailbox. See the AI Enquiry Manager.
Next step
We reply within one working day. No obligation.
What you get
A map of how enquiries reach you today, and the routing rules for each type.
The AI Front Desk configured for your agreed channels.
An approved answer library and set of qualifying questions, written with you.
Escalation rules and handover alerts to named people in Outlook or Teams.
An enquiry log showing every enquiry, its source and what happened next.
Testing with real example enquiries, a walkthrough for your team and handover notes.
What it is built with
Microsoft 365 sits at the core: Outlook and shared mailboxes, Teams for alerts, Power Automate for the workflow, and Copilot Studio or Azure OpenAI for the language model, grounded in approved content kept in SharePoint. It runs in your own Microsoft environment rather than on a separate chatbot platform, where that suits your setup.
How we set it up
- 01
Understand
We look at where your enquiries come from, what people ask and how your team replies today.
- 02
Assess
We agree what the AI Front Desk should handle, what it should hand over and what a good first reply looks like for your business.
- 03
Improve
We build and test it with real example enquiries, then switch it on channel by channel while your team watches the results.
- 04
Support
We review conversations with you in the early weeks and tune the answers. Ongoing support is available if you want it.
What it looks like in practice
Illustrative example, not a client result: a heating engineer receives a website enquiry at 8.40pm. The AI Front Desk replies straight away, asks for the postcode, boiler make and whether there is any heating or hot water, marks it urgent and offers an 8am callback. The engineer opens Teams before the first job and finds a complete enquiry with a time already agreed.
Where the AI Front Desk fits
It is the front door of Convert. Enquiries generated through Attract arrive here, get answered and logged, then flow into your lead management system and CRM for follow-up. Once the work is won, Automate takes the admin that follows.
FAQs
Common questions
What is an AI receptionist?
Software that handles the first contact with a new enquiry the way a good receptionist would: it acknowledges the person, asks the right questions and gets the enquiry to the right member of your team. Ours is built around your business, your services and your rules, rather than a generic bot.
Does it answer phone calls?
The standard AI Front Desk handles written enquiries: website forms, chat, email and optionally WhatsApp. If phone calls are your main channel, raise it on the consultation and we will talk through the options for your call volumes before recommending anything.
Is an AI receptionist a good fit for a small business?
Usually yes, because small teams are the ones who cannot watch the inbox all day. If you only get a few enquiries a month and one person handles them well, a clear process and a better autoresponder may be enough, and we will tell you so.
Will customers know they are talking to AI?
Yes. We set it up to be clear that it is an automated assistant and to offer a person whenever someone asks for one.
What if it gets something wrong?
It answers only from content you have approved, and when it is unsure it hands over rather than guesses. In the first weeks we review real conversations with you and adjust anything that is not right.
How much does an AI receptionist cost?
It depends on the channels, enquiry volumes and systems involved, so we scope it after the consultation and give you a clear proposal before any work starts. We do not publish a price list.
How is this different from other AI receptionist UK services?
Many AI receptionist services are phone apps with a generic script. The AI Front Desk is designed around your business, built on Microsoft 365 and connected to your mailboxes, calendar and CRM, with a clear handover to your team.
Do we need Microsoft 365?
It is where we build best, and most of the businesses we work with already use it. If you run on something else, ask us and we will tell you honestly whether the AI Front Desk is a good fit.
Tell us what is not working
You don't need a fully defined project before you talk to us. We reply within one working day.