# AI answering > Set up your AI receptionist: what it knows, who it puts callers through to, and where it answers. ## What it does Your AI receptionist answers calls as your business. It answers questions from the facts, instructions and documents you give it, puts callers through to your people and departments, and takes a message when the person they want can’t take the call. Callers ask in their own words: “Is Sam in today?” or “I need someone about my bill.” When a caller asks whether they are talking to an AI, it says so. The AI receptionist is part of your plan, with no monthly fee: you pay $0.10 a minute while it is talking with a caller, in 6-second increments, from your prepaid credit. Your free month includes 30 AI minutes. The call it answers is an inbound call like any other: it uses your included minutes, then costs $0.02 a minute. You choose where it answers in your call routing. ## Or let an AI agent do it An AI agent can set up and change your receptionist with the rinzo command-line tool (`rinzo receptionists`): it drafts the business information and destinations, validates them and publishes after your approval. See [Agents](https://rinzo.ai/agents.md). ## 1. Create your receptionist In the Control panel, open SmartPBX › AI answering and create a receptionist. Give it a name and a greeting, then fill in what callers should know: your services, hours, service area and policies, written the way you would brief a new member of staff. Add instructions too, such as “Ask for the address before transferring a repair call.” ## 2. Add your website and documents For more detail, open Advanced settings (the AI receptionist app) and, under Knowledge, import your website: Rinzo reads its public pages and writes notes about your business, hours, services and policies as a knowledge file you can read and edit. Upload documents too: PDF, Word, text or Markdown files such as a price list, service menu or FAQ. Review the text of each before you publish. The receptionist answers only from what you give it and what you approved. ## 3. Add your people and departments Choose who callers reach when they ask for a person or press 0, and where calls go when nobody can help, such as a ring group or voicemail. Add named people and departments as destinations, with the names callers use: a user, a ring group, a voicemail box or an outside number. Callers can also ask for anyone in your phone directory by name or extension; you can turn the directory off to limit them to the destinations you list. ## 4. Review and publish Nothing answers calls until the receptionist is published and connected to a number. Choose Save and publish. To change it later, update the information and publish again; a call already in progress keeps the version it started with. ## 5. Choose where it answers In SmartPBX, open Main number. Each time period (open hours, after hours, lunch and holidays) has a “who answers” choice, with your published receptionists at the top. Pick a receptionist for the periods it should answer, for example after hours only, or all day. The period’s voicemail or menu becomes its fallback. The AI answering tab shows where each receptionist answers. For custom routes, add it in the Advanced Callflows app. See [Call routing](https://rinzo.ai/docs/call-routing.md). ## Messages When the person a caller wants can’t take the call, or the caller asks to leave a message, the receptionist takes a message. It asks for their name, a callback number and what it’s about. When a caller asks for an appointment and you haven’t connected a calendar, it takes the request as a message too, with the service and the times that suit them, and tells the caller your team will confirm. The message arrives as a voicemail in the recipient’s voicemail box, with a text summary, the caller’s name and number as caller ID, the message-waiting light on their phone and an email if the box has voicemail-to-email on. Urgent messages are marked urgent. To collect general messages, choose a messages box for the receptionist in SmartPBX › AI answering. See [Voicemail](https://rinzo.ai/docs/voicemail.md). ## Appointments in your Google Calendar To let the receptionist book appointments, connect your Google Calendar to your account (once, in a browser sign-in you approve) and give the receptionist a booking policy: the services callers can book and how long each takes, your bookable hours, and how much notice you need. It then checks the calendar’s free time, offers the caller times that fit and books the appointment, which appears in your calendar with the caller’s name and number. It tells the caller an appointment is booked only after the calendar has confirmed it; if the calendar can’t be reached or nothing fits, it takes the request as a message instead. Without a connected calendar, appointment requests are always messages. ## After the call: summary email and transcripts Both are off until you turn them on for a receptionist. **Summary email:** add up to ten email addresses to the receptionist, and after each call they get one email with who called, what they wanted and the outcome (a message, a transfer, a booking or nothing needed). Messages themselves stay in voicemail. **Transcripts:** turn on Keep transcripts for a receptionist and the text of each call (what the caller and the receptionist said) is kept in its Activity for the number of days you choose, up to 30, then deleted. Audio is kept only when you turn on Keep audio for a receptionist, and your greeting should then say the call is recorded. ## Language Each receptionist answers in one language: English (US, Canada or UK), Spanish (US, Mexico or Spain) or French (Canada or France), chosen when you set it up. Write its greeting in that language; your business information and documents can stay in English. It doesn’t switch languages during a call or detect the caller’s language; for more than one language, publish a receptionist per language and route callers to each, for example from an auto-attendant. ## 6. Test with real calls Call your number from an outside phone before you rely on it: - Ask a familiar question about your services. - Ask something your information doesn’t answer. - Ask for a person or department by name. - Check what happens when that person doesn’t answer, and leave a message. - Try your after-hours arrangement. When an answer is wrong or missing, update the business information or documents and publish again. ## What it doesn’t do The receptionist speaks English, Spanish or French, one language per receptionist, with one voice. It books appointments only in a Google Calendar you connect, and it doesn’t send text messages. It sends each call’s record to your CRM or automation through a signed webhook when you set one up. It reads your website only when you import it, and never browses the web during a call. Calls it answers are recorded only when you turn that on for a receptionist, transcripts are kept only when you turn them on, and it recognizes repeat callers by their number (last 90 days) unless you turn that off. When the carrier reports a caller’s number as failing verification, the receptionist asks who is calling before anything else and hangs up on silence; a call with no caller speech under 15 seconds is not charged, and you can block a number from its call record. Don’t use it for health information that needs HIPAA safeguards. It cannot handle emergencies: Rinzo cannot call 911. --- The Markdown version of https://rinzo.ai/docs/ai-answering/. An index of every page: https://rinzo.ai/llms.txt. 911 and emergency calling are not supported during early access.