Yes, and this is what turns a generic voice into your receptionist. You give an AI receptionist the facts about your business, your hours, services, prices, policies, and the questions customers ask all day, and it answers callers from that, in your own words. The important part to understand up front: you are not training a model or writing code. You are briefing an assistant.
“Think of it exactly like onboarding a new front-desk hire. You would not hand them the phone with no information. You tell them how the business works, and a good setup lets you do that in plain language, in an afternoon.”
Branislav Hrivnák, Co-Founder, AI Receptionist Now
What you teach it
The more specific you are, the better it sounds and the fewer questions it has to dodge. The essentials:
- The basics: your hours, locations, and how you want callers greeted.
- Services and prices: what you offer, what it costs, and what is out of scope.
- Policies: cancellations, deposits, service areas, anything a caller commonly asks about.
- Your FAQs: the dozen questions you answer every week, in the answers you would actually give.
- Escalation rules: what it should handle itself and what it should hand to a person.
You're briefing an assistant, not training a model
This is the point that confuses people. “Training” here does not mean machine learning, datasets, or anything technical. You fill in instructions and a knowledge base through a simple form, the same way you would write a one-page brief for a new hire. No code, no data science, and you can do it yourself the same day. That is also why you can connect it to your existing business number and be live quickly.
Keep it accurate as your business changes
A knowledge base is only as good as how current it is. When a price changes, you add a service, or you close for a holiday, update the instructions, it takes minutes. The fastest way to find what is missing is to read real call transcripts: every time the AI had to dodge a question is a gap you can fill in one edit.
One honest limit: it only knows what you tell it. Vague instructions produce vague answers, and for anything genuinely outside its knowledge it should admit it and hand off rather than guess, see what happens when an AI receptionist can't answer a question. Once it knows your business, the next step most owners want is scheduling, see whether it can book appointments into your calendar, or just try our AI receptionist on a live call.