Phone receptionist
The Settings row that sets up the AI receptionist: credit, a number, what it says, the answering switch, callbacks, crew texting and the end-to-end check — what each card changes and who can open it.
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Settings → Client-facing → Phone receptionist is titled “Answers the calls you can't, takes the details, and books visits against your real availability. It never quotes a price.” The screen is laid out in the order of the decisions — credit, then a number, then the words, then the switch — and a new company sees the cards numbered 1 to 7. Once the setup is done the numbers disappear and the same cards remain.
This article walks the screen card by card. What the receptionist does on a call, what a minute costs and what nobody else's pricing page lists is in The phone receptionist; what it did with each call is the Receptionist screen in the main sidebar, see The receptionist's call log.
Overview
A status bar at the top shows your number and whether it is answering. Everything the receptionist can spend is priced by the server and printed on the screen before you commit: the per-minute rate on the Credit card, the monthly rental beside each kind of number, the top-up amounts. The browser never sends an amount.
The receptionist runs on prepaid credit in US dollars. Calls are metered per minute, numbers are rented per month, and both come out of the same balance.
The seven cards
- Credit — the Balance, the rate (“35¢ a minute, rounded up, one minute minimum. Your number's monthly rental comes out of this same credit.”), Add credit, Where the credit went, and the Top up automatically card.
- Your number — “What the receptionist answers on.” Three ways to get one: Keep my number, forward missed calls (marked Recommended), Get a new number with Choose the number yourself, or Move my number over. A live number shows its forwarding codes, its next rental date and a Release link.
- What it says — “It will never give a price, promise a time it hasn't checked, or claim to be a person.” The Greeting, Anything it should know with Draft this from my company profile, What it asks callers for, the Voice with Hear … previews, and How it sounds.
- Answer my calls — the one switch: Start answering calls / It's answering — turn off.
- Call clients back automatically — Turn on quote callbacks and Which quotes get a call. Covered in Quote callbacks.
- Let the crew text in photos and updates — a Set up crew texting link. Crew texting uses its own number, separate from the one that answers your calls, and is set up on the crew inbox page: The crew inbox: photos and updates by text.
- Check it end to end — Run the check asks the phone service itself about every link between somebody dialling and a lead landing in FieldQuo. Shown once you have a number.
How to set it up
- Under Credit, press Add credit if the balance is empty — $10, $30, $50, $100, or any amount between $5 and $1,000. Your first number comes with 30 free minutes of credit, and the number's first month of rental is taken out of it.
- Under Your number, pick Keep my number, forward missed calls unless you have a reason not to. FieldQuo rents a line for the receptionist and shows the code to dial from your own phone; your clients keep dialling the number on the van, and only the calls you miss reach the receptionist.
- Under What it says, write the Greeting and press Draft this from my company profile. It lists the questions it cannot answer from your settings — what you turn down, what counts as urgent, what to say when you are shut — under Answer these in your own words. Type over each bracket; a line left in brackets is skipped.
- Pick a Voice and listen with Hear …. Leave How it sounds on its defaults unless callers keep getting cut off.
- Press Start answering calls, then Run the check under Check it end to end and ring your own number.
What each control changes
| Control | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Keep my number, forward missed calls | Rents a $4-a-month local line the receptionist answers on. Your own number is untouched; you set conditional forwarding on your phone with the code shown, and undo it by dialling ##002#. |
| Get a new number / Choose the number yourself | Buys a separate line — local at $4 a month, toll-free at $9 a month plus 5¢ a minute — in an area code you pick. Picking one buys it straight away and the first month comes out of your credit. |
| Move my number over | Starts a port. Nothing is charged to start; your number keeps working with your old carrier for the two to four weeks the transfer takes, and the receptionist cannot answer on it until it lands. |
| Greeting, Anything it should know | The first thing every caller hears, and the facts it may use beyond your settings. Opening hours, services and areas are read from your settings on every call and belong there, not in the note. |
| Voice, How it sounds | Which voice speaks, and four tuning choices — what it does when a caller talks over it, where callers usually ring from, how quickly it answers, how it comes across. None of them changes what it is allowed to say. |
| Answer my calls | Whether the number is answered at all. It refuses to turn on without a number and credit for at least one minute. Turning it off stops answering at once — “If this number is on your van, forward it somewhere before you switch it off.” |
| Top up automatically | Off unless you turn it on. Saves a card and, when the balance drops below $5, $10 or $20, charges the amount you chose — at most 3 times a day. It switches itself off and tells you if the card is declined. |
| Release … | Gives a bought number back for good. It is deleted at the phone company, cannot be recovered, and the rest of the paid month is not refunded. |
Who can see it
The owner, administrators, and anyone at the Dispatcher or Manager level see the row and can change everything on it — buying a number and topping up spend the company's money. Crew and Estimator logins do not see it. The call log in the main sidebar has its own rule.
Часті запитання
The switch will not turn on.
It needs a live number and enough credit for one minute. The line under Answer my calls says which one is missing — “Set up a number above first” or “Add credit first”.
Can it quote a price on the phone?
Never. It can read back a visit fee you published on your booking page, because that is your own figure, but it never prices the work.
I called and nothing appeared in FieldQuo.
Press Run the check under Check it end to end. It asks the phone service about every link and names the one that is broken, and can push your settings to the provider again with one button.
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