What to write in your Business Brain so your AI receptionist stops guessing

An AI receptionist is only as good as what you told it. That sounds like a platitude until you watch two businesses in the same trade get completely different results from the same software, purely because one wrote three lines and the other wrote three pages.

This is a guide to what to put in each section, and — more usefully — what bad input looks like.

Start with the description

One paragraph. What you do, who for, where, and one thing that makes you different.

Weak: "We are a company committed to excellence in customer service."

Strong: "Family-run dental clinic in the centre of Valencia, open since 2009. General dentistry, hygiene and orthodontics for adults and children. Two dentists, appointments in Spanish and English, wheelchair accessible, street parking outside."

The second one lets the receptionist answer six questions the first one cannot.

Services: use the customer's words

List each service with a one-line explanation. Use the term a customer would say out loud, and add your internal name as an aside if you must.

For each service, if you can, include: what it involves, roughly how long it takes, and who it is for. That last one prevents a lot of wasted appointments.

Also list what you do not do. This feels negative. It is the single highest-value thing in the whole Brain, because it stops the receptionist from politely implying yes.

Prices: be as specific as you honestly can

The instinct is to hide prices so people call. But the AI is answering the call, and the caller wants a number.

Ranked from best to worst:

• "Hygiene: 55 EUR." Perfect.
• "Fillings: from 60 EUR, depending on size." Good — the caller knows the floor and why it moves.
• "Orthodontics: quoted after a free 20-minute assessment, typically 2,000 to 4,000 EUR." Good for big-ticket work.
• "Prices vary, please ask." Useless. The receptionist can only repeat it back.

If you genuinely cannot price something over the phone, write down what determines it. "Depends on the number of teeth involved and whether an X-ray is needed" turns a dead end into a real conversation.

Hours: including the gaps

Put in the actual pattern, including the midday close if you have one, and be explicit about the edges:

• What happens on public holidays.
• Whether the last appointment is earlier than closing time.
• Whether phones are answered when the shop is shut.
• Any seasonal change — the August closure, the winter hours.

Callers ask about the edges far more than the middle.

FAQs: mine them from real life

Do not invent these. Take them from the last two weeks of actual conversations. Look at your WhatsApp, your inbox, your call notes.

The ones nearly every business needs:

• Do you take card / bank transfer / cash?
• Is there parking?
• Do I need an appointment or can I walk in?
• How long will it take?
• Do you come to me, or do I come to you?
• What is the cancellation policy?
• Do you speak [language]?
• Do you invoice companies?
• Do you cover [nearby town]?
• Is there a guarantee or warranty?

Answer each in two sentences. Long answers get truncated or paraphrased; short ones get repeated accurately.

Policies: what happens when things go wrong

Cancellations, deposits, late arrivals, no-shows, refunds, guarantees. Write the version you actually enforce, not the strict one on the wall that you never apply — otherwise the receptionist will be harsher than you are, and you will have to walk it back.

The instructions section: rules, not personality

This is where you tell it how to behave. Keep it to a handful of firm rules:

• If information is not in the Brain, say you do not have it and offer to take a message. Never estimate.
• Always collect a name and phone number.
• Pass complaints, urgent problems and press enquiries straight to a human.
• Answer in the customer's language.
• Keep phone answers to two or three sentences.

Resist writing a personality essay. "Friendly and professional, never pushy" does more than a paragraph about brand values.

A quick test to know if your Brain is good enough

Ask it these five things and see whether the answers would embarrass you:

1. A price you did not enter. (It should admit ignorance.) 2. A service you do not offer. (It should say no clearly.) 3. "Are you open now?" on a Sunday. 4. Something entirely unrelated to your business. 5. Your single most common real question.

If four out of five come back right, you are ready to connect a channel. If not, the gaps you just found are your to-do list.

Keep it alive

Prices change. Hours change in summer. You add a service. The Brain is not a setup task, it is a small monthly habit — ten minutes, usually triggered by reading last week's transcripts and noticing a question you could not answer.

Build yours in RecepAI and test the five questions above before a single customer hears an answer.