Missing Calls? Whether an AI Receptionist Is Worth It, and the Rules in Canada

If your phone rings while you're up a ladder, under a sink or in court, you already know the problem. Whether an AI receptionist is the answer depends on something most owners have never counted, which is how many of the calls they miss would have turned into paid work.

So count that first. If it's several jobs a month, an AI receptionist or a human answering service will usually pay for itself, provided urgent and sensitive calls still go to a person. If it's a couple of calls a week, a better voicemail greeting and an automatic text-back cost next to nothing and will sort out most of it.

Whichever way you go, there are Canadian rules about recording calls and texting people back, and law firms have some extra things to think about. Both are covered below.

Count your missed calls before you buy anything

Every company selling AI receptionists has a scary statistic about unanswered calls. Your own call log is far more useful. Pull last month's call history from your phone provider and go through it. Count the calls you missed during working hours, the ones that came in after hours or at the weekend, how many of those you called back and how quickly, and how many people didn't pick up when you did.

Then look at the numbers you don't recognise and make a rough guess at what they were: spam, existing customers, suppliers or new work. Take the new-work calls you never got back to, multiply by your average job value and by how often you normally win a quote, and you have a rough monthly cost of missed calls. That's also the most it's worth paying to fix it.

If the phone isn't ringing much in the first place, the problem is further back. Our website traffic but no calls checklist covers that.

The options

Prices vary a lot between providers and change often, so get a few quotes and compare them with the figure you worked out above. Stick to month-to-month terms while you're trying one out.

I'd start with the free fixes. Re-record your voicemail so it says who you are, when you'll call back, and that people can text the same number. Switch on missed-call text-back if your phone provider or app has it. Then set two times a day when you return calls. For a lot of one- and two-person trades that's enough on its own.

Setting up an AI receptionist properly

The better ones answer naturally, take the caller's name, number, address and what they need, book them into your calendar and send you a summary. Whether that helps or hurts you comes down to how it's set up.

At the start of the call it should tell people they're talking to an automated assistant and how to reach a person. Set it to recognise urgent calls, things like no heat, a leak, a burst pipe or, for a law firm, an arrest, and put those straight through to you or whoever is on call. Only let it book into times you've actually opened up, and make sure you get a written summary of every call with the recording or transcript somewhere you can check it.

Just as important is what you stop it doing. It shouldn't quote prices you haven't agreed or promise arrival times you can't keep. Questions you'd rather answer yourself, such as warranties, insurance claims or whether a job needs a permit, should be passed on to you. It should never say anything that sounds like legal, medical or financial advice. And if a caller is upset, it should get them to a person rather than keep them talking.

For the first month, listen to some of the calls every week. You'll quickly find the questions it doesn't handle well and can fix the script.

The rules on recording, texting and privacy

This is general information, not legal advice. If you're not sure how it applies to you, ask your lawyer, or ask the provider to show you how their product meets the rules.

Recording calls

Most AI receptionists record or transcribe calls. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada says businesses covered by federal privacy law have to tell customers a call is being recorded, and why, before the recording starts, and should be clear and honest about what the recording is used for. If recording isn't essential, callers should be able to deal with you another way. The Commissioner's guidance is here. A short line in the greeting, such as "This call is recorded so we get your details right," covers most of it.

Texting people back

Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation, usually called CASL, covers commercial messages sent electronically, and that includes texts. Three parts of it are relevant here.

When someone makes an inquiry, you have implied consent to send them commercial messages for six months afterwards, and a call asking about a job is generally treated as an inquiry. That's in section 10 of the Act. A message that only gives someone a quote or estimate they asked for doesn't need consent at all. That's in section 6. Either way, commercial messages still have to say who they're from, give contact details and include a way to unsubscribe, so put something like "Reply STOP to opt out" in your text-back message.

What you shouldn't do is quietly add every missed caller to a promotional text list and keep messaging them a year later. Once the six months are up, either ask for their permission or stop.

Where the recordings go

Ask any provider where recordings and transcripts are stored, how long they're kept, who can see them, and whether they're used to train AI models. Get the answers in writing.

Law firms

An AI receptionist can be useful for a small firm, particularly after hours, when someone calls in a panic and would otherwise just ring the next firm on the list. Intake is where your professional obligations come in, though.

Set it up to take only a name, contact details, the general area of law and, where it's needed, the other party's name for a conflict check. It shouldn't ask callers to explain their situation in any detail before that check is done. It also can't answer questions like "Do I have a case?" or "What should I do about my landlord?" The answer to those is always that a lawyer will call them back.

Anything a caller says is information you're responsible for, so the provider's answers about storage, access and AI training matter even more for you than for a painter. You're also responsible for what the system says on your behalf, in the same way you would be for a junior member of staff.

The Law Society of Ontario published guidance in 2024 on how its rules apply to generative AI, including confidentiality, competence and supervision. Osler's summary of it is a good place to start, along with the Rules of Professional Conduct. Our post on law firm websites makes the same point about contact forms.

Try it for a month first

Don't sign up for a year because the demo sounded good. Write down last month's figures first: missed calls, how many of those were new work, and jobs booked. Then switch the system on, on a monthly plan, with a recording notice in the greeting and urgent calls going to your phone. Listen to calls each week and adjust the script as you go.

After 30 days, compare the jobs booked from phone calls with the month before, and compare what you paid with what those extra jobs were worth. If you booked more work than it cost, keep it. If it mostly took messages your voicemail would have taken anyway, cancel it and stick with the free fixes.

If you'd like us to look

If you're paying for ads or lead sites, missed calls make all of them look worse than they really are. We can check how calls reach you from your website and Google profile, and where they're getting lost. Get in touch.