AI Voice & Greetings

Choose your AI's voice, write its greeting, set its personality, and control what it says.

• How your AI receptionist worksOn every call three systems work together: speech-to-text turns the caller's words into text as they talk, a language model decides what to say and which action to take, and text-to-speech speaks the reply in the voice you chose. The model works from instructions FrontDesk builds for each call out of your settings: the greeting, name and tone on Receptionist → AI Voice, your hours, address and services, your knowledge base and accepted insurance, the switches that say what it may do, your call script and your clinical rules. Actions such as checking availability or booking run against your live calendar. After the call you get a summary and transcript in Call Logs, and the call is scored in the Review queue. Knowing the pipeline helps you write better greetings, knowledge and scripts.
  3 min
• What your AI can and can't doYour AI answers questions from your settings and knowledge base, books, reschedules and cancels appointments, adds callers to the waitlist, takes messages and callback requests, looks up balances and texts a secure payment link, recognizes returning patients, and transfers calls, each within the switches on Receptionist → AI Voice, Voice tab. It won't give medical advice or diagnose, quote a price you haven't set (and only when Quote prices is on), take a card number over the phone, or share a returning patient's details before identity checks when those are required. It transfers when a caller asks for a person and in the situations you choose; if transfers are off, no one can take the call, or it can't help, it takes a message for your team. Messages land in Tasks.
  3 min
• Choose an AI voiceOpen Receptionist → AI Voice; the Voice card is at the top of the Voice tab. In English mode it lists 12 voices (Emma, Layla, Clara, Chloe, Nia, Jake, James, Neil, Josh, Adam, Ryan and Luis), each with its accent and gender. Click the play button to hear a sample and click the row to select it: the voice saves at once ("Voice set to …"), with no Save needed, and the next call uses it. With Answers in set to Spanish or Bilingual the list shows the six Spanish-capable voices instead (Andrew, Horacio, Antonio, Sophia, Hannah and Brittney), which have no audio preview. The Speaking speed slider (0.5x to 1.5x, shown as Slow, Normal or Fast) sits under the list, and Tone is in the How it answers card; both need Save Changes.
  2 min
• Customize your greetingThe greeting is on Receptionist → AI Voice, Voice tab, in the How it answers card: the Greeting field, up to 500 characters with a counter. The Insert chips add {assistantName}, {businessName} and {patientName}, filled in on every call. Leave it blank for the default: "Hi! This is [name] with [practice]. How can I help you today?", or "Thank you for calling [practice]!" when no assistant name is set, greeting a recognised caller by first name. [practice] is the name clients know you by (your organization name, or the location's Name clients see), never the location's own name; with more than one location it adds the office, as in "Bright Path Therapy, Indianapolis office". Reset to default clears your text. Introduces itself as sets the assistant's name; Tone and the Speaking speed slider shape how it sounds. Click Save Changes, then hear it with a test call. A recording notice plays first when you have one turned on. There is one greeting; the after-hours voicemail message is on Settings → Phone & SMS → Calls.
  4 min
• Set what your AI can do on callsOpen Receptionist → AI Voice, Voice tab, and scroll past the voice and greeting. What it can do has switches for Book appointments (or Transfer instead of booking), Reschedule, Cancel, Quote prices, Caller memory, Conversation memory and Verify identity before sharing records, plus Send refill requests to athenahealth when athena is connected. Handing off to a person holds Transfer to a human: send transfers to An outside number or My team (it rings the app and the web), choose whether staff hear a whisper, and pick when the AI transfers without being asked. Where things go sets the office email for taken messages, what the AI does when it answers after hours, the maximum call length, and the booking lead time and how far ahead callers can book. Click Save Changes in the bar at the bottom.
  7 min
• Call scripts & AI agentsOpen Receptionist → AI Voice → Call scripts. When answering calls lists your inbound scripts; the Calls are answered by row picks which one runs on live calls (Default agent) and, optionally, a different one after hours (Same agent otherwise). Click a script to open its System prompt, edit it, use the Insert chips for {{variables}}, and click Save Changes; Reset to default restores a built-in script. + Custom script creates your own inbound agent,. The script you pick is layered on top of your settings, services, hours and knowledge, so it changes how the AI handles calls, not what it can do. When calling patients lists outbound scripts, which are read-only approved templates unless you click Request edit access. Each script has a Test button for a live test call.
  4 min
• Spanish and bilingual callsOn Receptionist → AI Voice, Voice tab, the Answers in control at the top of the Voice card offers English, Spanish or Bilingual. Bilingual starts every call in English and switches to Spanish as soon as the caller speaks it, for the rest of the call, on the same number; Spanish conducts the whole call in Spanish. Both need a Spanish-capable voice, and in those modes the list shows only those: Andrew, Horacio, Antonio, Sophia, Hannah and Brittney. The language and the voice save as soon as you pick them. Switching offers to reset your own greeting to the new language's default. Translate my greeting & knowledge to Spanish rewrites your greeting and the Anything else it should know box; review it and click Save Changes. Text reminders and the online booking page stay in English.
  2 min
• Train your AI on your FAQsOn Receptionist → AI Voice, Voice tab, the What it knows card shows what the AI already has from your settings (your active services with their lengths, with Manage, and your hours, with Edit) and a free-text box, Anything else it should know, for everything else: parking, arrival instructions, what to bring, policies. It holds up to 8,000 characters and is added to every call. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page and the next call uses it; there is no retraining. For many questions, or long answers, use the Knowledge tab instead, which the AI searches during the call. Accepted insurance has its own card on the Knowledge tab, and prices come from your services when Quote prices is on. Each location has its own text.
  2 min
• Build your AI's knowledge baseThe Knowledge tab (Receptionist → AI Voice → Knowledge) is a searchable library your AI looks things up in during a call. Enter your website in the banner and click Import: FrontDesk reads up to 8 pages and turns them into entries, usually in under a minute; Re-import replaces the previous website entries and never touches entries you added. Click Add to write your own: a title, a category (General, Services, Insurance, Billing, Policies, Pre-visit, Post-visit, Directions, Forms, Providers or Other) and the answer, written the way it should be said aloud. Each entry has a switch to take it out of use without deleting it. The library holds up to 200 entries and 250,000 characters. When a caller asks something, the AI searches it and uses the few closest matches, so short, focused entries work best.
  2 min
• Review queue & clinical rulesBoth tabs are on Receptionist → AI Voice. Each call the AI handles is scored and added to the Review queue with a severity, the kind of call and how it went. The queue has To review, Urgent (critical and high severity) and Reviewed views and a What your AI is getting wrong summary. Open a call to read the transcript, grade it (Handled well, Partly right, Got it wrong or Not a real call), add tags or a note, then Save & next. Add to clinical rules turns a correction into a when/then rule. The Clinical rules tab lists those rules by priority; active rules are added to the AI's instructions on every call at this location. Suggested rules for your type of practice stay inactive until you click + Add.
  3 min
• Test your AI with call scriptsOpen Receptionist → AI Voice → Call scripts and click Test on any enabled script. In the Test Call window, enter your phone number (Use My Phone fills in your practice number) and click Start Test Call. The AI rings you within seconds using that script and your saved voice; you see Calling your phone..., then Call in Progress with a timer and a live transcript, then Test Call Complete! with the full transcript. Testing an inbound script runs your real receptionist: real hours, services, availability and knowledge, but bookings, cancellations and messages are simulated, so nothing lands on the calendar. The Free plan includes 5 test calls a month and paid plans are unlimited. To hear exactly what callers hear, including real bookings, call your FrontDesk number from your own phone.
  4 min
• Advanced voice settingsThe Advanced tab on Receptionist → AI Voice fine-tunes the timing and turn-taking of your AI. Pacing sets who speaks first (Assistant greets or Caller first), a Patience preset (Snappy, Balanced or Relaxed) with Fine-tune the exact timing underneath, and Hang up after silence (30 seconds by default). Further cards cover phrases that do or do not count as interruptions, nudging quiet callers, voicemail detection, background-noise filtering, recovery lines, sign-offs, and the short fillers the AI says while it checks the calendar or looks something up. Defaults work well for most practices; change them only if calls feel off. Click Save changes at the bottom, or Reset to defaults to undo all advanced tuning.
  8 min
• Set your accepted insuranceOpen Receptionist → AI Voice → Knowledge and use the Accepted insurance card. Under Accepted plans, type each plan and press Enter, or pick a common one from the list (Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Delta Dental, Medicare and others). Insurance notes (optional) holds up to 1,000 characters for anything the list cannot say, such as "We are out-of-network but provide superbills". Click Save; the next call uses it. When a caller asks about insurance, the AI looks up this list and your notes and tells them which plans you take. It cannot check an individual's benefits or eligibility, so for anything beyond the list it offers to take a message for your team. The list is per location; with several locations you can copy another location's list or apply this one to all.
  1 min