AI receptionist vs hiring a receptionist.
A good receptionist is one of the highest-return hires a small business can make. Using that person as a queue is one of the biggest wastes. Prime Assist answers every call at once, never queued.
From £150 a month including VAT
£125 plus VAT for 500 minutes, about 140 to 200 calls. New customers get the first three months free with a 12-month commitment.Note 1: new customer offer terms
Should I hire a receptionist or use an AI receptionist?
For most businesses the answer is both, in a specific order. A human is better at judgement, empathy, in-person hospitality and anything unusual, and cannot be replaced for those. An AI voice agent is better at answering simultaneous callers without a queue, covering nights and weekends, and completing routine bookings consistently in your systems. The failure mode to avoid is hiring people to absorb a queue: it is expensive, it does not scale to the peak, and it wastes the part of the job only a human can do.
Two different jobs that happen to share a phone.
| Capability | Prime Assist | In-house receptionist |
|---|---|---|
| Answers all concurrent calls | Yes | One at a time |
| Nights, weekends, bank holidays | Yes | Requires shifts or overtime |
| Sickness, holiday, turnover | Not applicable | Real and recurring cost |
| Consistency of information | Follows your approved script on every call | Varies with training and pressure |
| Cost as call volume doubles | Rises with the minutes used, in bundles of 500. No extra headcount | Additional headcount |
| Greeting people in the building | Not applicable | Only a person can do this |
| Reading distress or urgency | Escalates on defined triggers | A real strength |
| Handling a complaint well | Escalates to a human | A real strength |
| Local knowledge and rapport | Configured, not felt | Genuine |
| Available from day one | Once your scripts are signed off and tested | Recruitment cycle |
The waste is the queue, not the person
Count how much of your receptionist day is spent on calls that are entirely mechanical: what time is my appointment, can I move Thursday, are you open Saturday. Every one of those interrupts something more valuable. The argument for an AI voice agent is not that it is better than your receptionist, it is that your receptionist should not be a queue management system.
Peak demand is the honest test
Reception staffing is sized for the average and then fails at the peak: Monday morning, the 8am rush, the day after a bank holiday, the week a competitor closes. You cannot hire for a fifteen-minute peak. Software absorbs it without a rota conversation.
What a person does that we will not attempt
Reading the pause before someone says the real reason they rang. Recognising a regular by voice. Calming a caller who is frightened or furious. Making a judgement call that breaks the rules for a good reason. We do not simulate these, and we escalate to a human the moment they appear, on triggers you define.
Deploy first, decide on the hire later
Put Prime Assist on first answer and keep your receptionist on the desk. New customers get the first three months free with a 12-month commitment, so use those months’ call records, not a vendor promise, to decide whether you still need the extra hire.
The short verdict
Do not choose. Put an AI voice agent in front of the queue and keep your person for the work that requires a person. If you are choosing between a second receptionist and an AI receptionist, put the AI on first answer and let your own call records make the hiring decision.
Questions buyers actually ask.
Ask us something elseWill this make my receptionist redundant?
It does not have to. Prime Assist takes the repetitive calls so reception time can go to patients, clients or customers who are physically present, and to calls that need judgement. If your plan is to cut the role entirely, be honest with yourself about who handles the escalations.
Is it cheaper than a receptionist?
They do different jobs, so compare coverage as well as cost. The median full-time receptionist in the UK earned £25,865 a year before employer costs (ONS, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2026 provisional). Prime Assist starts at £150 a month including VAT for 500 minutes, about 140 to 200 calls, on a 12-month agreement, and answers every call at once, at any hour. Our guide to AI receptionist costs in the UK sets the billing models side by side.
What about the human touch our customers expect?
Keep it, and aim it at the calls that need it. Being answered straight away at 9pm is also a form of good service.
How does my receptionist feel about this?
Involve them from the start. Prime Assist takes the repetitive calls and hands over the difficult ones with a transcript attached. Ask your receptionist to help write the scripts: they know the calls better than anyone.
Can it cover holiday and sickness only?
Yes. You can start with overflow and absence cover, and extend it to full first answer when you are ready.
Page last updated . Every figure and claim on it is on our facts page.
Three ways to test us. Only one of them involves talking to a human.
Buying voice AI on a slide deck is how people end up with something that fails on the first awkward caller. So we made the product itself easy to try before you commit to anything.
Hear it for yourself, right now
Ring the line, choose a scenario, for example a dental practice or a trades business, and talk to Prime Assist the way one of your callers would. Ask it to book you in, then try to catch it out. No form and no email address.
Call +44 20 3747 7785We only get in touch if you ask us to.
Put a number on your missed calls
Two questions show the calls you miss today next to the same calls with Prime Assist, where every call is answered at once. Add your own figures to see what they are worth, what answering them would cost from £150 a month including VAT, and how many of your bookings that price equals.
Run my numbersNo email needed: nothing you enter leaves your browser.
Watch it handle your calls
Bring the three calls that waste the most of your team’s day. We run them live, in your sector’s language, and tell you honestly which ones we would not take. One short form to book.
Book a demoNo card, no sales sequence, one human reply.
Do all three, in that order, and it takes a little over half an hour in total. We would rather you tested the product than read our claims about it.
- DCB0129 safety case
- UK or EU processing region
- First three months free for new customers, with a 12-month commitmentNote 1: new customer offer terms
Let AI answer the phone, so your team can answer the person in front of them.
Bring your reception call reasons for one week. We will mark which ones a person should never have taken.
Free proof of concept on one call type before you sign, and new customers get the first three months free with a 12-month commitment.
HEAR IT FIRST
Call +44 20 3747 7785 and put Prime Assist through its paces before you book anything.
Notes
- New customer offer: 12 months for the price of 9. When you sign, you commit to all 12 months, starting on the day you go live. Months 1 to 3 are free, then you pay your bundle price each month for months 4 to 12, from £150 including VAT (£125 plus VAT), with the price before VAT fixed for your 12 months. On 500 minutes, the bundle for your 12 months costs £1,350 including VAT (£1,125 plus VAT), plus any extra minutes, at 36p a minute including VAT (30p plus VAT) in every month, free months included. For new customers, switchers included, once per customer. A new customer is a practice or business that has not used Prime Assist in the 24 months before it signs. Switching? We do the switch, and a notice period of up to three months runs alongside your free months. Full terms on our pricing page. Back to text, note 1, mention 1Back to text (2), note 1, mention 2
- Prime Assist column as at 23 October 2026; in-house receptionist column July 2026. Back to text, note 2