12 questions to ask any answering service or AI receptionist

Before you sign with an answering service or AI receptionist, ask every provider the same 12 questions and get the answers in writing. Then test the answers with your own calls, before your customers do. The questions that separate providers most are whether it books or only takes messages, how urgent calls reach you, and what counts as a billable call.

The questions work for any provider: a live answering service, a self-serve AI tool or a managed AI receptionist, including us. Infold’s own answers are at the end, kept apart from the checklist.

What kind of service are you comparing?

Most options fall into three groups, and the questions apply to all of them:

• Live answering services. People answer, usually billed by the minute or by the call. Many take messages rather than book.
• Self-serve AI receptionists. They cost less, but you set them up and keep them current.
• Managed AI receptionists. The provider builds and tunes it for you, and charges for that work.

Still choosing a type? Start with AI receptionist vs answering service. For dated prices from named providers, see what an AI receptionist costs in Canada.

The 12 questions at a glance

1. What will my callers hear when it answers?

The first few seconds set the tone. Ask for the exact greeting, word for word, and ask to hear it played. Listen for:

• Your business name, said properly.
• Who is answering. Canada’s privacy commissioners say organizations should “ensure that individuals interacting with the tool are aware that they are interacting with a generative AI tool” (OPC, principles for generative AI). One honest line does it.
• A recording notice. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) says a business “must inform the customer that they are recording a call, clearly state the purpose of the recording and obtain consent,” and that “customers must be given a choice about whether their voice is recorded” (OPC, updated October 8, 2026). If you contract out call handling, the provider has to follow the same rules.

If your callers speak more than one language, ask to hear a test call in each.

2. When does it answer, and does my phone still ring first?

You should decide: after hours, when your line is busy or nobody answers, or always. Most providers work through call forwarding, so you keep your number and can switch it off yourself (how call forwarding works in Canada).

Ask:

• Can my team answer first, so only missed and busy calls go to you? After how many rings?
• What happens when several calls arrive at once, in a cold snap or a Monday-morning rush? Is there a limit, a queue or a busy signal?
• How do I switch it on and off, and how fast does a change take effect?

Check your own line too. Some forward one call at a time: Rogers says that on its Home Phone no-answer forwarding, “any other caller will get a busy signal” while the line is forwarding a call (Rogers).

3. Does it book the appointment, or just take a message?

This is often the biggest difference between providers. A message means someone still has to call back, and callbacks from unknown numbers often go unanswered: Hiya’s 2026 vendor survey of more than 12,000 consumers in six countries found that 88% of Canadian consumers will ignore calls from numbers they don’t recognize (Hiya, August 5, 2026).

Ask:

• Which calendar or practice software does it book into today, and which are only “connected during setup”? Does that cost extra?
• Does it follow your rules: service lengths, who does what, locations, deposits?
• Does it only tell a caller “you’re booked” once the booking is saved? And when it can’t book, how fast does your team find out?

4. What does it do with an urgent call?

Every business has calls that can’t wait: no heat in January, an active leak, a knocked-out tooth, a court deadline tomorrow. You decide what counts as urgent and who hears about it.

Ask:

• Can I write my own urgent rules, in my own words?
• Who gets the alert, by call or text, and how fast? If they don’t answer, who’s next?
• For safety calls, such as a gas smell or a flood, does it read only the script I approve?

Then test it: call after hours with your worst case and time how long your on-call person takes to hear about it.

5. What happens when a caller asks for a real person?

Some callers want a person, full stop. A good service lets them reach one without a fight.

Ask:

• Is the caller transferred live, or called back? By whom, and how soon?
• Where do transfers ring? Make sure that number doesn’t forward back to the service, or callers go in circles.
• Does a transfer, or a hand-off to the provider’s own live agents, cost extra? Can it happen without my OK?

6. What will it say, and what will it refuse to say?

It should say what you’d say, and nothing you wouldn’t. Ask whether it answers only from information you approve, including the prices you’re willing to quote, and what it says when it doesn’t know. “I’ll have someone call you back” is a good answer. A guess isn’t.

Regulated professions need firmer lines:

• Dental offices and clinics. Intake and booking only, with no clinical advice. In Ontario, a regulation under PHIPA limits what a company supplying electronic services to a health practice may do with patient information (O. Reg. 329/04, s. 6). Our privacy checklist covers what to ask.
• Law firms. The Law Society of Ontario’s April 2024 white paper on generative AI (PDF) warns that a client-facing AI tool could create a lawyer-client relationship without the lawyer knowing, or give what a client reads as legal advice. It recommends avoiding such chatbots unless “appropriate controls are in place to ensure predictable and reliable outputs.” Ask whether intake takes the names for your conflict check first and leaves the facts of the matter for the lawyer.

7. How are mistakes caught and fixed?

Mistakes happen with people and with AI. What matters is how fast they’re caught and fixed.

Ask:

• Does it read back names, numbers and addresses? Does the caller get a text they can check?
• Can I hear the recording or read the transcript of any call?
• Who do I contact when something goes wrong, and does anyone review calls before I complain?

Be wary of headline numbers. Under the Competition Act, a claim about how well a product performs must be based on “an adequate and proper test,” and the business making it carries the proof (s. 74.01(1)(b)). If a provider quotes an answer rate or a jump in bookings, ask how it was measured, on whose calls and when.

8. What do I get after each call, and what does it send callers?

Ask what lands where, and how fast: the caller’s name, number, what they need and what was promised, by text or email, within minutes. Ask whether there’s a daily summary, and what the caller receives.

Texts to callers fall under Canada’s anti-spam law (CASL). A text that only confirms a booking the caller agreed to, or sends a quote they asked for, doesn’t need separate consent, but it must still identify the sender and offer a way to unsubscribe (CASL, s. 6). Promotional texts need consent: an inquiry gives implied consent for six months, and a purchase for two years (s. 10).

Also ask whether it will ever phone your customers on its own, for reminders or win-backs. The CRTC’s Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules require express consent, naming the specific number, before a telemarketing call made with “a pre-recorded or synthesized voice message.” In June 2026 the CRTC opened a review of whether those rules capture AI voices (Notice of Consultation 2026-132); when we checked on October 30, 2026, it had not published a decision. Ask who gets and records consent, and check with your lawyer before using AI for promotional calls.

9. What counts as a billable call or minute?

How a provider counts matters as much as the headline price. Ask:

• Per minute or per call? Per-minute plans charge for every second a caller spends explaining, and some round up: RingCentral says its AI receptionist “call time is rounded up and billed in 30-second increments” (RingCentral).
• Do spam and hang-ups count? Policies differ. Upfirst says it doesn’t bill “calls under 15 seconds or calls where the caller never speaks” (Upfirst); Smith.ai lets AI receptionist customers remove up to 10% of calls from each bill (Smith.ai).
• What happens when I go over? An overage charge, a forced upgrade, or a cap I approve? Will I be warned?
• On a live service, do hold time, transfers and writing up the message count as minutes?

Then ask for the first payment and the yearly total, with tax shown. Canada’s Competition Act treats a price that “is not attainable due to fixed obligatory charges or fees” as false or misleading, unless the extra is an amount imposed by law, such as sales tax (s. 74.01(1.1)). A mandatory setup fee belongs in the price you’re shown.

10. What’s the commitment, and how do I leave?

Get the way out in writing before you sign. Ask:

• Month to month or a contract? Is a year paid upfront, and what’s refundable?
• How much notice to cancel? Smith.ai’s AI receptionist, for example, is month to month but asks for “30 days’ notice” (Smith.ai).
• Can the price go up mid-term? Does a trial or guarantee start when you pay, or when calls go live?
• Do I keep my number, and can I export my call history if I leave? With call forwarding, your number stays with your carrier.

11. Where does call data go, and who can use it?

You stay responsible for your callers’ information when a provider handles it. Under PIPEDA, a business is responsible for personal information it transfers to a third party for processing and must use “contractual or other means to provide a comparable level of protection” (PIPEDA, Schedule 1, clause 4.1.3).

Ask:

• Which companies handle each step of a call (phone carrier, speech recognition, AI model, voice, storage), and where does each store and process data? “Hosted in Canada” can describe where recordings are kept while live steps run elsewhere.
• How long are recordings and transcripts kept, and can I change that? How fast will you tell me about a breach?
• Does anyone in the chain train AI models on my callers’ data? The privacy commissioners expect AI providers to disclose secondary uses, “such as where personal information collected from prompts is used for further training or refining of an AI model” (OPC). Get the answer in the contract.
• Callers in Quebec? Its private-sector privacy law says that “before communicating personal information outside Québec, a person carrying on an enterprise must conduct a privacy impact assessment” (s. 17), and that includes the rest of Canada.

Our privacy checklist has the full list of data questions.

12. Who sets it up, who keeps it current, and can I test it first?

A service only knows what it’s been told about your business, and your business changes. Ask who builds the call flow and how many hours it takes from your team; whether you can call it and try to break it before customers reach it; who updates it when your hours, prices or staff change, and how soon; and how long it takes to go live.

Self-serve tools suit owners who like to tinker and have the time. Managed services cost more because someone else does that work.

How do you test a service before you sign?

Make the same three calls to every service on your shortlist, from a phone that isn’t on your account:

1. The ordinary call. Book your most common service, the way a customer would ask.
2. The awkward call. Ask for something you don’t do, or change your mind halfway.
3. The urgent call. After hours, with your worst-case scenario.

On each call, spell out a hard name and address, ask for a person, and call from two phones at once. Then check what reached your calendar, your inbox and the caller’s phone, and how long it took. Score each service against the 12 questions while the calls are fresh.

Which questions matter most for your kind of business?

What are the red flags?

• No written definition of a billable call or minute.
• “Hosted in Canada” with no list of the companies that handle your calls.
• Performance numbers with no explanation of how they were measured.
• Privacy “certifications” for PIPEDA, PHIPA or Law 25. These are laws, not certification programs.
• “Callers won’t even know it’s AI.”
• “You’re booked” when nothing appears in your calendar.
• No way for a caller to reach a person.
• Pressure to prepay a year before you’ve heard it handle your own calls.

How does Infold answer these questions?

Here are our answers to the same 12 questions today. Hold us to the same standard as everyone else.

Where we’re not the best fit:

• A few calls a week, and you like setting things up yourself. A self-serve tool will cost much less.
• Most of your calls need a person’s judgement. A live answering service may suit you better.

Bring this checklist to your demo and ask us every question on it. See pricing, read how Infold handles call data, compare us with named providers in our sourced comparisons, or book a demo.