AI receptionist glossary
The terms that come up when talking about answering customers and capturing bookings with AI, explained in a sentence.
- AI receptionist
- An automated assistant that handles your customers’ enquiries in natural language, answers with your real business information and captures the customer’s details (name, phone and time) so you can close the appointment. Unlike a menu chatbot, it converses rather than offering buttons.
- Virtual receptionist
- A service that answers calls or messages on behalf of a business without being physically at a front desk. It can be a remote person (call centre) or, like FrontChime, an AI available 24/7.
- Lead capture
- Collecting the contact details of an interested person — usually name, phone and what they need — so you can follow up and turn them into a customer.
- Response rate
- The share of enquiries (calls, messages, forms) a business actually answers. Every unanswered enquiry is usually a lost customer.
- Response time
- How long a business takes to reply to an enquiry. Replying within the first hour markedly increases the odds of winning the customer.
- Missed call
- A call that goes unanswered (after hours, line busy, nobody available). Without an automated fallback, it’s rarely recovered.
- Chatbot
- Software that replies to messages automatically. Classic ones follow button scripts; an AI receptionist understands and replies in natural language.
- GDPR
- The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. It governs how personal data is collected and processed, requiring a legal basis, transparency and security.