Your AI receptionist's first week, day by day
What to do on each of the first seven days after an AI receptionist goes live: what to read, what to fix, and the signal that it is ready for more autonomy.
Frontiva · · 2 min read
The first week of an AI receptionist is supervision and fixing. Keep every reply in approval mode, read every draft, add the missing facts the drafts reveal, tune the tone once, test the handoffs on purpose, and at the end of the week decide which conversations it can answer on its own. By day seven the list of questions it could not answer should be short, and most drafts should need no edits.
Day 1: watch everything
Approval mode on. One person reads every draft before it sends. Do not fix anything yet except outright errors; note what goes wrong. Expect "I am not sure" replies to questions you thought were obvious.
Day 2: fill the obvious gaps
Open the list of questions it could not answer. Most will be facts you know by heart: parking, a price, a policy. Add them. Rewrite any FAQ whose wording customers do not use.
Day 3: tune the tone
Read twenty drafts in a row. If they sound too formal, too cheerful, or too long, change the tone paragraph once. Do not edit individual replies to fix tone; fix the instruction.
Day 4: test the handoffs on purpose
From your own phone, send the messages that must reach a person: an emergency word, a complaint, "can I speak to someone", a medical or legal question. Confirm each one handed off and that someone saw it.
Day 5: check the numbers
How many conversations did it handle? How many handoffs? How long did handed-off customers wait for a person? If they waited hours, the problem is ownership, not the AI.
Day 6: fix what repeated
Look for edits your team made more than twice. Each one is a missing fact, a wrong fact, or a tone rule. Fix the cause.
Day 7: decide
If most drafts went out unedited and the gaps list is short, consider letting simple conversations send on their own: hours, directions, booking links. Keep pricing, new customers and anything sensitive supervised for longer.
Frequently asked questions
What if it is wrong a lot on day one?
That is normal and useful. Each wrong answer points at a fact that is missing or unclear. Fix the facts, not the replies.
Who should read the drafts?
Whoever answers the phone today. They know the right answers and the right tone.
Can we skip the supervised week?
You can, but businesses that skip it usually spend longer fixing mistakes customers already saw.
What Frontiva does here
Frontiva's AI agents start in approval mode, the knowledge gaps log counts every question the agent could not answer, and the readiness suite and playground let you test handoffs before and during the week. See autonomous vs approval mode for the decision on day seven.