AI receptionist vs hiring someone
A receptionist greets the person at the counter and does the other ninety per cent of the job. Ours answers the phone, including at seven on a Saturday.
That is our own line, answered by the AI Receptionist. Ask it for a quote.
Hiring a receptionist or answering with AI
WorkBC puts annual earnings for a receptionist in British Columbia at $37,670 CAD a year, and says the hours are generally Monday to Friday. Ours is $97 CAD a month plus a one-time $297 implementation fee, and it answers at seven on a Saturday. A person can do a hundred things our AI cannot. If those hundred things are the job, hire the person. If answering the phone is the job, ours costs less and answers at any hour while your hands are full.
A front desk and ours, job by job
The hire's column is WorkBC's published profile: the duties, the hours and the earnings, dated. Four of these rows go to the person.
When it answers
What the job is
What it costs
Sources: WorkBC's Receptionists career profile, checked 20 July 2026.
What a front desk costs
WorkBC’s Receptionists profile publishes annual earnings of $37,670 CAD a year in British Columbia. The same profile puts the median hourly wage at $24.00 CAD and the high at $30.00. For reference, the general minimum wage in BC is $18.25 CAD an hour.
The wage is not the whole cost. An employer also carries:
- CPP and EI contributions
- WorkSafeBC premiums
- Statutory vacation pay
- The cost of hiring, training, and eventually replacing someone
We have not put a dollar total on those, because we could not source one. They are real, and the figure above is the wage alone.
Sources: WorkBC's Receptionists career profile and the Government of British Columbia, checked 20 July 2026. All prices are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax.
Where hiring someone beats us
Four things a person does that our AI does not.
A person greets the customer who walks in the door.
Ours cannot. If somebody has to be at the front when the door opens, that is a person's job and no software changes it.
A person does the other ninety per cent of a front-desk job.
The filing, the follow-up, the supplier who needs chasing, the thing you forgot. Answering the phone is one line on that list.
A person exercises judgement.
They remember that this customer's mother was ill last month, and they know when the rule should be bent. Ours follows the rules you gave it and escalates the rest.
A person can be trained on anything.
You explain it once and it is learned, including the parts nobody wrote down. Ours has to be configured, and anything it has not been configured for goes to you.
The two ways to answer the phone
Sources: WorkBC's Receptionists career profile, checked 20 July 2026. Employer costs above wages are real and are not included in that figure. All prices are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax.
This is not an argument for firing anyone
Most owners weighing this are in one of two situations, and neither of them is about removing a person.
In the first, there is no front desk. There is you, a phone in a pocket, and a voicemail box that callers hang up on. The decision is whether the next step is a salary you are not sure you can afford this year.
In the second, there is a front desk, and it is working. The calls being lost are the ones that arrive after that person has gone home. WorkBC’s own line on the job is plain: “Most receptionists work in office settings. Hours are generally Monday to Friday.”
In that case, buy both. The person works the week and does the hundred things a person does; the AI takes the call that comes in at seven in the evening, which is the call the wage was never going to cover.
Sources: WorkBC's Receptionists career profile, checked 20 July 2026.
Hire someone if this is you
Hiring is the right buy when
- Customers come to your premises and someone needs to be there.
- The phone is a small part of a job that is mostly other things.
- You have the volume of administrative work to justify a salary.
- You want someone who can be handed anything.
Ours is the right buy when
- You are mid-job and cannot pick up.
- Your calls come outside office hours as often as inside.
- You need the phone answered but you do not need a desk staffed.
- A salary is not something you can commit to this year.
Questions buyers ask
If they ask, it tells them the truth: it says it is an assistant for your business and carries on. It does not pretend to be a person. What it is configured to do is answer the question, quote inside the ranges you set, book the job, and hand anything it has not been given an answer for straight to you. Some callers can tell, and we do not claim otherwise.
It hands them to you. You write the rules for what counts as urgent, and those calls route to your mobile while the caller is still on the line. Everything else is recorded, transcribed and summarised.
Yes, and it is a common order to do it in. The configuration stays as it is; when the person starts, calls in their hours can ring the desk first and fall through to the AI when nobody picks up, and the AI keeps the evenings, the weekends and the overflow. Nothing gets rebuilt.
For most of the people who buy it, no, because there is no job there to replace. They have a phone that nobody answers and a voicemail box that callers hang up on. Where there is a front desk, in practice this takes the calls that arrive when that person is not at work, and the desk keeps the hundred other things it does.
Calls past 75 a month bill at $0.75 CAD each. Spam and wrong numbers don't count. You can see the running count in your dashboard all month. All prices are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax.
The full price.
$97CAD a month
One-time $297 implementation fee
Included: 75 calls a month. Past that, $0.75 CAD per call. Spam and wrong numbers do not count.
In your first 30 days, we keep configuring your AI receptionist at no extra charge until it answers, quotes and books the way we agreed. That work is covered by the implementation fee.
No hourly billing.
All prices are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax.
If you are busier than that
75 calls is two or three a day. A month where the phone rings 150 times costs $97 plus $56.25. You see the count in your dashboard all month, so it never arrives as a surprise.
$97/mo, plus $297 CAD for the build.
The build fee is due at signing.
In your first 30 days, we keep configuring your AI receptionist at no extra charge until it answers, quotes and books the way we agreed. That work is covered by the implementation fee.
Still weighing the other options? An answering service against ours is the other comparison people read beside this one.