Real-World Onboarding

Most guides assume you're starting from zero. In reality you already have a way calls get handled today: a person, a voicemail box, or your own cell phone, and ripping that out on day one is risky. You don't have to. Every scenario below starts small, lets you and your customers get comfortable, and only expands once it's clearly working.

Pick whichever matches your situation, or skip straight to [Phone Number Setup](/docs/phone-number-setup) once you know your path.

Scenario: You already have a human receptionist

Goal: Free up your receptionist's time for outreach and customer service by offloading scheduling to the AI.

Low-risk way to start:

• The next time your receptionist is about to book an appointment, have them ask the customer: "Would you be open to trying our new automated booking line? It's quick and available 24/7."
• If the customer says yes, your receptionist gives them the AI receptionist's phone number.
• The customer hangs up with your receptionist, dials the AI number, and books the appointment themselves.
• Your receptionist gets the calendar notification just like any other booking, and follows up as normal.

Nothing about your existing setup changes: your main line, your receptionist's job, and your calendar all work exactly as they do today. You're only testing a second, parallel path with customers who explicitly opt in.

Once it's working: offer the AI line to more callers, use it as the default for routine bookings (reschedules, quick estimates), and keep your receptionist focused on calls that need a human touch: upset customers, complex jobs, sales conversations.

Scenario: You answer your own phone, but want the AI to pick up when you're unavailable

Goal: Stop losing jobs when you're on a ladder, driving, mid-job, or your phone just rings out to voicemail, without changing anything about how calls work when you do answer.

Low-risk way to start:

• Set up conditional call forwarding (see "Forward everything, or only when you can't answer?"). Your phone rings first, and only rolls over to the AI receptionist if you don't pick up.
• Turn off (or delay) your carrier's own voicemail so the AI actually gets the call instead of losing the race to your carrier's voicemail box. See the note in Phone Number Setup.
• Tell a few regular or repeat customers directly: "If I don't answer, my assistant will pick up and get you booked, same as texting me, but faster."
• For the first week or two, check the dashboard after each AI-answered call to see what happened: was the caller booked, or did they need something you should call back about?

Every call you'd have picked up still comes straight to you. The AI only ever sees calls you were already missing: this is pure upside, no risk to calls you'd have handled yourself.

Once it's working: consider shortening the ring time before it rolls over, so fewer callers sit through unanswered rings before reaching someone who can actually help them, or move on to having the AI answer everything (see below).

Scenario: You want the AI receptionist to answer 100% of incoming calls

Goal: Make the AI receptionist your full-time front line, not a fallback.

Low-risk way to start:

• Start by handing out your dedicated AI receptionist number as the "front desk" line for a specific channel first, for example a new ad campaign, a listing update, or a new location, while your existing number keeps working exactly as before.
• Watch a batch of real calls come in on that number and confirm bookings, transfers, and urgent-message alerts all behave the way you expect.
• Once you're confident, either keep that number as your permanent front line, or move on to forwarding your existing number to it completely (see the next scenario) so callers never have to know anything changed.

Once it's working: this is the steady state most businesses land on: the AI answers every call, and you only get pulled in for the calls it flags as urgent or outside what it can handle.

Scenario: You want your existing number to completely forward to the AI

Goal: Keep the number you've always advertised, but have every call to it answered by the AI receptionist from now on, with no ringing on your phone first.

Low-risk way to start:

• Get your dedicated AI receptionist number first, and run it through the "100% of incoming calls" scenario above until you're confident in how it handles real calls.
• When you're ready, set up unconditional forwarding (*72 on most carriers, or your carrier app) from your existing number to the AI number. Every call to your known number now goes straight to the AI; your own phone never rings.
• Forwarding is reversible any time with *73, so if something's off you can move back to answering calls yourself while you sort it out.

Because you already validated the AI on a separate number first, this step is just a phone-company setting change, not a leap of faith.

Scenario: You're already a Jobber user

Goal: Get missed-call leads and after-hours bookings into Jobber without re-typing anything.

Low-risk way to start:

• Connect Jobber first, before you route any real calls. Confirm a test booking shows up correctly as a Jobber request or job.
• Start with the "unavailable" scenario above, so the AI is only handling calls you weren't going to answer anyway.
• Check that each AI-booked appointment appears in Jobber the way you'd expect: client record, requested time, and job details, before sending it more volume.

Once it's working: this is the scenario the Starter plan is built for. A dedicated number, Google Calendar, and Jobber are all included from day one, so there's no feature you'd need to upgrade for just to run this rollout.

The general pattern

Every scenario above follows the same shape, regardless of your starting point:

• Start with calls you were already going to lose (voicemail, missed calls, or an explicit customer opt-in), never calls you're already handling well.
• Verify a handful of real bookings land correctly on your calendar (and in Jobber, if you use it) before trusting it with more volume.
• Expand gradually: more call types, more hours, eventually the main line, once you've seen it work with your actual customers, not just a test call.

If you're unsure which scenario fits, start with whichever one changes the least about how your business already operates today.