A receptionist costs about $40,000 a year once salary and benefits are counted. A CellCog AI Employee answers common customer questions from your docs, and drafts email responses to incoming inquiries, for a fraction of that.
*A shift is a focused block of work, roughly 2,000 credits (about $20 at standard rates). One shift every working day, 250 days a year, comes to about $5,000 a year; actual cost scales with how much it works.
Five things a receptionist does every day, handled on demand.
Answer common customer questions from your docs and knowledge base.
Draft email responses to incoming inquiries.
Build and maintain an FAQ document.
Route and summarize incoming messages by priority.
Schedule appointments and send confirmations.
Copy, paste, and adapt. Each one comes back as a finished artifact.
“Here are 15 questions customers ask us most. Write clear, friendly answers based on our docs and format them as a customer-facing FAQ page.”
Delivers: a formatted FAQ document
“Draft polite email responses for these five common situations: refund request, hours inquiry, booking change, complaint, and partnership ask.”
Delivers: five reusable email templates
“Summarize these 30 incoming messages by priority and tell me which three need a same-day reply.”
Delivers: a prioritized inbox summary
“Create a simple intake form for new client inquiries with the fields we need to route them correctly.”
Delivers: a ready-to-use intake form
“Write appointment confirmation and reminder messages for our booking flow, friendly and on brand.”
Delivers: confirmation and reminder templates
Founders hand off the repetitive receptionist work and get back finished deliverables, so they can focus on what only they can do.
Small teams point CellCog AI Employee at the receptionist work no one owns, so output stays consistent and no longer waits on one person.
Agencies produce receptionist deliverables across many clients at once, growing capacity without adding headcount.
Knowing when to lean on a person is the whole point.
The first impression of a friendly person at the front desk sets a tone that an automated reply cannot fully match.
A human receptionist notices when a visitor is confused, upset, or a VIP and adjusts in the moment.
Greeting guests, handling deliveries, and managing the physical space are things only a person on-site can do.
Hiring a receptionist is valuable, and expensive. Here is how it compares for the production-heavy parts of the job.
| Human Receptionist | CellCog AI Employee | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | ~$40,000/yr fully loaded | ≈ $5,000/yr* |
| Availability | Business hours | Works shifts on demand, any hour |
| Ramp-up time | 2 to 4 weeks | Instant |
| Output formats | A few document types | Reports, PDFs, slides, spreadsheets, images, video, audio, dashboards, interactive apps |
| Scalability | One person, one task at a time | Parallel tasks |
| Sick days and turnover | Yes | Never |
| Onboarding | Recruiting and training | Goals, access, and approvals |
| Inquiry response | During business hours | Drafted answers any hour |
| FAQ upkeep | Rarely updated | Rebuilt from your docs on demand |
| Live phone calls | Yes | No (prepares scripts, not live calls) |
*A shift is a focused block of work, roughly 2,000 credits (about $20 at standard rates). One shift every working day, 250 days a year, comes to about $5,000 a year; actual cost scales with how much it works.
When you connect your docs and policies, it answers from your real information rather than guessing. You review the answers it drafts, so accuracy stays under your control.
It drafts responses in your tone, and with your inbox connected and your approval it can reply directly. Anything sensitive routes to you first.
It flags the message for you instead of inventing an answer. That way unusual or sensitive inquiries reach a human, while routine ones get handled fast.
The responses are warm and on-brand when you give it your voice, but it is a tool for handling routine inquiries, not for pretending to be a specific employee. Use it to keep responses fast and consistent.
Its strength is written communication: email, chat, FAQs, and scripts. For live phone reception a human is still better, but it can prepare the answer scripts that make calls faster.
A receptionist costs about $40,000 a year once salary and benefits are counted. A CellCog AI Employee works in shifts of roughly 2,000 credits (about $20 each); one shift every working day, 250 days a year, comes to about $5,000.
Click "Hire your AI employee" to sign up and hire one in minutes, or use "Talk to us" and our team will help you set up your AI Receptionist.
Give it your most common customer questions and get back a clean, friendly FAQ you can publish today.