Can an AI receptionist answer pricing questions?

Price is the most common question a phone line gets, and the one businesses are most reluctant to answer.

Refusing it entirely costs you calls. A caller who cannot get a number rings the next company on the list, who will give one.

Answering it badly costs more. A quoted figure that turns out wrong starts the relationship with an argument.

Fixed prices are safe. A callout fee, a standard service, a consultation charge. These are facts and saying them fast wins work.

Ranges are workable when the range is honest and the reason for it is explained in the same breath.

Anything depending on what the assistant cannot see should be a handover. Access, condition, scope, urgency.

The useful phrasing gives something before transferring. A starting figure plus a reason the final number varies beats a flat refusal to discuss it.

Whatever you decide, write it in the brief rather than assuming. An assistant with no pricing guidance either says nothing helpful or improvises, and neither is what you wanted.

Say you run a carpet cleaning company. Your prices fall into three groups, and each needs different wording in the brief.

Fixed: "Standard cleaning is $45 a room with a three-room minimum, so the smallest job is $135." The assistant can say that to anyone, and should follow it in the same breath with an offer to book.

A range: "Pet odor treatment runs $30 to $60 a room on top of cleaning. The tech confirms the exact figure when they see the carpet, before any work starts." The second sentence is what makes the range safe, because the caller knows who decides and when.

Handover: water damage. There's no number to give, since it depends on how long the carpet has been wet and what's underneath. The brief says: "For flooding or water damage, don't quote. Say we need to see it, and transfer to Luis."

A wrong price on a call costs more than a wrong price on a web page, because the caller heard it from your business and wrote it down. The discipline is simple. On the day a price changes, the brief changes first, before the invoice template and before the website.

Add a safety line to anything that isn't fully fixed: "That's our current price, and we confirm it before starting." It costs four seconds and heads off most arguments.

Once a month, search your transcripts for dollar signs and read what was quoted. You're looking for figures you don't recognize, for ranges stated without the reason, and for callers who asked about a price you never wrote down. That last group is your list of new lines to add.

Know how you compare with local rivals. Ring three competitors as a customer and ask your most common pricing question. When all three give a number straight away and your line says "we'd need to see it", you're losing calls to them.

GreetKeeper says the prices you put in the brief and transfers on the rest, so nothing gets quoted that you did not write down.

Our own pricing follows the same principle. Plans are published at $49, $149 and $349 with overage rates of $0.45, $0.35 and $0.25 a call printed beside them.

Transcripts show you which pricing questions came up, which is usually the fastest way to find out what your brief should have covered.