How do I switch AI receptionist providers?

The switch itself is not technically hard. Forwarding is a setting, and pointing it somewhere else takes a minute.

What takes time is rebuilding the brief, because it rarely transfers between vendors in any useful form.

The risk is concentrated in the gap between canceling one thing and confirming another.

Build and test the new setup first, using a spare number or a direct dial rather than your main line.

Export anything you want from the old provider before you give notice. Transcripts and caller details are business records, and access usually ends with the account.

Check whether any number belongs to the old vendor. If you took one from them rather than forwarding your own, leaving means porting, which takes days and has to be scheduled.

Move the forwarding on a quiet morning and ring your own number to confirm it landed where you intended.

Run both for a week if the old contract allows it, then cancel. A week of overlap costs one month's fee and removes nearly all the risk.

Say you run a chimney sweep company and you're moving from another answering provider in early September, before the busy season. Here's the move laid out on a calendar.

On day one you export your transcripts from the old provider and copy its greeting, FAQ answers and transfer rules into a document by hand. Nothing imports, but your old script is a good first draft. Day two goes to writing the new brief, using the ten questions that show up most in those old transcripts. For the third day's testing you call the new forwarding number directly from your cell, so your main line is untouched.

Day five is a Tuesday. At 7am you cancel the old forward, set the new one, and ring your own number from a second phone to confirm who answers. From then until day twelve both accounts exist, and you check the old dashboard each evening. If a call turns up there, some line is still pointed at the old provider.

On day twelve you remove the old provider's calendar access, switch off its automations and cancel the account.

Second lines are the usual stray. The main number gets moved and the old fax-turned-voice line, the after-hours number or the ad tracking number keeps forwarding to the provider you just left. List every number you own before you start and tick each one off.

Look for the old vendor's number in the wild. If you ever printed or advertised a number they issued to you, it stops working when the account closes. Search your website and your Google listing for it.

Read the notice clause before you pick dates. If the old contract needs 30 days' notice, give it on day one so the overlap week falls inside a month you're already paying for.

During the overlap, both systems may be connected to the same calendar and CRM. Two systems reading one calendar is harmless, but two automations writing to one CRM will create duplicates, so pause the old one the moment the forward moves.

GreetKeeper is reached by forwarding your own number, so switching to us or away from us is a carrier setting rather than a migration.

You write the brief in plain language, which means rebuilding it is typing rather than a configuration project.

Pricing is published at $49, $149 and $349 with overage printed, so the comparison against your current bill is arithmetic rather than a quote request.