Let the AI receptionist answer texts

1 What it does

1. Answers people who text your business number, with what you told it about your business.
2. Asks for the name, the service, the address and a good time, and creates a new request in Requests.
3. Never gives prices and never confirms a time. That stays with you.
4. Stops as soon as someone on your team replies, or when the client asks for a person.

The first reply says it's an automated assistant.

2 Turn it on

1. Open Settings → AI assistant and find Text receptionist.
2. Turn on Answer texts with AI. It's off until you do.
3. Under When it answers, choose Always or Only outside business hours (the hours in Settings → Online booking).
4. Under What it should know, write the services you do and don't do, the areas you cover and how soon you can usually come. No prices.
5. Click Save.

It starts answering once text messages are on with your own number (Settings → Text messages).

3 Privacy and limits

1. Each reply sends the last 3 days of that conversation, your business details and your notes to Anthropic, the AI provider. For existing clients it also sends their name. Phone numbers aren't sent.
2. The settings show how many replies it sent this month (up to 500).