What a virtual receptionist actually does
A virtual receptionist answers your business calls from somewhere other than your office. That is the whole definition — the “virtual” part describes where the answering happens, not who or what does it. It covers a human PA in a call centre in Warrington and it covers software running in a data centre, and the two are sold with almost identical language.
The job itself is narrower than most people expect. Reception work is overwhelmingly: greet the caller in the business name, work out what they want, answer it if the answer is known, take a proper message if it is not, and put the call through if it is genuinely urgent. Long, delicate, consultative conversations do happen, but they are the minority of calls and they are usually with people who already know who they want to speak to.
That distribution is why AI answering became viable. It is not that the technology got good enough to replace a skilled receptionist on the hardest call of the week. It is that most calls are not that call.
The two models, and how they are billed
Human virtual receptionist services employ people, so they bill for time. In practice that means a monthly plan covering a bundle of calls or minutes, plus an overage rate once you exceed it. The shape has a specific consequence worth understanding before you sign anything: your bill rises exactly when your business is busiest. A good month and an expensive month are the same month. Providers quote per business and repackage periodically, so read the current rates on their own site on the day you decide, and get the overage rate in writing rather than the headline.
An AI virtual receptionist is software, so it is licensed rather than metered. Odette is a flat monthly licence — £19 Solo, £49 Pro, £99 Business — and it does not move when your call volume does. What you do pay separately is the telephony and voice underneath it, and you pay those providers directly at their cost rather than through us: a Twilio number is around £2.80 a month plus roughly 1p a minute, and ElevenLabs voice runs about 8p a minute. On a genuinely busy line that lands near £30 a month of usage. We do not mark it up, and we do not resell you minutes.
Both models are defensible. The point is that they fail in opposite directions — one gets expensive when you succeed, the other asks you to accept software on your front desk.
What you gain, and what you give up
The gains are availability and consistency. There is no queue while your regular receptionist is on another call, no gap between 5:30pm and 9am, no difference between the Tuesday morning greeting and the Saturday night one. Callers get a straight answer about what you do and when you are open, and the message that reaches your inbox has the caller’s name, number, company, reason and an urgency flag — captured in structured fields rather than scrawled on a pad.
What you give up is judgement on the unusual call. A human receptionist who has worked your front desk for three years knows which customer is about to leave, which supplier to stall, and when “it’s not urgent” means the opposite. That knowledge is real and Odette does not have it. What it does instead is refuse to invent: if something is not in your knowledge base, it says so plainly and takes a message rather than guessing, and if a call needs a person it announces the transfer to you — press 1 to take it, 2 for a message, 3 to promise a call back in five minutes.
Transfer is a plan feature, not a universal one. It is included on Pro and Business and requires a transfer number to be set; on Solo, urgent calls are captured as priority-flagged messages instead. Worth checking against how you actually work before you choose a plan.
What it does not do
Stated plainly, because the category is full of vagueness: Odette does not book appointments into a diary. It captures a callback or appointment request with everything you need to return the call, but it does not hold a calendar and it will not write into yours. It does not make outbound calls, take card payments, or send SMS. Anyone selling you an AI receptionist should be able to give you that list for their own product in one sentence; if they cannot, ask again.
Simultaneous calls are handled, but how many depends on the concurrency your own Twilio account allows — it is a setting on your telephony plan, not something we can promise on your behalf.
Is it right for you?
The honest test is what happens to your current missed calls. If your phone rings a handful of times a week and you catch nearly all of them, a virtual receptionist of any kind is solving a problem you do not have. If calls arrive while your hands are full, after you have closed, or faster than one person can pick up — and if the caller who does not get through simply rings the next name on the list — then the question is only which model fits your billing preference and your tolerance for software.
You can hear it before deciding anything. Our own line is 0330 912 3400, answered by the same product, and it tells you it is AI in the first sentence. Ask it something awkward.