ai answering service
AI Answering Service with Live Agent Backup
Built around the calls AI shouldn't take.
An AI answering service answers routine business calls day or night — common questions, appointment booking, order status — and routes the calls that need judgment to a person. Ours runs both sides under one roof: AI voice from US$0.15 a minute, with live multilingual agents taking the handoff.
Live agents from US$300 a month · 65+ languages — AI and human agents alike · start from half a seat — no five-seat minimums.
at a glance
What is an AI answering service?
An AI answering service uses voice AI to answer business calls, handle routine requests such as FAQs and appointment scheduling, and route calls requiring judgment or empathy to a person. It is sometimes called an AI virtual receptionist, particularly when it also books appointments, qualifies leads, and transfers calls.
Callnovo provides the AI and the multilingual live-agent backup under one service — 65+ languages — the same list whether the AI answers or a person does.
how it works
How it works.
- 1
Answer
AI picks up your business phone 24/7, using your greeting and your approved knowledge base.
- 2
Resolve
It handles FAQs, appointment booking, status checks, and lead intake on its own.
- 3
Escalate
Calls that need judgment transfer to your team or a Callnovo agent, with the transcript and caller context attached.
what it does
What the AI handles on its own.
- Answers 24/7 — nights, weekends, and overflow during your business day
- Identifies caller intent and routes by your rules
- Answers FAQs from your approved knowledge base, not the open internet
- Books, moves, and cancels appointments
- Checks order and job status through integrations — Shopify, Jobber, ServiceTitan, Skimmer
- Captures and qualifies leads with your intake questions
- Follows up by SMS or email from the same conversation thread
- Hands off to a live agent with the full transcript and caller context attached
the seam
Most vendors show you the AI. Few show you the seam.
The AI on every answering service demo sounds fine. It answers, it books, it reads your hours. The demos have converged — the AI is no longer the difference between vendors.
The difference is the seam: what happens the moment a call goes past what the AI should decide. Does a person pick up — in the caller's language, with the context the AI already collected, at 2am? Or does the caller get a promise that someone will call back?
We run both sides of that seam under one roof — the AI and the people it hands off to — which is why this page spends more time on the handoff than on the bot.
who takes which call
Route by the cost of getting it wrong.
| The call | Route to | Cost of getting it wrong |
|---|---|---|
| "Are you open? Where's my order?" | AI | An annoyed caller |
| Booking, moving, cancelling | AI | An annoyed caller |
| Price questions with a published answer | AI | A lost lead — AI reads your rates verbatim |
| A caller who is upset, or already burned once | Human | A person who needed a person |
| Money in dispute | Human | The relationship, not just the refund |
| Anything touching safety or a legal deadline | Human | A call that must never wait in a queue |
| A supported language your team doesn't staff | Callnovo agent | The AI "handles" it, fails, and hands off to nobody |
Your escalation rules define which words, intents, or account conditions trigger an immediate live transfer. The AI does not make legal, medical, or safety decisions — it recognises your triggers and moves the call.
That last row is the quiet killer. Most AI voice vendors cover far more languages than their human team can staff, and the caller only finds out at the handoff. A call the AI can't close is covered only if a person who speaks that language can take it — so we run one number, not two: 65+ languages, AI and human agents alike. A second, larger AI number would look better and fail the caller at exactly the moment the first one stopped working. (How we staff languages →)
three ways to buy
AI-only, live, or hybrid — decided by your call mix, not by the demo.
| Who it fits | Main limitation | Human fallback | |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI-only | Calls are mostly lookup and booking | Struggles with emotional or unusual cases | Usually a callback, or nobody |
| Live agents | Low volume, high stakes — every call is judgment | Cost scales linearly; you pay a person to read your hours aloud | Built in — it is the fallback |
| Hybrid (what we run) | Mixed traffic — AI closes the routine, people take the rest | Depends entirely on handoff quality | Built into the workflow, same queue |
what it costs
Published rates, so you can check the division.
| Option | Published price | Per unit | What it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI voice | US$0.15 | per minute | Hours, scheduling, order status, rate questions |
| Web chat | US$0.15 | per session | Quote requests that land at midnight |
| Live shared team | from US$300 / month | includes 500 min → ≈ US$0.60/min | Mixed traffic with a human fallback |
| Live shared team | from US$650 / month | includes 1,500 min → ≈ US$0.43/min | Higher-volume coverage, including 24/7 setups |
| Dedicated agent | from US$5.80 | per hour, per agent | Your scripts, your escalation rules, a named team |
| Pay-per-resolution | from US$1 | per resolved contact | You pay for outcomes; unresolved costs nothing |
Rates vary with coverage hours, language mix, and call complexity — your quote spells out included minutes, overage rates, and minimums before you sign, so the number you compare is the number you pay. Package overview: pricing →
coverage
The part that doesn't fit in a demo: 26 countries, 65+ languages, half a seat to 200+.
Live-agent coverage follows your operating hours, your language mix, and your escalation rules — a 2am caller reaches a person because someone's daytime shift covers your night, and a Spanish caller reaches a native speaker, not a translation layer. That is what the geography below is for.
Operation centres in Markham (Canada), Yueyang and Shenzhen (China), La Paz (Bolivia), Managua (Nicaragua), and Nueva Ecija (Philippines) — delivery from 26 countries — Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Brazil, Bolivia, Suriname, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Kenya, Madagascar, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and South Korea. (Full language coverage →)
Engagements run from half a seat to 200+. The point of that range is not size — it's that you don't change providers when your volume changes. Crossing a vendor's boundary is a re-procurement: new RFP, new training, new QA baseline. Staying inside one range isn't. Since 2004 · about us →
start from your situation
This page is the map. Your situation has its own page.
The phone rings after you close
After-hours answering service →
Your callers speak Spanish
Bilingual answering service →
You’re small and deciding whether to buy at all
Answering service for small businesses →
You run a law firm
Answering service for law firms →
Your industry has its own rules — HVAC, med-spa, property management, pool services…
110 industry pages →
You’d rather run the platform yourself — same engine, your hands on the controls
HeroDash →
when we're the wrong choice
Three cases where you should buy something else.
- You want software you configure and run yourself. Then you are buying a platform, not a service — compare platforms on their own terms, including ours. A service contract wrapped around software you wanted to drive is the worst of both.
- You need a single onshore delivery site, WFM certification, and a named site director in the contract. That is an enterprise BPO requirement, and enterprise BPOs are better at it — true at 20 seats and at 200.
- Your phone genuinely does not ring. If your voicemail is empty most mornings, an answering service is a solution to a problem you do not have. Check a month of logs before you buy anything — from us or anyone.
questions
What buyers ask before they sign.
What is an AI answering service?
An AI answering service uses speech recognition and language models to answer business calls without a person on the line — greeting the caller, answering routine questions, booking appointments, and routing anything it should not decide to a human agent. In our deployments, hybrid routing is the practical norm: AI takes the first turn, people take the judgment calls.
How does an AI answering service work?
The AI picks up, identifies what the call is about, and either closes it — hours, booking, status, published prices — or hands off. The handoff is the part to inspect before buying: whether a person is actually staffed at the same hours, whether they see the full transcript, and whether they speak the caller’s language.
How much does an AI answering service cost?
Our published rates: AI voice US$0.15 per minute, web chat US$0.15 per session, live shared teams from US$300 per month including 500 minutes, dedicated agents from US$5.80 per hour, pay-per-resolution from US$1. The number that matters is the blend — what your routine volume costs on AI plus what your judgment calls cost with people.
What happens when the AI cannot handle a call?
It hands off to a live agent with the context it collected — identity, reason for calling, what was already attempted. If the handoff target is not staffed at that hour or in that language, the call fails twice. That staffing is the actual product; the AI is the front door.
Can it answer in languages other than English?
Yes — 65+ languages, and the same 65+ whether the AI answers or a person does. One number, not two, is the point: a language the AI can greet but nobody can staff fails the caller twice — once at the greeting, once at the handoff. Spanish is native-staffed from Bolivia and Nicaragua.
Is an answering service worth it for a small business?
Sometimes no — if your phone rarely rings after hours and your daytime volume fits your team, keep your money. The honest math on missed-call cost versus monthly fee, and when your mobile is still the right answer, is on our small business page.
start
Get a call-mix assessment.
Send a month of call logs, a rough call count, or simply describe your most common calls — whatever you have. We'll come back with a split: what AI can safely close, what needs a person, and what each side costs at your volume, on published rates. If the answer is that you don't need us, we'll say that too.