Traditional answering services put humans on the phone reading from a script. An AI answering service works from the business's actual content, so it can answer specific questions about services, pricing, and availability instead of only taking messages, and it costs a flat rate rather than charging per call or per minute.
Most AI answering services today live on the business's website as a chat widget, where the majority of after-hours enquiries actually start. The best ones capture the enquirer's details and hand genuinely tricky conversations to a human.
Clerkzo is an AI answering service for your website: it trains on your own pages, answers enquiries 24/7, captures leads, and hands off to your team when a visitor asks for a human.
Related terms
Browse all 142 terms- Answering serviceAn answering service handles a business's calls or enquiries when its own staff can't, taking messages and bookings so nothing is missed.
- After-hours answeringAfter-hours answering is covering customer enquiries that arrive outside business hours, evenings, weekends, and holidays, so those customers get a response instead of moving on to a competitor.
- Virtual receptionistA virtual receptionist is a remote human, often part of a shared team, who answers a business's phone calls and messages on its behalf, typically billed per call or on a monthly retainer.
- FAQ chatbotAn FAQ chatbot is a chat widget that answers a business's frequently asked questions in conversation, instantly, so visitors get the exact answer they need without reading through an FAQ page.