Your Tinylawn AI receptionist answers incoming calls, handles customer questions, books appointment requests, and captures leads — all automatically. This article explains what happens from the moment a call comes in to when it appears in your dashboard.

When someone dials your Tinylawn phone number, the AI receptionist picks up and delivers your greeting. By default, it says:

"Hello, thank you for calling [Your Business Name]. This is [Agent Name]. How can I help you today?"

You can customize this greeting anytime in Settings > Receptionist > Greeting.

During the call, the receptionist can:

- Answer questions about your services, pricing, and business hours

- Respond to FAQs you've configured

- Check your real-time availability based on business hours, appointment windows, existing appointments, and date overrides

- Capture appointment, reschedule, or cancellation requests

- Collect the right call details through natural follow-ups and, when one applies, a single saved Call questions scenario

- Collect caller information like name, address, and service needs

- Transfer the call to you or a teammate when a warm-transfer rule matches

- Screen spam calls and block repeat offenders

The AI uses the information you've set up in your account — services, business hours, FAQs, Call questions, and scheduling settings — to give accurate, helpful answers. It carries forward details callers already shared and skips similar saved questions instead of asking twice.

After the call ends, Tinylawn processes it automatically:

- The conversation is summarized by AI.

- The call is tagged with a category (see below).

- A call record is created with the summary, full transcript, and audio recording.

- Notifications are sent to contacts who opted in for that call type (email, SMS, and/or push).

- If the caller hung up early and call recovery is on, Tinylawn may text them a link to your default form.

For calls that capture a usable quote or appointment request, extra steps happen:

- Caller details (name, phone, address, service, preferred time) are extracted from the conversation.

- The address is validated automatically. If it can't be confirmed, the customer may receive an SMS to confirm or correct it.

- A client record and property record are created.

- A lead is created and appears in your Leads page.

- The customer may receive an SMS with a link to upload property photos.

- The property is enriched with data like lot size, square footage, satellite imagery, and a Virtual Site Report.

The receptionist draws on several sources of information you control:

Every call is automatically tagged with one of these categories:

- Appointment Request — The caller asked for a specific visit time.

- Reschedule Request — An existing appointment change was requested.

- Cancellation Request — An existing appointment cancellation was requested.

- Quote Request — Usable quote or job-request details were captured.

- Prospect Follow Up — A new prospect needs a callback.

- Client Follow Up — An existing client needs help.

- Message Taken — The caller left a general message.

- General Question — A question was answered and no further action is needed.

- Missed Call — No usable caller request was captured.

- Needs Follow Up — Fallback tag when the request still needs manual review.

- Spam — The call was identified as spam or a sales pitch.

- The more complete your setup (services, hours, FAQs, transfers), the better the AI handles calls.

- Review Prospect Follow Up, Client Follow Up, Message Taken, and Needs Follow Up calls regularly — these are opportunities that need a personal touch.

- Spam calls are not counted toward your monthly usage.

- You can listen to call recordings and read transcripts on the Calls page anytime.