You can configure an AI Receptionist agent by creating an agent and setting up its phone number, greeting, intents, routing, fallback, data collection, job matching, FAQs, closing statement, and voice.
Create an Agent
Go to AI Team > AI Receptionist. AI Receptionist appears alongside AI Recruiter and AI agents when the feature is enabled for your account.
Select + Add agent to create a new agent.
The configuration screen is similar to AI Agent Builder, with additional AI Receptionist-specific settings.
Configure Greeting
Configure the Greeting that plays when a call connects.
Set up the greeting the same way you would in AI Agent Builder. The greeting plays before the agent begins identifying the caller.
Configure Intents & Routing
Configure the intents that AI Receptionist can recognize and respond to.
Supported Intents
AI Receptionist supports the following intents out of the box:
| Intent | What it covers |
| Assignment / Placement | Questions about a candidate's current assignment or placement, including status, start and end dates, and other mapped details. |
| Submission | Questions about jobs the candidate has already applied to. |
| Candidate data | General questions about the candidate’s own records, including requests to update or modify their personal information. |
| Business development / Sales | Calls from prospects or partners that need to be routed to your sales team. |
| HR / Payroll | HR, Payroll, or Policy-related questions that can be answered using your FAQs or routed to HR. |
For each intent, configure the fields the agent can access, whether it can update those fields, and how calls should be routed.
Configure Fields
Select the fields that the agent can read when responding to the intent.
Standard fields, such as status, start date, end date, title, and description, are pulled in automatically based on your ATS mapping.
Add additional fields if callers are likely to ask for information that isn't included by default.
Allow Field Updates
You can enable Allow Update for any field that you want callers to be able to update during a call.
When enabled, Sense saves the caller's updated information and writes it back to the corresponding field in your ATS.
Fields with Allow update disabled remain read-only, so callers can't change their values during the call.
Configure Routing
Routing is disabled by default. Enable it when you want calls for a specific intent to be transferred to a person.
You can configure either of the following routing options:
- Static routing: Route the call to a specific phone number.
- Dynamic routing: Route the call to the specific person related to the caller of the relevant record. For example, route the call for a candidate application to the job internal employee/recruiter.
For dynamic routing, map the internal employee mobile number field that Sense should use to identify the internal employee's phone number.
If the internal employee is unavailable because they are outside their available hours or don't answer the call, the caller can leave a message. Sense then notifies the internal employee by SMS or email that someone tried to reach them.
Configure Fallback Communication
You can configure a Fallback number and Fallback email to receive requests that AI Receptionist can't resolve.
Fallback communication is used when:
- The caller's request doesn't match a configured intent.
- AI Receptionist can't determine how to handle the request.
Fallback communication is enabled by default and can't be disabled. This ensures that unresolved requests are directed to an appropriate fallback channel instead of being dropped.
Configure Data Collection
Configure Data collection to determine which information AI Receptionist collects when it can't identify an existing candidate.
Important: Data collection is used when AI Receptionist can't find an existing candidate match. It isn't a general intake questionnaire that the agent asks every candidate not in the agency's database.
The fields required by your ATS to create a candidate are populated automatically.
If your ATS doesn't enforce required fields, such as Bullhorn, define the questions you want AI Receptionist to ask and map each question to the corresponding write-back field.
Add additional questions if you want to collect more candidate information during the initial call.
Configure Job Matching
Configure the default matching parameters that AI Receptionist uses to search for open jobs.
You can also add custom instructions to control how the agent searches for matching jobs.
When AI Receptionist finds matching jobs, it sends the job details to the caller by text message.
If no matching jobs are found, Sense notifies the assigned recruiter with the caller's details so they can follow up directly.
Note: Job matching only identifies and surfaces matching jobs. It doesn't screen or qualify the candidate against those jobs.
Configure FAQs and Closing Statement
Configure the FAQ and Closing Statement the same way you would in AI Agent Builder.
- FAQ: Add information that AI Receptionist can use to answer common questions.
- Closing Statement: Configure what the agent says when the call is ending.
Configure Voice
Configure the bot's Voice the same way you would in AI Agent Builder.
The voice configuration works the same way for AI Receptionist.
Test the Configuration
After configuring the bot, call the assigned number to verify that it works as expected.
The test environment does not support the following:
- Call routing: Routing is not supported during test calls.
- Object creation: Creating objects, such as candidates, is not supported during test calls.
Test the following
During the test call, verify that:
- Greeting
- Caller identification
- Configured intents
- Field retrieval
- Field updates, if enabled
- Call routing
- Fallback behavior
- Data collection
- Job matching
- FAQs
- Closing statement
- Voice
Edit AI Receptionist settings
You can use the Settings icon to update the basic configuration of your AI Receptionist.
- Select the Settings icon in the top-right corner.
- Update the Agent Name or Description.
- In the Brand dropdown, select the brand you want to associate with the AI Receptionist.
- Select Save to apply your changes.
Publish the AI Receptionist Agent
Once you've completed the configuration and tested the AI Receptionist, you can publish it to make it available for incoming calls.
- Click Publish in the top-right corner.
- Confirm the publish action, if prompted.
After you publish, the AI Receptionist is available to handle incoming calls based on your configured settings.
Expected result
Once set up, a call to your AI Receptionist number should play your greeting and the recording disclosure, then either identify the caller by phone number or move into data collection. From there, it should answer or route the call based on intent, and fall back to your default contact for anything it can't resolve.
Example: A Job-matching Call
The following is a representative example of what a job-matching call looks like once AI Receptionist is configured. Wording will vary based on your greeting, FAQ, and how the caller responds.
AI Receptionist: Thank you for calling [Your Agency]. You've reached our AI receptionist. I'm here to help with questions about your assignments, job applications, availability, and more. How may I help you today?
Caller: Hi, I'm looking for some jobs — can you help me find something?
AI Receptionist: Got it, you're interested in finding jobs. Let me check if I have your candidate record... I found more than one candidate record for your phone number. Could you share your complete email address so I can match you correctly?
Caller: It's alex.rivera@example.com.
AI Receptionist: Thanks for spelling that out. I couldn't find a candidate record with that email address. Could you tell me your full name so I can double-check?
Caller: Alex Rivera.
AI Receptionist: Thanks for confirming. I still can't safely match your record, so I'll collect a few quick details to get you set up. What city and state do you live in?
From here, the agent collects the remaining basics (state, work authorization), asks what kind of role the caller wants, searches open jobs, and — as in this example — either offers to read matches aloud or, if the caller prefers, texts the matches directly. The call closes with a note that a summary is added to the candidate's profile so the assigned recruiter has visibility.
Important notes and limitations
- Each AI Receptionist agent needs a unique inbound number. It can't be shared with another AI Receptionist agent or with an outbound or screening/data-enrichment agent in AI agents.
- You can't convert an AI agent Builder agent into an AI Receptionist bot, or the reverse. They're separate agent types, built for different use cases — AI Receptionist is purpose-built for inbound calls only.
- AI Receptionist has no workflow module of its own; it only responds to inbound calls. You can still reference its number from an outbound Workflow message.
- Job matching finds and sends matching jobs. It doesn't screen or qualify candidates.
- Fallback communication is mandatory and can't be disabled.