AI receptionist for accountants

What is an AI receptionist for an accountancy practice?

An AI receptionist for an accountancy practice picks up the phone, the website chat and the inbox when your team cannot. It books appointments, answers the routine questions that interrupt client work, takes messages, and puts urgent callers through to a person when you have told it to. Most calls to an accountant are not about tax at all. They are about whether you are taking on new limited companies, what a first meeting costs, when the office is open over the bank holiday, and what to bring to a year-end review. Kalvo answers those from practice notes your team writes in ordinary English, so fees, hours and services stay accurate. The boundary is deliberate. Kalvo never gives tax advice on a call. It takes details, answers practice-knowledge questions, books time with the right person, and leaves a complete message for anything that needs an accountant's judgement. That matters most in a small practice, where the person answering the phone is often the person doing the work. Every call Kalvo takes is one fewer interruption to a set of accounts.

How does it cope with the January self-assessment rush?

January is the month the phone works against you. The self-assessment deadline fills the diary with returns to finish, and the same deadline fills the line with clients asking whether theirs is done. The calls are heaviest exactly when the team most needs to be left alone. Overflow answering changes the shape of the problem. Your number stays as it is, and Kalvo steps in only when the line is engaged, when nobody picks up within a few rings, or when the office is closed. On a quiet morning in May your team answers as normal. Because Kalvo answers every line at once, ten clients ringing on deadline day all get through at the first ring. Progress questions are answered from your notes where you have written the answer down, chase-ups are logged with the client's name and what they need, and anything genuinely urgent goes through to a person. The team gets January back as working time. The calls are still captured, as a tidy list rather than a ringing phone.

62% of calls to small businesses go unanswered. Source: 411 Locals, 2016 study

Can it handle new client enquiries about fees and switching?

A new client enquiry is the most valuable call a practice gets, and it usually arrives while everyone is billing time. Someone comparing three firms asks what you charge, whether you handle VAT and payroll, and how hard it is to move from their current accountant. If that call reaches voicemail, the enquiry usually ends there. Kalvo answers from your practice notes. It can explain your fee structure as you have written it, list the services you cover, from bookkeeping and VAT returns to payroll and year-end accounts, and describe how switching works at your practice and what you need from an incoming client. It also captures the lead completely: the caller's name, the business, roughly what they need, who looks after them now, and when they are free to talk. Your team rings back with the whole picture rather than a name and a mobile number.

80% of callers sent to voicemail do not leave a message. Source: Forbes, 2014

What happens when a client rings about an HMRC letter or a deadline?

A brown envelope from HMRC makes people anxious, and anxious clients ring. Kalvo answers calmly, takes the client's name, the reference on the letter, the date it arrived and what it appears to concern, then reads the details back so nothing is written down wrong. It does not interpret the letter and it does not give tax advice. That line is fixed. What the letter means, and what to do about it, is a conversation for the accountant who knows the file. Urgency follows rules you set, not the caller's tone. A client facing a deadline in two days, or a payment demand they do not recognise, can be put straight through to a person or flagged for a same-day call back. Everything else waits in the message queue with the reference already captured. Deadline calls work the same way. Kalvo notes which return or payment the client is asking about and when they believe it falls due, then passes it to the team to confirm. The client hears what happens next instead of an answering machine.