AI receptionist for recruitment agencies

What is an AI receptionist for a recruitment agency?

An AI receptionist for a recruitment agency picks up the phone, the website chatbot and the inbox when your consultants cannot. It answers the routine questions candidates and clients ring in with, captures their details completely, takes messages, and books calls into the right consultant's diary. There is an irony in how agencies miss calls. Recruitment runs on the phone: consultants spend the day ringing candidates and chasing clients, which is exactly why nobody is free when the agency's own line rings. The business built on calls is often the one that cannot answer its own. Kalvo answers at the first ring, on the number already printed on your job adverts and your website. Every call ends as a complete record: who rang, which role, what they wanted, and when to ring them back. What it says is yours. The answers come from role notes and agency notes your team writes in ordinary English, so locations, working patterns and who covers which desk stay accurate.

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

How does it handle candidate calls?

A candidate responding to an advert usually rings in a spare five minutes, often the only five minutes they have that day. If the call goes to voicemail, many will not try again, and the advert you paid for goes to waste. Kalvo answers, asks which role they saw, and takes it from there. It answers their questions from the notes your team provides for each role: the location, the hours, whether it is temporary or permanent, and the pay or rate if you choose to share it. Anything not in the notes is logged as a question for the consultant, not guessed at. Then it captures the details in full: name, the role they are interested in, their availability, and the best number and time for a callback. The candidate hangs up knowing a consultant will ring them, and the consultant picks up a complete record rather than a missed-call notification. What Kalvo never does is screen. It does not assess, filter or rank candidates, and it gives no opinion on suitability. Judging who is right for a role stays entirely with your consultants.

What about client calls from hiring managers?

A hiring manager with a new role to fill is the call an agency least wants to miss. They are often ringing more than one agency in the same hour, and the first proper conversation tends to win the brief. When that call lands, Kalvo takes the outline: the role, the location, whether it is temporary or permanent, and how quickly they need someone. Then it books a call with the consultant who covers that desk, at a time the client agrees to, instead of asking them to leave a message. A client chasing a shortlist gets the same treatment. Kalvo notes which role, what they are waiting on and how urgent it is, so the consultant rings back knowing exactly what the call is about rather than walking into it cold. Either way, the client's experience is a receptionist who took them seriously and a consultant who called back prepared. That is a hard first impression for a voicemail greeting to compete with.

£1,200 the estimated cost of a single missed customer call. Source: BT Business research, 2014

Does it cover the website chatbot and email as well as the phone?

Yes. Phone, the website chatbot and email all run through Kalvo, and everything lands in one inbox. There is one knowledge base behind all three, so the answers do not drift between channels. That matters because candidates do not all ring. Someone browsing job boards from an open-plan office cannot call about a new role on their lunch break, so they ask by chat instead, and get the same answers a caller gets by phone, because both come from the same role notes. Email enquiries work the same way. A candidate asking about a role overnight or a client sending across a vacancy gets a reply drawn from the same notes, and the thread joins the same inbox as the calls and chats. For your consultants, that means one place to look each morning. Every enquiry is a complete record with a name, a role and a next step, whichever channel it arrived on.