AI Receptionist for Newcastle and the Hunter Valley

No. Yes AI is a Melbourne business with no Newcastle office, no Hunter staff and no local team, and we would rather say that here than let you assume otherwise. For this product it costs you very little, and it is worth understanding why: your 02 number is a Hunter number because your business is in the Hunter. Australian geographic numbers follow the customer's service address, not the provider's, nobody needs a shopfront on Hunter Street to give you one. Your business is genuinely local and the number is genuinely yours. What we supply is the software that answers it, and we are in your timezone all year.

You choose. We can provide a local Newcastle and Hunter number (02 prefix), a mobile number, or a national 1300 number, depending on your business and your customers' expectations. Local businesses usually prefer the local number for the trust it carries with regional customers; national businesses and e-commerce operators often prefer 1300. We can also work with your existing number and simply forward calls from it, which means nothing on your vehicles, signage or website needs changing.

If they ask, yes: the AI should tell them the truth, and we will not configure it to deny what it is. It answers with your business name and the greeting you set, takes the enquiry, books the appointment and passes the message. It does not pretend to be a receptionist sitting in your office. If your reason for buying this is that callers would never know, this is the wrong product. What they do get is a phone answered on the first ring at 8pm on a Saturday, which in our experience matters to people considerably more than the pretence does.

It is built with small and medium businesses in mind, sole traders, small professional firms and growing trades businesses, which is exactly the group that cannot justify a receptionist but feels every missed call. Plans start at $299 per month for up to 100 calls with business-hours answering, $599 for up to 500 calls with 24/7 coverage and appointment booking, and $1,299 for unlimited calls. Do the arithmetic against your own numbers rather than ours: if what you currently miss is worth more per month than the plan, it pays for itself. If it is not, it does not.

The AI does not distinguish between suburbs by default. It answers every call the same way. You can configure it to capture the caller's suburb and use that for service area filtering (for example, if you cover Newcastle and Lake Macquarie but not the Upper Hunter) or to route calls to different team members by area.

This is one of the most common reasons trades businesses use it. Plumbers, electricians, HVAC and builders across the Hunter take a large share of their enquiries in the evenings and on weekends, when the person who could answer is at dinner. The AI captures those calls with full job details and notifies you by SMS so you can decide whether it is an emergency tonight or a job for the morning list.

It is suitable for appointment booking, health fund queries and new patient intake, with clinical scope boundaries configured so it does not stray into advice. Two things to settle before you go live rather than after. First, health service providers are covered by the federal Privacy Act regardless of turnover, so agree up front how patient information is handled and where it is stored, ask us that question directly and we will answer it directly. Second, if you want calls recorded, the Surveillance Devices Act 2007 (NSW) governs recording private conversations, so get the consent position right first. We integrate with Cliniko and other practice management systems used across the Hunter.

Standard setup for a Newcastle business takes 24 to 48 hours. We configure your business profile and call flow from a short intake form you complete online, no meetings required. A custom configuration, such as a multi-site business with different call flows per location or an integration with a specific platform, typically takes three to five business days. We will confirm the timeline for your requirements when you enquire, and tell you if what you want is something we cannot do.