What’s the difference between an AI receptionist and an answering service?

An answering service traditionally relies on humans or basic automation to take messages and pass them to your team, while an AI receptionist is designed for real-time, conversational handling and can often do more than message-taking (like triage, FAQs, and scheduling). Many “automated answering services” are closer to menu-based or scripted systems, whereas AI receptionist experiences are built to let callers speak naturally and still get the right outcome.