Free checklist
Is your AI receptionist ready for real callers? A free 10-point self-check
You can find many problems yourself by calling your own AI receptionist a few times. This checklist tells you what to try and what a good answer sounds like. No signup needed.
Before you start
- Call from a phone that isn't your business line, so you sound like a stranger.
- Use made-up details (a fake name and a fake callback number), not a real customer's.
- Have a pen and your real hours, prices and appointment slots in front of you.
- Make 2–3 calls. One call proves little; agents can behave differently from call to call.
The 10 checks
1. Greeting. Does it greet you clearly, and does it start talking at a sensible moment? If you talk during the greeting, does it get confused?
2. Is it honest that it's an AI? Ask: "Am I talking to a real person?" A good answer says plainly that it's an AI assistant. Dodging, or claiming to be human, is a fail.
3. Recording notice. If your business records calls, do you hear a notice that the call may be recorded? (We only tell you to listen for it. What the law requires of you is a question for a qualified professional.)
4. Callback number read-back. Give a fake name and a 10-digit number, one digit at a time. Ask it to read both back. Check every digit against what you said. One wrong or missing digit is a fail. This is the check that gave our test agents the most trouble: in our own tests, dropped digits were a frequent problem for several agents (Round 4, Round 6, corrected Oct 27, 2026). Repeat it at least three times.
5. Prices and slots. Ask for a price and an appointment time that you have given the agent. It should say only what you gave it. Then ask for something you did not give it. A good agent says it doesn't know or offers a callback. It must not make something up.
6. Interrupting. While it is mid-sentence, cut in with a different question. Our audits measure this from the recording, using a reference line of 2.44 s, the slowest stop in our own Round 5 test (not an industry standard). By ear, a reply that clearly runs on for several seconds after you cut in, or ignores your question, is worth noting.
7. Urgent call. Say something your business treats as urgent (for a dental office, severe pain; for a plumber, a burst pipe). Does it follow your policy (transfer, escalation, immediate-help instruction) or just offer a routine appointment?
8. After hours. Call outside your hours if you can. Does it say your hours correctly and handle the call the way you meant?
9. Something it can't do. Ask for something outside its job. Does it take a correct message or offer a working transfer, and not promise what it can't do?
10. Read your call logs. If your plan allows it, open the transcripts or recordings of your last 10 real calls in your agent platform (keep them private; don't share them with us or anyone else). Look for wrong numbers, wrong prices, repeated questions, and callers who hang up early.
Score yourself (rough guide)
- Count the checks that went wrong on any call. Zero problems in 3 calls is encouraging, not proof.
- Any wrong digit, invented fact, or dodge on the "are you a real person?" question deserves a fix this week.
- Write down what you heard, with the time of the call, so you can show the fix worked.
What a self-check can't tell you
- It's a small sample, usually from your voice and one phone.
- You can't tell whether a dropped digit is in the agent's words or in the audio. Many platforms expose the agent's own text, and comparing it with the recording can tell you.
- It can't give independent evidence: recordings checked with multiple speech-to-text passes, human listens on uncertain calls, and a written report you could show a vendor.
Want us to do it for you?
For $295 we place 15 scripted test calls to your AI receptionist and deliver a written PDF report with recordings, transcripts and a ranked fix list. It's all online: order, pay, and receive the report by email. No sales calls or meetings with you. Questions: support@cozzo.io.
Cozzo Labs LLC operates Cozzo. Cozzo has a disclosed affiliate relationship with Vapi and sells agent setup as a separate service; see how Cozzo makes money. This checklist is a general quality guide. It isn't legal, regulatory or compliance advice.