The Voice Receptionist is in early access, so we switch it on for the accounts that ask rather than opening it to everyone at once. Open Skills, find the AI Voice Receptionist and hit Request access. We will come back to you on your support ticket, and once it is switched on you install it yourself from the same page.
The Voice Receptionist answers the calls you cannot get to. It picks up in your business name, talks to the caller, and depending on what you let it do, takes a message, saves a new client, or pencils in a job for you to approve. Because it is part of Mucka, everything it takes lands straight in your jobs, clients and diary, with nothing to copy across.
You keep your own number: you forward your calls to the number Mucka gives you, so the receptionist only picks up when you do not. See Forward your calls to Mucka for how to set that up.
Getting set up
Once we have switched it on for you:
- Open Skills and hit Install on the AI Voice Receptionist.
- Mucka walks you through setting it up. Pick a voice and what it says when it answers, give it your website so it can learn what you do, choose what it is allowed to do, and set the hours it can book work in. It takes about five minutes.
- The last step gets you your number. Nothing is bought until you get there, so you can take your time over the rest.
- Fill in and accept the data-processing agreement, at the bottom of the receptionist's settings. Because Mucka is handling your callers' details for you, the law asks for one in writing — we have prepared it. See The paperwork for answering your phone.
- Forward your calls to that number and it starts answering.
Every step is optional and nothing is final. Skip anything you are not sure about and change it later in your receptionist settings.
What it costs
The receptionist comes with every paid Mucka plan and your free trial, so there is nothing extra to subscribe to. Each user on your plan gets 60 minutes of calls a month, included, and both the calls it answers for you and the calls you ask it to make come out of the same pot.
On the free trial? You can claim a real number and use it just like anyone else. It stays yours through your trial and for 14 days after it ends. If you have not added a card by then, we hand the number back to the network so we are not renting it for an account that is not using it, and once it is gone we cannot get that same number back. Add a card before the end of that window and it is yours for good.
If you need more than your included minutes, you buy them in bundles of 500 minutes for £45 (plus VAT). You can also turn on auto-top-up so Mucka buys another bundle automatically when you drop below a level you set, and you never run out mid-month.
Minutes and billing
Because the receptionist is part of your Mucka plan, there is no separate receptionist subscription. Open the Receptionist page and, under Settings, you will see your minutes balance, a Buy 500 minutes button, and the auto-top-up toggle. Every payment shows in your payment history with a VAT receipt.
Buying minutes is done on the web: in the phone app you will see your balance but not the buy button, so head to app.mucka.ai on a laptop to top up or add a card.
Choose what it can do
Open Receptionist to set it up. Under What your receptionist can do, switch each job on or off:
- Take a message / lead. Always on. The caller's name, number and what they need, saved for your team to follow up.
- Check addresses. Always on. It looks the caller's postcode up against the Royal Mail address file and reads the real address back to them, rather than spelling it from the sound of it.
- Add a new client. Let it save a first-time caller straight into your client list.
- Check the diary. Let it read your schedule and tell callers when you are free.
- Pencil in a booking. Let it prepare a job for you to approve.
- Look up a caller's bookings. Let it tell a caller it recognises what they already have booked in.
- Reschedule a booking. Let it pencil in a change to an existing appointment's time for you to approve.
- Quote standard prices. Let it tell callers what something costs, using only the items you have ticked on your price list. Always given as a standard charge the team will confirm, never a fixed quote.
Switch off anything you would rather handle yourself.
When it pencils something in, you get told
A pencilled booking is not a job yet — it is a promise the receptionist made on your behalf, waiting on your yes. So it does not sit there quietly:
- It goes straight into your diary as a pencil, so you can see the slot is spoken for. It stays there whether you act on it or not, even after the day has passed.
- You get a notification and a WhatsApp the moment it happens — "Booking to approve" — with who rang, what they want, when, and the address. The WhatsApp has two buttons: Approve it books it there and then, Open it sends you the link.
- An action card appears on your overview, and approving it turns the pencil into a real job.
- If the slot is getting close and nobody has decided, Mucka reminds you again. The caller was told the team would confirm, so a booking nobody has looked at is the one thing here worth chasing you about twice.
Turning off engine-action notifications in Settings turns all of that off too — the pencil and the card still appear, they just stop chasing you.
There is deliberately no "decline" button on the WhatsApp. Saying no deletes the pencil and puts the slot back, and that is not something you want to do by accident from your lock screen, so it is a job for the app where you can see what you are giving up.
Say no and the pencil is removed, which puts the slot back. Say yes and it becomes an ordinary job. Doing nothing leaves it pencilled — visible, but nobody has been confirmed, so the caller is still waiting.
Quote standard prices needs a second step before it does anything: it only works once you have also ticked Let the AI receptionist share this price on the items you are happy for it to give out. Tick the items but leave this switch off and callers asking a price are told the team will get back to them. See Set up your price list for the full picture.
How it offers times
Most trades do not give a customer an exact start time, because a job overrunning two streets away turns that into a broken promise. So you choose how your receptionist words what is free. The setting appears on the Receptionist page under How it offers times, once Check the diary is switched on.
- Exact times. It offers a start time: "I've got Tuesday at 9am, or Tuesday at 2pm." This is what every account starts on.
- Morning and afternoon. It offers a half of the day: "I could do you Tuesday morning, or Tuesday afternoon." The split is midday, and the two halves follow your working hours.
- Your own slots. You set them up yourself, whatever you actually sell: 8 to 10, 10 to 12, 12 to 2, 2 to 4. Name each one however you say it on the phone, because that is the wording the caller hears.
Underneath the three choices is a line showing exactly what a caller would hear, updating as you change things. Set the days you work and the hours you start and finish in the same place, and the receptionist never offers a Saturday you do not work or a 7am you are not up for.
If you offer a window, that is what the customer is told and what they get in writing. The confirmation text says "8am to 12pm", not a start time, and if they ring back to check, the receptionist reads the window back rather than an hour. Your diary shows the window on the job too, so whoever is keeping the promise can see what it was.
Behind the scenes Mucka still puts the job at a real time inside the window (the first slot that is genuinely free), so two morning bookings never land on the same doorstep at eight o'clock. You will see that time if you open the job; the window is what the customer was told.
Filling your afternoons before your mornings
Plenty of businesses would rather keep one half of the day clear: mornings for the big jobs you plan yourself, afternoons for whatever comes in over the phone. On Morning and afternoon, a Fill up first setting lets you say which half the receptionist leads with.
Pick Afternoons and callers simply hear "I could do you Tuesday afternoon." The morning is not mentioned, so nobody talks you into one.
It still will not turn work away, though:
- Once that day's afternoon is booked, it offers the morning. Each day is judged on its own, so a full Tuesday afternoon means Tuesday mornings go back on offer while Wednesday still leads with its afternoon.
- A caller who asks for a morning gets one. If they say "afternoons are no good for me", the receptionist checks and offers what is genuinely free. Same for an emergency, where the answer is whatever is soonest.
If you want a harder line, tick Only offer afternoons. Then it never books a morning over the phone at all: a caller who needs one is offered a message instead, and you ring them back and decide yourself. Worth knowing that this one does turn work away, which is the point of it, so only tick it if that is what you mean.
Set your working hours to your real hours, not the half of the day you want booked. The receptionist quotes your hours to callers, so an 8 to 5 business that sets 12 to 5 starts telling people it does not open until midday. Fill up first is the setting for that, and it keeps your hours honest.
How long it holds for a job
Unless you tell it otherwise, a booking taken over the phone holds an hour of your diary, whether it is a tap washer or a boiler swap.
You can do better than that from your price list: each item has a Typical length. Set Boiler service: 1 hour 30 once, and from then on a caller booking a boiler service gets offered slots that are actually long enough and the job goes in the diary at ninety minutes.
You do not have to tick share with receptionist for this to work. That switch is about whether the receptionist may say the price out loud; a length is never read to a caller, it just decides how much of your day to keep free. For anything not on your price list, the receptionist falls back to the length you set on the receptionist page.
Greeting returning callers by name
Turn on Greet returning callers by name and, when a caller's number matches someone in your clients, Mucka opens with their name, like "Good afternoon, Janet". First-time callers get a normal greeting. Mucka only does this when it is sure of the match, so it will not guess.
A caller's number showing up is not proof of who they are, so the receptionist still confirms details before saving anything important.
If a caller asks whether they are talking to a person
It tells them the truth. Asked "are you a human?", "is this a robot?" or anything like it, it says plainly that it is not a person, it is the automated assistant that answers your phone, and then it carries on helping them. It will never tell a caller it is a person, claim to be one of your team, or take on a name you have not given it.
It does not announce it the rest of the time. There is no disclaimer in the greeting and it does not bring it up mid-call, so callers who never ask just get their message taken or their job pencilled in. Honest when asked, out of the way when not.
Teaching it about your business
Scroll to What your receptionist knows and tell it about your business, so it can answer callers instead of taking a message for everything:
- About your business. A short description, like "Family-run plumbing and heating firm, Gas Safe registered."
- Services you offer. Add each one, like "Boiler repair" or "Bathroom installations."
- Areas you cover. The towns or postcodes you work in.
- Opening hours. In plain words, like "Mon to Fri 8am to 5pm, 24/7 emergency callout."
- Common questions. The questions callers ask most, with your answers, like "Do you give free quotes? Yes, free no-obligation quotes on all work."
In a hurry? Draft it from your website. At the top of the section, pop in your website address and tap Draft. Mucka reads your site and fills in the bio, services, areas, hours and common questions for you. It only uses what your site actually says, and nothing goes live until you have looked it over and tapped Save these details, so you stay in control of every word.
Whether you fill it in yourself or draft it from your website, your changes are only kept once you tap Save business details at the bottom of the section. If you have unsaved changes the button turns orange, so you always know when there is something still to save.
The receptionist only ever says what you put here. If a caller asks something you have not covered, it does not guess, it takes a message so you can follow up.
Bookings always wait for your nod
The receptionist never books a job on its own. When it pencils one in, it tells the caller the team will confirm the time, and it leaves you a booking to approve.
You will find it in your Actions list, under Actions in the menu or View actions on the Home page. A booking waiting on you counts as urgent, so it sits at the top. Messages and new leads the receptionist takes arrive in the same list, tagged New call or Urgent call. They are not in your Notepad: that is your own inbox and to-do list, and nothing from the receptionist goes there.
A booking waits for you. Most cards clear themselves after a couple of days if you never touch them. A pencilled booking does not: the caller has been told someone will confirm, and the slot is being held in your diary, so the card stays put until you approve it, dismiss it, or the time itself has been and gone. You will not lose one by leaving it a few days.
Before it can pencil anything in, it has to have four things from the caller: their name, a contact number, the address the work is at, and a time it has actually checked against your diary. If it is missing any of them it asks, and it will not offer a time that is not genuinely free. So the booking that reaches you is one you can act on.
"Genuinely free" means the whole diary, not just your jobs. It will not offer a time that clashes with a job, a personal appointment, or anything in a connected Google or Microsoft calendar. It is never told what any of those are, only that the time is taken.
Pencilling is not just something the receptionist does, either. You can pencil any job in yourself when the work is not settled yet, and it behaves exactly the same way: the slot is held, and the customer hears nothing until you confirm it.
Tap Review booking on the card and you see exactly what it took:
- Time: the slot it checked and the caller agreed to
- Client: their name and contact number
- Address: where the engineer is going, with the postcode
- Job: what needs doing, in the caller's own words
Approve it and Mucka creates the job in your diary there and then, adding the client and the address if they are new to you. If the slot has been taken since the call, Mucka tells you rather than double-booking you. Dismiss it and nothing happens at all. See Approve an action for how action cards work.
Getting the address right
Addresses are the easiest thing to get wrong on a phone call. Acacia sounds like Acasha, Bromley sounds like Bromham, and nobody spells a postcode out loud the way it is written. So the receptionist does not write down what it thinks it heard. It takes the postcode, looks it up against the Royal Mail address file, and reads the real address back to the caller to confirm before it uses it, exactly as Mucka does when you dictate an address in the app.
If a postcode covers a lot of houses it asks for the house number or name rather than reading the street out. If the lookup finds nothing, it does not guess or offer you a house nearby: it reads the postcode back character by character and asks the caller to check it.
It will never tell a caller their postcode looks wrong or needs a space in it. Spacing and capitals do not matter, and the caller only ever spoke it.
Existing bookings and changing a time
When someone rings whose number matches one of your clients, the receptionist can look up what they already have booked and read it back. It only ever tells the caller when it is and what the job is — never a house number, a balance or anything private, because a matching phone number is not proof of who is calling.
How precise it is about the time is your choice, on the receptionist's own How it offers times screen, under When somebody rings to ask when you are coming. Pick just the day and it says "I can see you're booked in for Tuesday" — it will not name an hour, estimate one, or be talked into one if the caller pushes, and says the team will confirm nearer the day. You can also have it read back the half day or slot they were given, or the exact time. It follows however your diary already promises times until you choose. A precise time on the phone is a promise, and often one you cannot keep. This is about a booking already made; which times get offered to a new caller is How you promise times.
If the caller wants to move an appointment, the receptionist treats it as a change, not a new booking. It checks your diary for the day they want, offers a time that is genuinely free, and pencils in the change for you to approve. It never moves anything itself, and it tells the caller the team will confirm the new time.
Tap Review change on the card and you see the job, the client, where it is now and the new time. Approve it and Mucka moves the job in your diary. If the new time has been taken since the call, Mucka tells you rather than double-booking you. Dismiss it and the original booking stays exactly where it was.
When you're closed
Your receptionist answers round the clock, and it has always taken a message at eleven at night exactly as it would at eleven in the morning. What it can now do as well is say you are shut, and then get on with helping anyway.
Turn it on under Settings → Inbound → When you're closed. Outside your opening hours the receptionist opens with one short line telling the caller you are closed, and then carries straight on: it still takes their name, their number and what they need, and it still checks the diary and pencils work in. Being shut is never a reason it tells someone to ring back in the morning.
Leave the wording blank and callers hear ours: "We're closed at the moment, but I can take a message and the team will give you a call tomorrow when they're back in."
Mucka works that day out from your opening hours, every call. Somebody ringing on a Thursday night is told tomorrow. Somebody ringing at six on a Friday, at a firm that is shut over the weekend, is told Monday, because telling them tomorrow would be a promise nobody is there to keep. Ring before you open in the morning and it says later today. The receptionist is never left to work the day out for itself.
You can write your own line instead, and it is said exactly as you type it. If you do, leave the day out of it and let Mucka add it, or you will end up promising Monday callers a call on Tuesday every week of the year. Keep it to a sentence or two, because it is the first thing the caller hears.
If they ask what time you open again, the receptionist tells them that too, off the same hours.
Two things worth knowing:
- Set your opening hours first. They live in Settings → Business → Details. Until they are saved the receptionist has no way of knowing when you are shut, so the switch stays greyed out and it says nothing. That is deliberate: plenty of trades take work at any hour, and a receptionist announcing a Monday-to-Friday nine-to-five nobody set would be turning away your best jobs.
- An emergency is handled the same at 2am as at 2pm. A gas smell or a burst pipe still gets the urgent treatment below, and still alerts you straight away. Being closed changes nothing about it.
Hearing about every call
Normally the only calls that reach you are the two worth interrupting for: an emergency, and a booking waiting on your approval. Everything else lands as a card in your Actions list, which is easy to miss if you are out on the tools all day.
Switch on Settings → Inbound → Tell me about every call and you get a notification and a WhatsApp after every call the receptionist answers, with who rang and what about, and their number so you can ring them straight back.
- It is off until you turn it on.
- With a team, you can pick who gets told, the same way you pick who hears about urgent calls. Leave everyone off and the whole office is told.
- A call that already pinged you is not told twice. An emergency and a pencilled booking have already reached you in a sharper way, so no second message follows them.
- Calls taken overnight wait until the morning rather than waking you. Nothing is lost, it just arrives once you are out of your quiet hours.
When it's urgent
If a caller describes something urgent, like a gas smell, a major leak, or no heating for someone vulnerable, the receptionist keeps them calm, takes the details, and flags the call as urgent. Because it only answered because you could not get to the phone, it does not leave that sitting in the app for you to spot: it alerts you straight away with the caller's number, so you can ring them back rather than the emergency waiting to be noticed. For a suspected gas leak it also gives the caller the standard safety advice and the national gas emergency line.
If you have a team, you can choose who gets that alert under Settings → Inbound → Who to alert about urgent calls. Pick a couple of people rather than everyone, so you do not all ring the customer back at once. Leave everyone off and the whole team is alerted.
A gas smell gets a text as well as a talking-to
If a caller says they can smell gas, the receptionist gives them the national gas emergency line on the call, and Mucka then texts them that number from your line once the call ends.
That is because a phone number said out loud, once, to somebody standing in their kitchen frightened, is the easiest thing in the world to lose. The text is the written copy of it.
Worth being straight with you about this one: it is the only message Mucka ever sends one of your customers without you approving it first. It is the same fixed safety wording every time, never anything Mucka writes itself, and it says nothing about you, the job or the money — just the emergency number and what to do. It only goes out for a gas smell, only to a mobile, and never if that number has texted STOP. Replies come back to your receptionist, same as any other text from your number.
If it says it has taken something down and it has not
Rarely, the receptionist tells a caller their message has been passed on and then does not save it. Mucka checks every call for that after it ends, and if the words and the record do not match you get a card saying so, with what the caller actually said, so you can ring them back yourself.
If the caller described an emergency, that card is tagged Urgent call not logged and you are alerted straight away, exactly as you would be for one that saved properly. A call that went wrong should not be quieter than one that went right.
What you get afterwards
Open the Receptionist page and the Calls tab to see every call. Pick one and you get a short summary, what the receptionist did for you (took a message, added a client, pencilled in a booking), the full transcript, and a recording you can play back. Anything the receptionist saved, a new client, a message, a pencilled-in job, is already where you would expect it in Mucka.
Recordings are private to you (only owners and managers can listen) and are kept for 90 days, then deleted automatically.
If a call ever cannot be answered
On the rare occasion the receptionist cannot take a call, Mucka does not let it slip by quietly. You get an action card showing the caller's number and when they rang, so you can ring them straight back and never lose the lead. Very short hang-ups and wrong numbers are filtered out, so the card only appears when someone genuinely tried to reach you.