AI receptionist statistics: 8,246 customer conversations

Key findings

• After hours: 36% of customer conversations arrive outside 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday to Friday, including the 17% that arrive on a weekend.
• Buying questions: 35% of conversations ask about price, booking, location, stock or specs, or something urgent, and the share holds after hours: 34% against 35% during business hours.
• Price: 18% ask about price, cost or a quote, the most common topic in every industry group.
• Short messages: the median customer message is 5 words, and 30% of first messages are three words or fewer.
• Talking to AI: 0.9% of conversations ask whether the receptionist is AI. 2.0% ask for a person: 1.5% of website chats and 12% of phone calls.
• Contact details: 65% of conversations end with a phone number or email on record, from a typed message, a contact form or the number the customer called or texted from. In website chats without a contact form, 7.9% of one-message chats end with details, against 81% of chats with ten or more messages.
• Website against phone: 38% of website chats arrive after hours, against 12% of phone calls, which depend on when a business forwards them. Calls ask for a booking about twice as often as website chats, 15% against 7.7%.

When do customers contact a small business?

36% of customer conversations in Small Business Chatbot’s sample arrive outside 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday to Friday.

• Outside 9 to 5: 44% of conversations.
• Weekday evenings, 6 to 10 p.m.: 10%.
• Overnight, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.: 7.6%.
• Busiest hour: 11 a.m., and the share stays near that level until 4 p.m.
• Busiest days: Monday and Wednesday. Friday is the quietest weekday.

After-hours share by industry

It varies by business: for the middle half of businesses, the after-hours share is between 29% and 44%.

What do customers ask a small business?

Price comes first: 18% of conversations ask about price, cost or a quote. 35% ask about price, booking, location, stock or specs, or something urgent.

What customers ask, by industry

Home services get the most booking requests. Product sellers get stock, spec and order questions instead.

Do after-hours customers ask different things?

Barely. A buying question appears in 34% of after-hours conversations and 35% of business-hours ones.

• Opening hours: 48% of questions about opening hours arrive after hours.
• Something urgent: 3.8% of conversations mention an emergency or a job that can’t wait. 39% of those arrive after hours, and 90% end with a phone number or email on record.
• Timing: 7.8% of conversations mention today, tonight, tomorrow or this week.

How do customers word their messages?

Customers write the way they text. In Small Business Chatbot’s sample the median message is 5 words, and 51% of messages are five words or fewer.

The first message

• Length: the median first message is 7 words. 30% are three words or fewer, and 10% run past 25 words.
• Greeting: 23% open with a greeting, and 4.5% are a greeting and nothing else.
• Straight to business: 19% hold a buying question, and 9.8% mention price.

How customers phrase a request

The plain question comes first. “Do you” or “does it” appears in 18% of conversations, and “looking for” alone in 9.7%.

The words each industry’s customers use

Every group starts with “looking for”. After that, home-service customers want a quote or an estimate, product buyers ask about stock and orders, and professional-service clients say “wondering if”.

33% say thanks, and 0.9% ask if it’s AI

• Thanks: 33% of conversations include a thank-you, and 12% a please.
• Is this AI? 0.9% of conversations ask whether the receptionist is AI or a person.

How many customers leave a phone number or email?

65% of conversations end with a phone number or email on record: typed by the customer, sent through a contact form, or the number they called or texted from. After hours the share is 64%, against 66% during business hours.

49% of website chats start with a contact form. In the rest, 28% of visitors type their details during the chat: 7.9% of one-message chats and 81% of chats with ten or more messages.

• With a buying question: 36% of these visitors leave their details, against 28% of all of them.
• By industry: home services 33%, professional services 31%, product sellers 22%.

How website chat and phone calls differ

Calls ask for a booking about twice as often as website chats, 15% against 7.7%, and for a person about eight times as often, 12% against 1.5%. Website chats ask about price more often, 19% against 12%. Phone figures depend on when each business forwards its calls, so website chat is the better read on after-hours demand.

• Length: a caller’s median turn is 3 words, against 6 in a website message. The median call has 4 customer turns, the median chat 3 messages.
• Repeat callers: 17% of callers called more than once, and 7.0% of calls were followed by another from the same number within an hour.
• Robocalls: 30% of calls with spoken words were robocalls or recorded sales scripts. Every other figure here leaves them out.

See how an AI answering service handles a call.

Customer conversation statistics by industry

Home services get the most buying questions, at 41%. Product sellers get the fewest bookings, at 1.2%.

My take

I’d start with your website. More than a third of these conversations came in after hours, mostly through website chat, and they asked the same buying questions as daytime ones. Keep whoever answers your phone during the day, and let an AI receptionist take your website and your after-hours calls.

How we counted

1. The sample.We counted 8,246 conversations between customers and small businesses on website chat, phone and text, answered by Small Business Chatbot’s AI receptionist, Sarah. A conversation counts when the customer typed or said something.
2. What we left out.Our own test conversations, robocalls, calls with no caller words, and any business with fewer than 50 conversations.
3. Time.Each conversation is counted in the business’s local time. After hours means outside 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday to Friday, weekends included.
4. Topics.Keyword rules read the customer’s own words, so one conversation can count under several topics. A buying question means price, booking, location, stock or specs, or something urgent.
5. Wording.Text the customer did not write was removed first, such as form submissions and links. A phrase appears here only when customers of three or more businesses use it. No message is quoted.
6. Industries.Each group pools three or more businesses, and no business is named.
7. Channels.Most of the sample is website chat. Phone calls are a smaller part from fewer businesses, and they depend on when each business forwards its calls to the AI receptionist. Texts count in the totals and are too few to compare.
8. How the page was made.A script counted every figure from the conversation records. The page was drafted with AI tools, then reviewed and edited by Arthur Cockfield.

Cite this data

You can use any figure or chart on this page. Link to this page as the source.

Questions