Why I Started Switchly.ai Building a Reliable AI Receptionist for Real Phone Calls

When most people think about AI in business, they think about chat. Pop-ups. Website widgets. “Ask our bot anything.”

But if you’ve ever actually run a small business (or tried to book anything in the real world), you know the truth: the phone still runs everything.

You call a barbershop. You call a salon. You call your doctor. You call an auto shop. You call a restaurant to ask if they have space. Even businesses with online booking still get flooded with calls—because customers want answers now, in plain language, without clicking through a dozen screens.

That’s the gap that made me start Switchly.ai. Not another chatbot demo—an AI receptionist built for real phone calls.

The problem I kept seeing: “AI receptionists” that aren’t reliable enough

I started noticing something weird once AI assistants became mainstream.

A lot of tools showed templates that looked great on the surface:

  • “Connect your calendar”
  • “Let the assistant book appointments”
  • “Add your business info so it can answer questions”

In demos, it looked like the future. In reality, it often fell apart the moment you tried to use it like a real receptionist.

Here’s what I saw again and again:

  • Hallucinations: The assistant confidently says something that isn’t true.
  • Granularity problems: Real scheduling has rules—service duration, buffers, working hours, breaks, double-booking prevention, “can I come 10 minutes earlier,” and a thousand other edge cases.
  • Unfriendly setup: It might be “possible” to configure, but not in a way that a busy business owner can actually do.
  • Not trustworthy enough to replace a phone line: Businesses can’t risk their reputation (or revenue) on “mostly works.”

And that’s the key phrase: mostly works.

If you’re playing with AI for fun, “mostly works” is fine.

If this is your main receptionist—the thing standing between you and missed calls, lost appointments, and frustrated customers—“mostly works” is not acceptable.

Why DIY assistants don’t solve it for most businesses

At this point, you might think: “Okay, so just build a better setup yourself.”

That’s exactly the trap.

The business owners who need an AI receptionist the most are the least able to build one:

  • They’re busy doing the actual work (cutting hair, treating patients, repairing cars, running a shop).
  • They want fewer interruptions, not a new technical project.
  • They don’t have time to debug calendar logic or figure out why a bot suddenly booked over lunch.

Even if a business owner is motivated, a production-grade AI phone receptionist isn’t something you slap together in an afternoon. Reliability takes real engineering: guardrails, logic, testing, and constant iteration.

The other path is hiring someone: “I’ll build your AI receptionist for you.”

I saw a lot of that too. And honestly, it’s a mixed bag.

Some builders are great. Many are not. The problem is that AI assistants fail in ways that aren’t obvious until you’re live. If the builder doesn’t have deep experience, they often don’t even know what to test for—so you end up with something that works in a best-case demo and breaks on real customer calls.

My background: four years in AI engineering (and knowing where these systems break)

I’ve been working in AI engineering for the past four years. That experience changes how you see these “AI receptionist” demos.

You start to recognize the common failure modes:

  • What happens when the user is vague?
  • What happens when the calendar has conflicts, holds, or exceptions?
  • What if the customer changes their mind mid-call?
  • What if the business has rules that aren’t written anywhere?
  • What if the assistant is unsure—does it guess, or does it handle uncertainty safely?

If you want an AI receptionist that can handle real phone calls, you can’t just prompt it and pray. You need systems and constraints that make the assistant dependable—especially around booking and scheduling.

That’s what pushed me over the edge. I could see the gap clearly:

  • People want an AI receptionist.
  • The existing DIY + template approach isn’t reliable enough.
  • Business owners don’t have time to engineer it.
  • A lot of “done-for-you” builds aren’t production-quality.

So we built Switchly.ai.

Why phone calls aren’t going away (and why that matters for AI)

One thing I strongly believe: the phone is not dead.

If anything, we’re entering a second wave—where AI finally makes phone automation good enough to be normal.

Customers like calling because it’s the fastest way to get what they want:

  • “Do you have an opening today?”
  • “How much is a haircut and beard trim?”
  • “Where do I park?”
  • “Can I reschedule?”
  • “Is this service available for kids?”
  • “How long does it take?”

These are simple questions for a human receptionist. They should be simple for an AI receptionist too—if it’s built correctly.

What Switchly.ai is: an AI receptionist that’s easy to set up and built for reliability

Switchly.ai is our attempt to make the “real version” of the AI phone receptionist.

Not a hacky workflow. Not a fragile demo. Not something that needs a consultant to babysit it.

The goal is simple:

  • Make it easy enough that a normal business owner can set it up quickly.
  • Make it reliable enough that they actually trust it with real customer calls.

We’ve spent months testing, tightening logic, and pushing edge cases—because that’s where receptionists win or lose trust.

And we focused heavily on setup speed, because that’s the other big gap. If it takes days (or a technical person) to get running, most businesses won’t do it.

With Switchly.ai, you can go through a short setup wizard and quickly get to a working assistant that:

  • knows your business basics (hours, location, services, pricing guidance, policies)
  • can handle common questions
  • can help with appointment scheduling based on your availability rules

One of my favorite tests was the simplest: I had my grandma try it.

Not because she’s our target customer—but because if the setup and flow make sense to her, it’s a strong signal that it’ll make sense to just about anyone.

No offense to tech people, but most products are “easy” only if you already live online. We wanted Switchly.ai to be easy for real business owners.

A quick note on “perfect”

I’m ambitious about what we’re building, and I want it to feel perfect.

The honest truth is: no AI system is perfect in every scenario. Real life is messy.

But what we can do—what we’ve built Switchly.ai to do—is dramatically reduce errors through guardrails, careful logic, and extensive testing, and to handle uncertainty safely instead of guessing.

That’s the difference between a fun demo and a production AI receptionist.

What’s next

This is the first post in a series where I’ll share what we’re building, what we’ve learned, and how we’re thinking about the future of AI call handling for small businesses.

If you’re a business owner who wants fewer interruptions, fewer missed calls, and a receptionist that works 24/7, Switchly.ai is built for you.

If you want to see it in action, you can set it up in minutes and try it for your business.

Jan Cervenka Co-Founder & CEO, Switchly.ai