What we learn building and testing AI receptionists, written down so the next build goes faster. Technical when it needs to be.RSS
How I give each prospect a private AI receptionist demo that answers with their own business name, on one shared Retell number, and how those demos clean up after themselves.
Kate is an outbound Retell agent I can start from my iPhone. How it tells a person from a phone menu, the three ways I trigger it, and the bugs that only real calls found.
Our outbound Retell assistant talked into hold silence and over the people it called. Here is what fixed it, the API details that nearly bit us, and how playbooks now swap in per call.
How Volunteer AI runs every Retell voice receptionist through a seven-column board and user-story-shaped test cases, so 'sounds good on the phone' isn't the bar for shipping.
Our Retell test suite passed while an agent promised a booking update it never sent. Here is the bug, the fix, and how we rewrote the tests so it can't hide again.