What can an AI receptionist handle in a practice?
The calls that suit automation have a fixed answer or a fixed next step. In an accounting or bookkeeping practice these include booking and rescheduling appointments, taking a message with a callback number, answering questions about hours, location and how to send documents, reading out the standard document list for a tax return appointment, and routing calls from known suppliers to the right person. It can also answer after hours, when the alternative is voicemail. Each of these can be written as approved text the AI reads from, so it does not compose its own answers.
What should it never discuss?
Code item 6 of the Code of Professional Conduct says a registered tax or BAS agent must not disclose information about a client's affairs to a third party without the client's permission, unless there is a legal duty to do so. The Tax Practitioners Board treats any entity other than the client and the practitioner as a third party. A caller who says they are the client's spouse, business partner or bank is a third party. Unless the practice has a verification step it trusts, the AI receptionist should not confirm whether someone is a client, discuss return or BAS status, or read out figures.
- No tax or accounting advice, including answers that sound general.
- No confirmation to an unverified caller that a person or business is a client.
- No figures, refund amounts or lodgement status.
- No changes to bank details, addresses or contact details without staff.
How do you handle 'is my return done' calls?
Status questions are hard to automate safely, because the answer is about the client's affairs. One approach is for the AI receptionist to take the caller's name and number, then send the status through a channel already verified for that client, such as the client portal or the email address on file. Another is to hand the call to staff with the caller's details already captured, so the staff member starts with context. In both designs, the AI does not read a status to a voice on the phone that nobody has verified.
Do callers need to be told they are speaking to AI?
The OAIC's guidance on commercially available AI products says organisations should make sure public-facing AI tools, such as chatbots, are clearly identified as such to users, and should update privacy policies and notices to explain their use of AI. For a phone line, a short opening that tells the caller they are speaking with an automated assistant, and how to reach a person, follows that guidance. Update the practice's privacy policy to cover call recordings, transcripts and where they are stored, and check the rules that apply to recording calls before switching recording on.
Where do transcripts and recordings go?
An AI receptionist produces recordings, transcripts and summaries that may contain client information, including tax file numbers if a caller reads one out. Find out where the provider stores them, in which country, for how long and who can access them. The TPB's guidance on AI says practitioners are responsible for due diligence on AI tools, including whether information will be kept secure and Privacy Act requirements met, and notes the extra rules that apply to tax file numbers. Ask callers not to read out TFNs, and have the system redact numbers from transcripts where it can.
How do you set it up and check it?
Write the call script with the practice manager, starting from the call types you already receive. For each one, decide whether the AI answers, books, takes a message or transfers. Test it with staff making calls designed to extract client information, including callers who claim to be a spouse, a bank or the ATO. Review a sample of transcripts weekly at first, then monthly. Keep a list of questions it could not answer, and add an approved answer or a transfer rule for each one.