Smith.ai Virtual Receptionists vs. CBSI: In-Depth Comparison

CBSI’s pricing starts at $35/month for 30 minutes of on-phone time with callers. While that may seem affordable at first, when you inevitably receive a chatty caller, you’ll wind up paying big. And your callers won’t be getting the quality responsiveness they expect unless you pay extra. Smith.ai only charges per call, so your monthly costs are based on your call quota. That way, you won’t be stuck with a hefty bill for a lengthy call and you can rest assured that our professional agents will uphold the quality of all your calls. 

CBSI is a basic answering service. They even say it on their website themselves. They can answer calls and book appointments, but they don’t handle much more than that. Smith.ai’s virtual receptionist services, however, have a much wider bandwidth. Our agents become a true extension of your office: answering calls with custom greetings, qualifying and screening leads, booking appointments, taking payments, making outgoing calls if you need, and so much more!

When it comes to technology, CBSI fails in comparison to Smith.ai. CBSI doesn’t advertise any online portal or dashboards, and as far as integrations go, Smith.ai takes the lead. We play well with more than 30 CRMs, marketing platforms, calendars, billing systems, and intake forms. Furthermore, our AI platform searches for zip codes, connects to you via SMS and Slack, and is even a Zapier trigger (for our more tech-savvy users). Plus, we offer call recording and transcription for every industry and every business size — CBSI only offers transcription services for certain industries.

While CBSI doesn’t advertise any call tracking or reporting capabilities, Smith.ai’s Call Intelligence feature, on the other hand, offers valuable insight into your callers through detailed call analysis and reporting. We track key data, like caller type (e.g., new lead, existing client, spam), time of call, priority, and even disposition, to give you insight into the actions taken on your calls. Add in comprehensive customization options like complex call routing, plus Outreach Campaigns for follow-up with leads and clients, and it’s clear to see that Smith.ai provides better insight into your calls than CBSI can offer.

For more qualified leads, predictable pricing, technology-backed receptionists, custom plans, CRM and intake integrations, and a call tracking dashboard, businesses prefer Smith.ai to CBSI.