Reasonable use policy

Smith.ai maintains a commitment to easy, predictable billing through per-call, not per-minute, pricing. To meet this goal, we require that all calls fall within the scope of Reasonable Use for an answering service, as defined below. Calls that do not fall within this scope may incur additional fees to cover time and effort.

The following are included in the cost of your call (all plans):

• We determine the intent of the call — What does the caller need?
• We collect contact information — What is the caller’s name, phone number, email address, and/or physical address. Optionally, at your request, we can collect preferred pronouns if this is relevant to your clientele or business.

The following are also included in the cost of your call (Starter, Basic, Pro, and Custom plans):

• Simple Intake — 3 business-specific short-answer questions (e.g., case number, traffic ticket number, property address for real estate, etc.)
• Simple lead qualification — Is a potential lead a fit for your services, location, and prices (as provided to us by you).
• One integration — Integrate one CRM, Make, or Zapier for free. Additional integrations will incur a fee.

The following can be added to your call services for an additional fee (all plans):

• Additional CRM integrations
• Accept collect calls

The following can be added to your call services for an additional fee (Starter, Basic, Pro, and Custom plans):

• Extended Intake
• Custom Extended Intake
• Appointment Booking
• Custom Calendaring
• Payment Collection
• Complex Call Routing
• Additional transfer destinations
• Slack or SMS transfer requests
• Text & email follow-up

Each of these add-on services are defined in more detail below.

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Extended intake

Extended Intake is up to 6 additional short-answer questions after the lead qualification and Simple Intake that are already included in the call. These questions must take 120 seconds (2 minutes) or less to ask and answer. Extended Intake is done after your lead is qualified, and, as such, we consider these additional questions virtual-assistant work on behalf of the business.

How we approve Extended Intake for your business:
Extended Intake cannot exceed an average of 120 seconds. We will practice your intake questions with enough callers to determine a consistent average time.

Why do we go through this approval process?
Having answered well over half a million calls, we know that your potential clients are frustrated when they have to repeatedly answer the same questions. Short-answer questions do a good job of qualifying and booking your leads, at which point you can provide excellent service.

Examples of Extended Intake:
Family information for wills and trusts, network setup for IT, or project scope for marketing. Working with external ticketing systems (e.g., filing a ticket in Zendesk) constitutes Extended Intake. As each business is unique, we reserve the right to redefine what constitutes Extended Intake at any time (often influenced by call time).

Custom Extended Intake

If your business requires intake questions beyond our lead qualification, Simple Intake, and Extended Intake, you can add additional short-answer questions on an à la carte basis, priced per question with Custom Extended Intake. There is no limit on the number of questions you can add. Each question must take 20 seconds or less to ask and answer.

What is not included in extended intake and custom extended intake?

• "Briefly describe" questions that could have elaborate answers depending on the caller.
• Additional questions added after the initial approval process.
• Appointment Booking or other add-on services (unless you sign up for them separately).

Note: We are more than happy to help you with your intake forms to ensure they are within our parameters and a good experience for you and your new leads.

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Appointment booking

Appointment Booking includes scheduling appointments, rescheduling appointments, and outbound calls for the purpose of scheduling appointments (which incur standard call charges). Appointment Booking requires the use of availability-slot software such as Calendly or any other publicly accessible booking link (most major CRMs and calendaring software offer this — see our integrations page if you need suggestions). Appointment Booking covers all transfer lines on your plan (e.g. 2 for the Basic plan). Each additional transfer number will incur an extra cost per appointment.

Appointment Booking fields are limited to the following:

• Contact Information
• Service Required
• Location
• Availability (Date/Time)

Information beyond the scope of the above four items is considered intake and is subject to the requirements for Simple or Extended Intake.

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Custom calendaring

Appointment Booking that involves following complex rules, such as checking one person’s availability before checking another, is considered custom calendaring and will incur an additional fee. We will make our best effort to simplify your calendaring requirements (for the sake of your callers) and only escalate to custom calendaring if it’s necessary for your business.

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Payment collection

Payment Collection is defined as follows:
Smith.ai will act on a business’s behalf to accept payment instrument information from a caller during the course of a call to input into a third-party interface provided by the business. Examples of interfaces include online payment pages, invoice pages, and appointment-booking pages where pre-payment or pre-authorization is required. For the security of the caller, Smith.ai, and the business, Smith.ai does not and will not store caller payment information on its own systems, nor will we document payment information in call summaries.

Payment Collection is limited to the following criteria:

• Payment instrument details (e.g., card number, expiration date, CVV)
• Amount (including currency)

Information beyond the scope of the above two items is considered Intake and is subject to the requirements for Simple and Extended Intake.

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Complex call routing

Complex Call Routing occurs anytime we set unique call-handling rules for a number, time of day, or extension. We can route calls based on specific schedules, availability, and holiday hours. We can also ring your team sequentially or “blast” everyone at once.

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CRM integration

Smith.ai can integrate with most major CRMs, case management, practice management, marketing/sales management software programs, and Zapier. Call details including contact information and notes can be added to your records in real time. In many cases, receptionists can also search through and update existing records to prevent duplication. CRM Integration includes the initial setup of the integration and its ongoing maintenance.

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Slack/SMS transfer requests

When you enable Slack or SMS Transfer Notifications, you and your staff will receive a Slack or SMS message when a caller qualifies for a live transfer. You can decide to accept or reject the call. Additional transfer notification attempts incur additional pricing as listed on our pricing pages. For example, you may request that for every call, we first try Person A, and if Person A does not respond, try Person B.

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Conjoined add-on services

A single additional service may require the use of other add-on services. For example, Payment Collection can also constitute the need for Extended Intake or Appointment Booking services in cases where payments are processed only after a booking or intake form is completed.

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Call blocking

The ability to block calls is offered for reduction of spam, unwanted sales, and wrong numbers. When you block a call, you are no longer charged for it. Our system blocks over 20 million known spam sources automatically, using crowdsourced identification. In addition, blocking calls can be used to prevent abusive / harassing callers and pushy salespeople. However, blocking calls from qualified callers retroactively is considered an abuse of the system (manipulating a quota to cut costs). In the event we detect this abuse, we reserve the right to reverse the blocked calls (and charge for them) as well as terminate your account.

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Legacy Essential plans

Legacy Essential plans are limited and the following features are not available:

• Additional transfer destinations
• Appointment Booking
• Complex Call Routing
• Custom Calendaring
• Extended Intake
• Integrations
• Payment Collection
• Simple Intake
• Simple lead qualification
• Slack or SMS transfer requests
• Text & email follow-up
• Any new features developed by Smith.ai

Essential plans are no longer available for purchase. Explore our Virtual Receptionist and Outreach Campaign plans.

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Exclusions

Some calls are beyond the scope of Smith.ai’s services and therefore beyond the scope of our Reasonable Use Policy. These include product specialization (e.g., technical support requiring training) and telemarketing, and are not available from Smith.ai.

If you have any questions, please contact us at support@smith.ai.