The Operator's AI Brief
A Fifth Name Joins the AI Receptionist List
NextPhone is a new AI receptionist to quote, and the numbers it publishes are the vendor's own.
Listen to this brief (4 min)
The audio is AI-produced: an AI clone of Jon's voice and an AI co-host, reading a script built from the sources below.
NextPhone belongs on your AI receptionist shortlist, but its best numbers come from its own marketing. Separately, two surveys say most small businesses already use AI, so the open question is fit.
NextPhone joins the receptionist list
As of October 4, NextPhone’s pricing page lists three plans: Pro at $199 a month, Growth at $299, and Scale at $599. Every plan includes unlimited calls. NextPhone’s blog claims the system answers in under 2 seconds and resolves 90% to 95% of calls without a human.
NextPhone sells call answering, and the blog is its own, so treat both figures as vendor claims. The page also shows an update date of September 22, so its numbers may differ from earlier versions.
Any system can pick up a phone. The test is whether the caller gets booked, quoted, or routed without your dispatcher touching the call. Ask each vendor how it counts a call as resolved.
Most small businesses already use AI
Intuit’s 2026 AI Impact Report, published May 12, found that 77% of US small businesses use AI regularly, up from 48% in July 2024. In a separate study, the SBE Council’s 2026 Small Business Tech Use Survey, published April 25, found that 82% of small employers have invested in AI tools.
If you have not started, you are in the minority. Neither survey tells you what fits your shop.
Google pushes voice AI forward
On September 15, Google announced Gemini 3.8 Live. Its extended thinking version ranks first on Artificial Analysis’s Speech to Speech Index with a score of 82.6. It is the second Gemini 3.8 release since Gemini 3.8 Flash on September 2.
The companies that build the voice layer under phone AI are competing hard. That tends to improve call quality and push prices down.
None of this changes what your phone does today. It does say the market is crowded and moving fast, which favors the buyer who asks vendors for their numbers and the method behind them.