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Aussern AI Receptionist Setup

Aussern is an AI receptionist for your business phone line. You program it before it goes live: what it knows, how it speaks, when it transfers calls, and how it books appointments. Once activated, it answers a real phone number and works every call the way you built it.

Aussern works together with Skejuhl. Aussern is where the receptionist is programmed. Skejuhl is where your calendar, your team, and every booking live. One receptionist serves exactly one Skejuhl workspace.

This page documents the complete setup flow — every screen, every field you fill in, and every button you press, from purchase to a live receptionist.

Part One — Purchase and Account

The Start page

Setup begins on the Start page, headed "Buy Aussern, create the owner account, then build the receptionist." The form on this page is titled Owner and business setup. You fill in six fields:

Below the fields are seven required agreement checkboxes. Each must be checked before you can continue:

  1. "I agree to the Aussern Terms of Service."
  2. "I acknowledge the Aussern Privacy Policy."
  3. "I acknowledge the Aussern Refund Policy."
  4. "I authorize recurring subscription billing for the Aussern AI Receptionist."
  5. "I certify that I am at least 18 years old."
  6. "I certify this purchase is for business and commercial use, not personal, family, or household use."
  7. "I agree to the arbitration and class action waiver terms."

Click Continue to secure payment. A Secure payment section opens with an embedded Stripe checkout — Stripe handles your card details; Aussern creates your account only after payment succeeds. Pricing details are published on the Pricing page.

The checkout return page

After payment you land on a status page headed "You are almost ready to build." It shows four status rows: Purchase, Payment, Account setup, and Owner email. When purchase reads Complete, a verification link has been sent to your owner email. If it still reads Processing, wait a moment and refresh.

Open the verification email and click the link, then press Sign in.

Signing in

The login page is headed "Login to manage your receptionist." Enter Email and Password, optionally check Remember me, and click Log in. The Builder opens, and every step below happens inside it. Your progress is saved as you go.

Part Two — The Builder

Step 1 — Create: "Build your receptionist"

The first Builder screen says: "Pick your trade and we pre-build the receptionist for you — call handling knowledge, voice, and escalation rules." You fill in:

When you pick a business type, a panel confirms "your template ready" and lists the call-handling topics it includes. Click Build Receptionist. Your receptionist is created as a draft — nothing is live yet.

Step 2 — Building: the website crawl

If you entered a website, the Builder shows "Building your receptionist" with the status "Crawl in progress — reading your website and extracting business knowledge." It takes about thirty seconds and the page advances automatically. There is nothing to click.

What the crawler does and why you should use it:

Step 3 — Knowledge: "What your receptionist knows"

This screen holds everything your receptionist knows about your business. At the top, a Template industry topics panel lists the call-handling topics from your trade, with a checkbox "Use template industry topics" — clear it to remove them.

You then have two ways to enter your business knowledge:

Describe your business — the default. One large text box with the guidance "Services, hours, location, pricing, anything callers should know. Plain language — no formatting needed." For example: "We're a locksmith serving Miami-Dade County. We offer residential lockout, rekey, lock installation, and car lockout services. Available 24/7."

Manual entry — seven fields, each its own text area:

Click Save knowledge, or ← Back to describe to return to the description box.

Step 4 — Prompt: "Tone and behavior"

The system prompt is pre-built from your template; here you adjust how the receptionist conducts calls. Five fields:

Click Preview compiled prompt to read the complete instructions your receptionist will follow, exactly as compiled. Click Save prompt to continue.

Step 5 — Voice: "How your receptionist sounds"

Click Save voice. This is enough to launch — full call-delivery tuning lives in Tuning after activation, where you can hear changes on a real call.

Step 6 — Escalation: "When to involve a human"

Pre-configured from your template; add your transfer number to complete it.

Click Save escalation.

Step 7 — Compliance: "Disclosure and limits"

Click Save compliance.

Step 8 — Configure: "Call transfer"

This screen sets how your receptionist handles calls that need a human, in full detail. If your template ships escalation triggers, they are shown at the top for reference.

Click Save and continue, or Skip to move on without changes.

Step 9 — Configure: "Appointment booking"

Booking is powered by Skejuhl. The screen explains: "The AI reads your team's live availability from Skejuhl to book appointments during calls." Before connecting, three things must exist on the Skejuhl side, listed right on the screen:

  1. Create a Skejuhl account — skejuhl.com (a Sign up button links there).
  2. Create a business entity.
  3. Add your team and set availability.

Then connect, in three actions:

  1. Click Connect Skejuhl. A form titled "Sign in to your Skejuhl account" opens with two fields — Skejuhl email and Password. Enter your Skejuhl credentials (you must be an administrator of the workspace) and click Continue, or Cancel to step back.
  2. Under "Select your Skejuhl entity," your business entities are listed with name and type — pick one with its radio button. If none exist you will see "No business entities found. Create one in Skejuhl first."
  3. Click Connect this entity. The Builder confirms "Skejuhl connected" with your workspace name, and in Skejuhl your Receptionist page shows a green Connected badge.

Once connected, a Skejuhl readiness panel appears with a Refresh button. It shows counters for Staff, Services, Private slots, and Session buckets; your configured services; shared group sessions with available seats; your staff members; your schedule with upcoming closures; and Scheduling diagnostics — plain alerts for anything still missing on the Skejuhl side. When it looks right, click Continue →.

You may instead click Skip for now → at any point. Your receptionist then runs without booking — answering, transferring, and taking messages — and you can connect Skejuhl later.

Step 10 — Review: "Review your receptionist"

Everything you built is laid out on one screen as read-only sections: Business Overview, Services, Pricing, Area Covered, Hours, Policies, Common Questions, How Calls Are Handled, How Calls End, When to Involve a Human, Restricted Topics, Opening Disclosure, and Receptionist Identity. There is no automated testing or robot recommendation on this screen — you read it yourself.

Every section carries a Describe a change button. This is the standard way to edit throughout Aussern:

  1. Click Describe a change. A panel opens showing what is currently configured, with a text box: "Describe what should change. Plain language, no formatting needed." Type your intent in your own words — "we don't do commercial work, only residential."
  2. Click Extract. Aussern rewrites the section professionally and shows it under "Review before saving."
  3. Click Save and recompile to apply it, Back to reword, or Cancel to discard.

Your industry topics appear as individual cards, each showing its topic name, caller phrases, description, and do-not-say rules — each field with its own Describe a change, and each card with a Delete topic button. An Add topic button creates a new one: describe the topic, the phrases callers use, what the business knows about it, and anything not to say.

When the configuration reads the way you want, click Continue to phone setup →.

Step 11 — Activate: "Provision your phone line"

Your receptionist needs its own number. This screen has two tabs:

Results appear under "Available numbers" as selectable cards showing each number and its region; click Load more to see more. Select the number you want — it appears under "Selected" — then click Activate & provision line.

The number is purchased, connected to your receptionist, and your receptionist goes live.

Step 12 — Live

The final screen is headed with your receptionist's name — "your receptionist is active" — and shows the phone number it now answers, with the date it went live. Call it yourself: that is the fastest way to hear your work.

How Your Receptionist Handles a Call

Everything you configured in the Builder is what runs on a live call.

Skejuhl Owns the Booking

Every appointment your receptionist books is created in Skejuhl, on your workspace calendar, as a confirmed meeting — the customer attached as a participant, the assigned team member's time blocked, and the verified job-site address on the meeting itself. Your technicians see it in their Skejuhl schedule like any other job.

After Activation

The Builder's job ends at activation. From then on you operate your receptionist from the authenticated dashboard:

Aussern is where you tune the receptionist. Skejuhl is where the work it books gets done.

Describe a Change — Complete Reference

Every configurable section of your receptionist is edited the same way, before activation on the Review screen and after activation in Tuning. You never edit machine configuration directly. The cycle is always:

  1. Describe. Click Describe a change on any section. A panel opens showing what is currently configured, with a plain text box: "Describe what should change. Plain language, no formatting needed." Write your intent the way you would tell a new employee — "we don't do commercial work, only residential," or "always mention the weekend emergency line."
  2. Extract. Click Extract. Aussern rewrites the section into professional, consistent wording and shows you the result under "Review before saving." Nothing has changed yet.
  3. Save and recompile. Click Save and recompile to apply. Your receptionist's complete instructions are rebuilt as one unit with your change folded in, and the next call runs on the new version. Click Back to reword, or Cancel to discard — a change you cancel leaves no trace.

Below is every section that carries a Describe a change button, and precisely how each one shapes what happens on a live call.

Business knowledge sections — what your receptionist knows

Conduct sections — how your receptionist behaves

Boundary sections — what your receptionist must and must not do

The topics area — teaching your receptionist a subject

Below the standard sections, your industry topics appear as individual cards. Topics are how your receptionist handles specific subjects that come up on calls — a burst pipe, a lockout, a rescheduling request particular to your trade. Your template ships with a starting set; you can edit, remove, or add your own. Each topic has four inputs, each with its own Describe a change button:

What defining a topic does on a live call: when a caller's words match the caller phrases, the receptionist recognizes the situation, applies the description — asking your questions, giving your explanations, steering to your next step — and honors the topic's do-not-say limits, all while your general behavior rules keep governing the call around it. A well-defined topic is the closest thing to standing behind a new receptionist and coaching them through a call type once, permanently.

Actions and outcomes:

Every change through any of these inputs ends the same way: Save and recompile rebuilds the receptionist's complete instructions with your change in place, and the next call answers on the new version. Before activation you do this from the Review screen; after activation, from Tuning — where you can call the line and hear the change on a real call.

Text Messaging — Your Brand, Approval, and the Use Cases

Your receptionist can text: confirmations to callers, reminders before appointments, one-time links during calls, and alerts to your staff. In the United States, business text messaging is regulated — carriers require that messages sent by a business to consumers come from a registered, verified brand. That is why texting is the one part of Aussern that involves an approval step outside the product.

Why you submit for approval, and what you gain

Add your brand: the registration form

Brand registration lives on the Compliance page, under the heading Brand registration. First, under Messaging features, check the features your business needs: Staff Notifications, Missed Call Alerts, Service Form Links, Appointment Reminders, Booking Confirmations. Then the Business registration details form appears:

Click Submit for approval. The status then reads "Under review" — approval typically takes 3–6 weeks and comes from carrier review, not from Aussern. When it completes, the status reads "Brand registered." If it is rejected, the page shows "Registration rejected" with the reason; correct the details and resubmit. After approval, features can be added with + Add messaging feature or removed with Remove at any time — each addition is registered as its own campaign with its own status: Pending setup, Under review, Active, or Rejected.

The five use cases

Each use case is a specific kind of text with its own trigger, recipient, and consent rule. All of them require your approved brand and their own active campaign before a single message is sent.

Notice the consent rule differs by direction: texts to your callers are transactional — sent unless the caller opts out; texts to your own staff require each person's explicit opt-in first. Every number's consent is tracked, and STOP always stops.

Operating the switchboard: once approved, the live state of every use case appears in Skejuhl on the Receptionist page's Messaging tab — brand status, each campaign's status, and a Pause / Resume button per use case. A paused use case stops sending immediately; resume and it picks back up. Registration and approvals are managed in Aussern; day-to-day pause and resume is operated from Skejuhl.

The forms builder

Forms are how your receptionist collects structured information a phone conversation shouldn't carry — model numbers, photos-worth of detail, gate codes, unit specifics. They are built in Skejuhl, on the Receptionist page's Forms tab: built there, texted by the receptionist mid-call, and every submission lands on the Intake tab.

Creating a form:

Building the fields — click Add field for each question, up to twenty-five per form. Every field has a type, a label, and a Required checkbox; a Remove button deletes it. Five field types:

Click Save form to create it, or Save changes when editing (Cancel edit discards). A title and a label on every field are required. Existing forms are listed with their field count, trigger, and status, each with Edit and Delete.

What the caller experiences: during the call, when the situation matches a form's trigger, the receptionist offers it and texts the caller a link. The caller taps it and sees a clean page with your form's title and questions — required ones marked with an asterisk — and presses Submit. The link is one-time and honest about it: it works once, expires on your schedule, and a link for a form you have since archived stops working.

Where submissions land: on the Skejuhl Receptionist page's Intake tab — the queue of everything callers return through receptionist links. Each item shows the caller's name and phone, when it was submitted, a summary, and every answer as label-and-value pairs, linked to the related appointment and service where one exists. Counters across the top show what is new, what is urgent, and the total. Items move through statuses — new, reviewed, assigned, attached, dismissed — and can be assigned to a team member, so what came back on the phone line becomes a work queue your office actually clears. Form submissions share this queue with returned location pins, payment events, and booking updates, each labeled by source.

Recovery — When Setup Is Incomplete

An incomplete receptionist doesn't crash — it quietly loses capabilities. A missing field means the receptionist simply cannot do that one thing, while everything else keeps working. This section maps what missing data does, and where to complete it.

Inside the Builder

The three legs of a booking

When booking is connected but nothing books, the cause is almost always missing data on the Skejuhl side. A booking stands on three legs, and the Skejuhl readiness panel in the booking step counts each one — zeros in that panel are the diagnosis:

  1. A complete service — active in Skejuhl's Receptionist → Services, with a duration, and — for work at the caller's location — the service area ZIP codes saved. Without ZIPs, the receptionist cannot confirm any caller's address is in your territory, and travel jobs cannot be reliably placed.
  2. A real schedule — the receptionist offers only time that exists in Skejuhl: team availability and shifts, minus blockouts, leave, and business closures. Services with no schedule behind them leave nothing to offer.
  3. A member connected to the service — each Skejuhl service lists who performs it. A service with no connected members has no calendar to land on; connect the people, and make sure those people have availability.

Fix each leg in Skejuhl, then press Refresh on the readiness panel — the diagnostics update, and capability returns on the next call. Nothing needs rebuilding on the Aussern side.

Symptom → missing data → where to fix

The pattern to remember: complete the data and the capability returns on the next call — configuration is read live, so recovery is always filling the gap, never reinstalling. If a symptom survives every check above, write to help@aussern.ai.