AI receptionist NZ
When your business goes to voicemail, they ring the next one.
Nobody waits for a call back any more.
The people who still ring instead of typing are the urgent ones and the older ones, and they are the two least likely to try you twice.
$297 a month and every call gets answered, nights, weekends and public holidays. On AI Complete, add $200 and it books them in before they hang up.
Hear it answer:
Don't take our word for it. Ring it.
Call the demo line and talk to the same receptionist we build for clients. Ask it awkward questions. Interrupt it. Ring at 3am if you like. Whatever answers you is exactly what your callers would get.
Before you hand your phone to anyone, check who you're handing it to
LazyMagnet was founded by Hamish Nuttall, who built Naked Bus to a $15 million business with 40% NZ market share. The core of that business was the same idea you're reading about now: answer people fast, follow up properly, and let systems do the repetitive work.
And we use what we sell. Our own text and web enquiries run on the exact system behind this page. Book a call and the system that replies to you, follows up with you and books you in is the same one we sell.
It picks up, in a real voice, at any hour
An AI receptionist answers your business phone with a natural voice, around the clock. It greets callers with your business name, works out what they need, answers the everyday questions, takes a name and number, and sends you the message straight away. With LazyMagnet it's built for you and run for you, and on AI Complete it can also book the caller into your calendar during the call.
Here's what that looks like on a real call.
It answers, every time.
Day, night, weekend, public holiday. No voicemail, no ringing out, no queue. The caller who rings at 9.40pm gets the same greeting as the one who rings at 9.40am.
The caller just talks.
There's no "press one for bookings". They say why they're ringing, in their own words, and the receptionist keeps up: it can handle the questions people always ask, your hours, where you are, what you do, and it asks sensible questions back to get the details you'll need.
You get the message straight away.
Who called, what they wanted, how to reach them, while the enquiry is still warm. Not a voicemail you find at 6pm. Not a sticky note. The actual message, the moment the call ends.
On AI Complete, it books.
If you take the booking add-on, the caller doesn't get a "someone will call you back". They get offered real times from your calendar and they hang up with an appointment. More on the two versions below.
It arrives already answering your phone
The $99 AI receptionist tools hand you an account and wish you luck. This one arrives working. You answer questions about your business: what you do, your hours, your prices, the questions callers always ask, what counts as urgent. We build the receptionist around those answers, test it on the calls your business actually gets, connect it to your phone, and keep improving it once it's live. If something needs changing, your prices, your hours, a new service, you tell us and it's handled.
There's nothing to install, no dashboard you have to learn, no prompt writing at 11pm. You did not get into business to configure software, and with this you never will.
The callers you're losing are the ones who won't text
Someone driving, someone with their hands full, someone who has always rung. They will not type it out and they will not try twice. You can't answer the phone and do the job at the same time, and the phone doesn't stop ringing when the job ends.
If you're on the tools all day
The call comes in while you're up a ladder or elbow-deep in a ceiling. It goes to voicemail, the caller doesn't leave a message, and they ring the next name on the list. Whoever answers first usually gets the job. That's the whole problem an AI receptionist solves: your phone gets answered, professionally, while you keep working, and the message is waiting when you climb down. If that's your world, there's a page for you: what we build for trades.
If you run a clinic
The person who finally decides to do something about their back doesn't decide at 11am. They decide at 7pm, after work, when it hurts. If the phone rings out, doubt gets the whole evening to work on them, and by morning they've booked somewhere else or nowhere at all. A receptionist that answers at 7pm, warmly, and takes the enquiry (or, with booking, puts them straight in the diary) is the difference between a full book and a quiet week. We know this one personally: Return to Form is the founder's family clinic, where we run the exact system we sell, so the after-hours pattern is one we see from the inside. There's a page for clinics too: how clinics use it.
If you're a one-person business of any kind
You are the receptionist. Which means every call you take interrupts paid work, and every call you don't take is a stranger deciding you're too busy for them. Neither is a good option. This is the third one.
$297 a month, and the phone stops ringing out
AI receptionist NZ pricing runs from under $100 to about $750 a month. Self-serve tools cluster at $99 to $199, and you set them up and run them yourself. Done-for-you services cost more. LazyMagnet's AI receptionist is $297 a month, built and run for you, answering calls and taking messages 24/7. On AI Complete, $200 a month adds a receptionist that books callers straight into your calendar.
There are two ways to have it, and the difference is one word: booking.
$297 a month: every call answered, and the message with you before they've put the phone down
Every call answered, day and night, weekends and public holidays. A natural conversation, the everyday questions handled, and the caller's name, number and reason with you the moment they hang up. You ring back with the message in front of you instead of a missed-call notification.
Want them booked in before they hang up? That's the next one: on AI Complete, $200 a month puts real times from your calendar in front of the caller during the call.
On AI Complete: add $200 a month, and it books
AI Complete is the full system, $697 a month: ads that bring you enquiries, an AI Sales Agent that replies to every text and web enquiry in about 15 seconds and texts back any caller who doesn't get through, follow-up that gets replies from the people who went quiet, and one calendar everything books into. Add the receptionist for $200 and your phone joins that system. A caller at 9pm ends the call with a time in your calendar, then gets reminded, so they actually show up. The whole thing, calls included, is $897 a month, plus AI Complete's one-off setup from $2,497.
Both prices are NZD and exclude GST. Pay annually and you get about two months free. The full breakdown, including setup and usage costs, is on the pricing page.
What you'd pay a person to do less
If the phone matters enough to pay someone to answer it, here is what the options actually cost in NZ.
| Human message service | LazyMagnet AI receptionist | |
|---|---|---|
| When it answers | Business hours | Every call, 24/7 |
| Cost at ~100 calls a month | $165 to $285 a month | $297 a month |
| After hours and weekends | Extra, or not offered | Included |
| When two people ring at once | Callers wait | No queue |
| The message reaches you | On their schedule | The moment the call ends |
| Books appointments | Usually a dearer plan | On AI Complete, +$200 |
Human message-service prices as published on NZ providers' pricing pages, August 2026, at roughly 100 calls a month.
One more difference worth knowing before you compare quotes: human answering services bill by the call or the minute, so a busy month costs more than a quiet one, and you find out which it was on the invoice. Ours is a monthly subscription with the number printed on this page, and anything usage-based is spelled out on usage costs before you sign, not discovered afterwards.
Read the table again and the point makes itself: for about the price of a business-hours message service, every call gets answered, at 2pm and at 2am, and the message is with you before the caller has put their phone down.
If answering the phone is the problem, wages are an expensive way to solve it. Sick days need cover, holidays need cover, and the phone still rings after five.
The $99 ones hand you a login. This one arrives already answering your phone.
The AI receptionist NZ market has split into two camps. At $99 to $199 a month you get a self-serve tool: an account, a setup wizard, and you. You write what it should say, record how it should sound, test it, and fix it when it answers something wrong. At $297 you get one that is already doing the job when it arrives.
Nothing to write, nothing to record, nothing to fix.
You answer questions about your business once: what you do, your hours, your prices, what counts as urgent. What comes back is a receptionist already answering your phone, in your words, tested on the calls your business actually gets.
Your prices change, your hours change, you add a service: you say so and it's handled. The $99 tool is cheaper the way a flat-pack is cheaper. The missing money is your evenings.
A message is a job you still have to chase. A booking is a job in the diary.
A receptionist that only takes messages still leaves the ringing back, the texting and the chasing to you.
On AI Complete, the system that answers your phone also replies to your texts and web enquiries in about 15 seconds, texts back any caller who didn't get through, follows up the people who went quiet, puts the ads that bring enquiries in behind it, and books the lot into one calendar with reminders that get people to turn up. The receptionist was never the product. The full calendar is.
Count last week's missed calls. Multiply by what one job is worth to you. That is the number this has to beat, and for most owners the first call it saves does it.
The message side is checkable in one tap: give the AI your mobile and it texts you back. Count the seconds before the reply lands. It's usually about fifteen.
What to check before you buy any AI receptionist, including ours
Five questions worth asking every provider. We've answered them for ourselves so you can compare.
- Can I hear it before I pay? Ask on the call and judge the voice yourself, on the kind of call your business actually gets.
- Who sets it up, and who fixes it? Self-serve means you, at both ends. With us it's built for you and run for you, and changes are our job, not your weekend.
- What exactly reaches me after a call, and when? You want the caller's name, number and reason, immediately, not a daily summary. That's what ours sends, the moment the call ends.
- Does booking cost extra, and what does it book into? Some tools include a booking link; fewer put real times in a real calendar. Ours books on the AI Complete add-on, directly into the same calendar the rest of your enquiries book into.
- What happens if it fails? Ask what the provider loses when a call slips through, and how they'd even know it happened. Our answer is the next section, including exactly which enquiries our guarantee covers and what it pays out.
Miss one enquiry and the month is free
On AI Complete, we answer that with money, in the words every LazyMagnet page uses:
Every enquiry answered in under 60 seconds, day or night. If we ever miss one, that month is free.
Applies to enquiries on your connected channels: text, email, web chat, social messages, and missed calls, which get a text back that starts the conversation. Measured from our message logs.
Read the second line again, because your phone is in it. If a call ever does get away, the person who rang gets a text back that starts the conversation, so they're talking to you instead of ringing the next name on the list. Every one of those is timed in our message logs, which is why we can put a month's fee behind the number.
The under-60-seconds guarantee runs on AI Complete, where the message logs do the timing. On the standalone receptionist your cover is simpler: one month at a time, no lock-in, stop whenever it stops earning. You are never more than a month deep.
What owners ask before they hand over the phone
At typical volumes, yes. An NZ human message-taking service costs about $165 to $285 a month at around 100 calls, answering during business hours and passing you messages. For $297 a month the AI answers every call, including nights, weekends and public holidays, never puts a caller in a queue, and takes the message the moment they ring.
The caller's name, number and what they rang about, sent to you the moment the call ends rather than as a summary at the end of the day. That is the whole point of it: you are reading job details, not listening back through voicemail. On the AI Complete add-on you get the appointment as well, because the caller has already been given real times and booked.
That is set up as part of the build, and it is our job rather than yours: you tell us the number your customers ring and we do the connecting before it goes live.
Booking is the AI Complete version. On its own, the $297 receptionist answers every call 24 hours a day and gets you the caller's name, number and reason the moment they hang up, so you ring back with the details in front of you. Add $200 a month on AI Complete and the caller is offered real times and booked straight into your calendar during the call, with reminders so they show up. See the pricing page for the full picture.
Half an hour, and you'll know if it pays for itself
Thirty minutes on how many calls your business misses, what one of them is worth to you, and what changes when every one of them gets answered.
Prices NZD, excludes GST. Full details on pricing.