AI Receptionist for Staffing Agencies: Recruitment and Labour Hire Calls Sorted Before Sunrise

Before anything else, Steve works out who’s ringing. A host employer with a hole in tomorrow’s roster is money walking out the door. A candidate is next month’s workforce. And a worker on assignment asking about their pay is someone you’d like to keep. Sending all three to “please leave a message” doesn’t do any of them any favours.

Steve asks one or two questions up front and then follows the right script: shift details and urgency for clients, role and availability for candidates, and shift or payroll details for workers.

• Shift fill requests: client, site address, roles, number of workers, start and finish times, tickets or licences (forklift, white card, driver licence), PPE, site contact.
• Sick calls and no-shows: worker name, shift, site, time of call, expected return. No medical detail.
• Candidates: name, mobile, email, suburb, the role or ad they saw, availability, transport, and the checks or tickets they already hold.
• Worker admin: timesheet, pay or roster queries, with the pay period and site.

Urgent calls trigger an SMS to whoever is on call, and every call is emailed as a summary within seconds. Recordings and transcripts are kept in your portal, which also gives you a timestamped record of when a worker called in. Steve works alongside recruitment and rostering software such as JobAdder, Bullhorn or Deputy: we send the details to you, and direct integration is quoted on request.

You tell us who is on call each night or weekend and what counts as urgent. A client short-staffed for a shift starting within, say, 12 hours goes out as an urgent SMS. A request for next week waits in the morning email. If you allow live transfers, Steve can put a site manager straight through to the on-call phone and only take a message when nobody picks up.

Steve never promises the client a worker. He confirms the request has been passed on and that a consultant will call back, which keeps your fill rate honest.

In Victoria, labour hire providers must hold a licence to operate, and host businesses must only use licensed providers, according to the Labour Hire Authority. Several other states and territories run their own schemes.

So new clients often ask “are you licensed?” before they’ve even told you the roles. Steve can give the licence number you supply and point them to the public register, so the conversation moves on to the roles they need. This is general information, not legal advice.

A labour hire branch placing warehouse and logistics workers might take around 280 calls a month. Most are short (sick calls, shift confirmations), so about 2 minutes each, or roughly 560 minutes. That suits Growth at $499/mo with 700 minutes included.

A boutique permanent recruitment desk with about 90 calls a month uses around 225 minutes, which fits Business at $299/mo. Prices are ex GST and month to month; see the pricing page for every plan.

Mel runs a labour hire agency in Laverton North supplying pickers, packers and forklift drivers to warehouses across Melbourne’s west. For years the after-hours line diverted to her mobile. Her alarm was the first sick call of the day, usually before 5am.

What really hurt were the calls she missed in the shower or on the Westgate. A client wanting three extra staff hit voicemail and rang another agency instead. Candidates who rang after 5pm got nothing at all.

Now Steve takes the line overnight. Sick calls and urgent requests reach the consultant rostered on, with the shift and site in the text. Candidate enquiries turn up as a tidy list with her first coffee. Clients hear back before the shift starts, and Mel sleeps past five.

Illustrative example based on common patterns. Mel and her agency are not real clients.

See how the product works in general on our AI receptionist page. Agencies placing support workers may also want our page for NDIS providers, which covers shift cover in that sector. Other sectors are on the industries hub.