AI employee vs. human hire.
Hire the AI employee for the repetitive, written-down part of a desk and keep a person for judgment and relationships. The AI inbound sales manager starts on a free 30-day pilot, so the decision is cheap to reverse.
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| Dimension | Human hire | AI employee |
|---|---|---|
| Time to productive | Job post, interviews, notice, training | Set up over a call, then an exam |
| Availability | Business hours | Any hour, on web chat and email |
| Loaded monthly cost | $6,062 modelled | Free 30-day pilot, then one flat fee |
| When someone leaves | Hire and train again | Lessons and knowledge folder stay with you |
| The next desk | Hire again | Built on request after a scoping call |
| Judgment & creativity | Excellent | Escalates to humans |
The monthly cost row is a model: a 40-hour desk at a loaded $35 an hour across 4.33 weeks a month. The calculator runs it on your own numbers. The $35 rate sits near the BLS median total compensation of $34.78 an hour (March 2026).
Decide
Four questions before you hire either
Answer them for the desk you are about to fill. Four yes answers point to an AI employee on a pilot; a no on the first or the last points to a person for now.
01 · Written down
Are the prices, hours and rules of the desk written down?
The AI employee answers only from the knowledge folder you approve: your site, price list, hours, service area and red lines. A desk that lives in someone's head needs that person first.
02 · Repeats
Do the same questions come before every quote or booking?
Repetition is what an exam can test. Twelve cases from your trade run three times each before release, so a desk of recurring questions is checked in advance.
03 · Reversible
Can a reply be checked before it costs you anything?
For the first 30 days the employee is a Trainee: it drafts, you approve, and if you do not answer within 3 minutes the customer gets a holding line and the thread comes to you. Payments, contracts and date promises stay with a person at every level.
04 · After hours
Do enquiries arrive when nobody is at the desk?
Web chat and email are answered at any hour. If most of your enquiries come by phone, hire the person for now: voice and SMS are planned.
Check the work before you decide
Interviewing a person tells you how they talk. With an AI employee you can read the work itself. The exam log shows 17 sittings of the demo employees from October 2026, 10 of them graduated, with every run and the failures quoted word for word.
You can also write to one: the live demoruns AI sales managers for demo companies, the founder’s own businesses and fictional ones, marked as such.
Frequently asked questions
For a desk that is repetitive, measurable and already documented, an AI sales manager starts with a free 30-day pilot, so the decision is cheap to reverse. For work that turns on judgment, negotiation or a relationship, hire the person. One desk can run both: the AI employee takes the routine share, the person takes the exceptions.
The AI inbound sales manager starts with a free 30-day pilot; after it, one flat monthly fee is agreed on the review. On the human side, a full-time desk models at $6,062 a month at a loaded $35 an hour across 4.33 weeks, close to the BLS median total compensation of $34.78 an hour (March 2026), and its routine 70% models at $4,243. For a Canadian reference, Job Bank puts an Ottawa receptionist at a median $20 an hour, about C$3,870 a month before benefits.
Start with the AI inbound sales manager. The Unistaff team sets up a free 30-day pilot with you: your site and price list become its knowledge folder, it sits an exam in your trade and starts as a Trainee whose replies you approve. The setup needs no code and no engineers on your side.
Anything that has to be decided rather than drafted. It moves no money, signs nothing, never confirms a booking time on its own, and hands anything outside its price list, hours or service area to a person. Judgment, creative direction and the relationship part of a deal stay with a person, and the role is built to hand those over with the thread attached.
Yes, and the trust levels are built for it. The AI employee works the queue: first replies, qualification, lead notes and booking requests. The person confirms bookings, keeps payments and contracts and takes every handover, which lands in the cabinet with a summary of the conversation so far.