Report
State of AI reception 2026: what the public data says about small business phones
Short answer
This is the State of AI reception 2026 from AIReceptionistGo, a 100% AI receptionist for small businesses: a roundup of what public data says about how small businesses in the US answer the phone, how callers behave, and how fast AI is arriving at the front desk. Every figure links to its original source, with its date, its sample and who paid for it. We haven’t added numbers of our own yet, and we say so where the data runs out.
These are the missed call statistics and small business AI adoption figures that hold up. We sell the thing this report is about, so we’ve held ourselves to one rule: if we couldn’t trace a figure back to the study that produced it, it isn’t here.
The short version
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How many US businesses use AI?
What the data says: 17% to 20% of employer businesses, December 2025 to May 2026
Source US Census Bureau (public agency)
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How many small business owners use AI?
What the data says: 24% use AI tools
Source NFIB, 2025 (independent research)
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Do people still prefer the phone?
What the data says: It’s the most preferred customer service channel, at 35%
Source YouGov, 2025 (independent research)
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Do customers want a person available?
What the data says: 87% say it’s essential to be able to reach a human agent
Source Gartner, 2026 (analyst survey)
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Do businesses answer?
What the data says: 40% of 500 law firms answered a call from a potential client
Source Clio, 2024 (vendor measurement)
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How common are unwanted calls?
What the data says: More than 2.6 million Do Not Call complaints in the FTC’s fiscal year 2025 (October 2024 to September 2025)
Source Federal Trade Commission (public agency)
How we sorted the sources
Not all numbers are equal, so each one below carries a label:
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Public agency
government statistics with published methods, such as the Census Bureau, the Federal Reserve, the FTC and the FCC.
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Independent research
survey organizations and associations with no product to sell here, such as Pew Research Center, YouGov and NFIB.
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Analyst survey
research firms such as Gartner, which sell research and advice to companies, including companies that sell AI for customer service. Their surveys are large and published with a method, but they aren’t neutral in the way a public agency is.
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Vendor measurement
real calls measured by a company that sells phone or practice software. Useful, but the company has a commercial interest and its customers may not represent everyone.
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Vendor survey
what people say they do, collected by a company with something to sell. The weakest kind of figure; we quote it only with its label.
1. Small business AI adoption in the US
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Public agency
Between December 2025 and May 2026, the share of US employer businesses using AI in any business function “hovered between 17% and 20%,” reaching 19.8% in the survey period ending May 3, 2026.
Size makes a difference: among firms with 250 or more employees it was 37%; among firms with four or fewer employees it was under 20%. Source: US Census Bureau, May 2026, from the biweekly Business Trends and Outlook Survey. The question changed in November 2025, so these figures can’t be compared with earlier ones.
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Public agency
In the Federal Reserve Banks’ 2026 Small Business Credit Survey, 46% of employer firms said the business or its employees currently use AI, 15% planned to start within a year, and a third had no plans. Source: 2026 Report on Employer Firms, 6,525 responses collected September to November 2025. It’s a convenience sample, not a random one.
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Independent research
In NFIB’s 2025 survey of 559 small business owners, 24% used AI tools such as chatbots and writing or design assistants. Among the 118 owners already using AI, customer service accounted for 9% of the uses they named, well behind communications (29%) and marketing (27%). Source: NFIB Small Business and Technology, June 2025.
Why three different numbers?
They measure different things. The Census asks whether the business used AI in the last two weeks; NFIB asks owners about current use; the Federal Reserve counts the business or any employee using AI. Read together, they say that AI is common in conversation and still uncommon at the front desk of a small business.
2. Do customers still call?
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Independent research
The phone is Americans’ most preferred way to contact a business for customer service, chosen by 35%, ahead of email at 23% and live chat at 10%. Preference for the phone rises with age, from 25% of Gen Z to 52% of baby boomers. Source: YouGov, March 2025.
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Vendor survey
In Invoca’s 2026 survey of US buyers making high-stakes purchases (over $500), the phone was the preferred channel for help at 41%, and 52% among baby boomers. Source: Invoca, June 2026, 693 US consumers surveyed in May 2026. Invoca sells call tracking and analytics software to large companies, and an AI voice agent of its own.
3. Do businesses answer? The missed call statistics that hold up
We found no public, current measurement of how many calls US small businesses miss. The best figures come from companies that measure calls for their own customers.
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Vendor measurement
In mystery-shopper calls to 500 US law firms posing as potential clients, only 40% answered the phone, down from 56% in 2019. Source: Clio Legal Trends Report 2024, as summarized by 2Civility, the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, November 2024.
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Vendor measurement
Across 11.5 million patient calls to 8,280 dental locations in 2025, 31 of every 100 calls hung up before reaching the front desk, and more than 890,000 never got a callback. Source: Patient Prism Dental Patient Access Report, July 2026. The locations are the company’s own customers.
4. What callers say they do when nobody answers
These are answers to survey questions, not observed behavior. People often say one thing and do another.
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Vendor survey
In the same Invoca survey (see §2 for who Invoca is) of 693 US consumers making high-stakes purchases, 79% said they would switch to a competitor that responds faster, and 75% said they had hung up because of a long hold. Source: Invoca, June 2026.
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Independent research
Calling people back has its own problem: in 2020, eight in ten Americans said they generally don’t answer cellphone calls from unknown numbers, and 67% said their general practice is to let the call ring out and check voicemail afterward. Source: Pew Research Center, December 2020, 10,211 adults.
What callers say vs. what was measured
What callers say Vendor survey
What was measured Vendor measurement
5. AI customer service statistics: how people feel
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Analyst survey
87% of customers say it’s essential for companies to offer a way to reach a human agent. Source: Gartner, August 2026, 3,566 B2B and B2C customers surveyed in February and March 2026.
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Analyst survey
Two years earlier, Gartner found that 64% of customers would prefer companies didn’t use AI for customer service at all. Source: Gartner, July 2024, 5,728 customers.
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Independent research
Half of US adults say the growing use of AI in daily life makes them more concerned than excited (June 2025). Source: Pew Research Center, March 2026. At the same time, 49% of adults use AI chatbots. Source: Pew Research Center, June 2026, 5,119 adults surveyed in February 2026.
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Vendor survey
In Invoca’s 2026 survey, when an AI and a person were equally available, 59% chose the person and 31% the AI. Source: Invoca, June 2026, a company that also sells an AI voice agent.
What this means for an AI receptionist
Customers want speed and a clear way to reach a person. An AI that hides what it is, or traps callers with no way out, goes against both findings. That’s why our AI receptionist says it’s an AI at the start of every call and transfers the call to a person when the owner’s rules say so.
6. Robocall statistics and unwanted calls
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Public agency
The FTC received more than 2.6 million Do Not Call complaints in its fiscal year 2025 (October 2024 to September 2025), mostly about robocalls, and the Do Not Call Registry had about 258.5 million active registrations as of September 30, 2025. Sources: FTC biennial report to Congress and FTC Do Not Call Data Book.
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Public agency
From 2020 to 2024, informal consumer complaints to the FCC alleged 906,622 violations of the federal rules on robocalls, telemarketing, junk faxes and caller ID; 391,418 of them were telemarketing calls to people on the Do Not Call list. A single complaint can include more than one violation, so these count violations, not people. Source: FCC Report to Congress on Robocalls, December 2025.
For a business line, that noise has a cost: every robocall that rings through takes the same attention as a customer. Screening unwanted calls is part of answering well; see call screening.
7. The answering service market
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Public agency
US telephone answering services, the industry of live operators who answer and take messages for other businesses, had revenue of about $2.56 billion in 2022, up from $2.33 billion in 2018. Source: US Census Bureau Service Annual Survey, via FRED. It’s the latest year published, and it doesn’t include AI software.
Figures that circulate, and why we don’t use them
You’ll see these on many websites. We tried to trace each one back to a study:
| Figure | What we found | Our call |
|---|---|---|
| “Small businesses miss 62% of calls” | A real study, but from January 2016, covering 85 businesses | Too old and too small to describe today |
| “80% of callers sent to voicemail don’t leave a message” | Earliest trace: a 2014 magazine note attributing it to “Forbes” with no study | Not used |
| “85% of people whose call isn’t answered won’t call back” | Attributed to a blog post that no longer contains it | Not used |
| “Missed calls cost a small business $126,000 a year” | Source page gone, not archived | Not used |
| “Over 40% of calls come after hours” | Repeated without data | Not used |
What nobody measures yet
The gaps are as telling as the data. We found no public, reliable figure for:
These are the numbers that would make a future edition of this report worth citing on its own. If we publish them, they’ll come with their method, period and sample, and without identifying any business.
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the share of calls US small businesses miss today, by industry and by hour of the day;
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how many callers actually leave a voicemail, as opposed to saying they would;
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how long the average small business call lasts;
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how much of a small business line’s traffic is spam or robocalls;
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how callers react when a small business, not a big brand, answers with AI.
How we built this report
We searched public agencies, research organizations and industry reports, then checked every figure against its original source on October 16, 2026. Figures from summaries that we couldn’t match to the original study were left out. We excluded data published by companies whose main product is an AI receptionist or answering service for small businesses, because they’re our direct competitors. Where a source also sells an AI voice agent among other products, as Invoca does, we say so next to its figures. We also left out vendor surveys that don’t publish their method. Two sources block automated access and were confirmed through official mirrors or independent summaries; we link the summary where that’s what we used.
How to cite this report
“State of AI reception 2026,” AIReceptionistGo, last updated October 16, 2026. When you cite a figure, please cite the original source we link next to it; that’s where the number comes from.
Questions
What percentage of calls do small businesses miss?
We found no current, independent measurement for US small businesses in general. Of the missed call statistics that circulate, the widely quoted 62% comes from a 2016 study of 85 businesses. Industry measurements exist: in 2024 mystery-shopper calls, 40% of 500 law firms answered, and in 2025 data, 31 of every 100 dental patient calls hung up before reaching the front desk.
How many small businesses use AI in 2026?
Between 17% and 20% of US employer businesses used AI in some business function between December 2025 and May 2026, according to the Census Bureau. Firms with four or fewer employees were under 20%. Other surveys report higher shares because they ask different questions, such as whether any employee uses AI.
Do customers mind talking to an AI on the phone?
Surveys say customers want two things: fast answers and a way to reach a person. Gartner found in 2026 that 87% of customers consider access to a human agent essential, and a survey by Invoca, which also sells an AI voice agent, found 59% would choose a person over an AI when both are available. An AI that is upfront about being AI and transfers calls when needed fits both.
Is the phone still the preferred way to contact a business?
Yes. In a 2025 YouGov study, the phone was the most preferred customer service channel, at 35%, ahead of email and chat. The preference is strongest among older customers, with 52% of baby boomers choosing the phone.
Will this report include your own data?
Not yet. This edition only compiles public sources. A future edition may add aggregated, anonymous figures from real calls, such as missed calls by hour and industry. If it does, we’ll publish the method alongside the numbers.
Put the numbers to work
If you want to see what missed calls could be costing your own business, try the missed call calculator. If you’d rather have every call answered, AIReceptionistGo answers 24/7 in English and Spanish, with no monthly fee on Pay As You Go and $0.99 per answered call. See pricing, how it works and our method.