Human Add AI help center covers call forwarding setup for every major US carrier (Verizon, AT and T, T-Mobile, Spectrum, Comcast, RingCentral, Google Voice, OpenPhone, and twelve more), PWA install instructions for the mobile dashboard, knowledge base editing, and account management. Most setup guides take under five minutes to complete.
Before you can forward calls, you need to know what kind of phone service you're on. The method is different for each. Here's how to tell in under a minute.
The three types in plain English
Wireless (cell)
Runs over a mobile network. You carry the phone. The bill comes from Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, or a carrier that resells their network (Spectrum Mobile, Cricket, Metro, Mint, Google Fi, Visible, etc.).
Forwarding method: star codes dialed from the phone, or sometimes the carrier's app.
Landline
The old-school kind - copper wire running into your building, analog dial tone. Increasingly rare; most "landlines" today are actually VoIP dressed up in traditional wiring.
Forwarding method: star codes dialed from the handset (*72 / *73). May require a small monthly add-on depending on your carrier.
VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)
Runs over the internet. Can look like a desk phone, an app, or even a traditional-looking landline - but the audio travels over your internet connection, not a phone line. Everything from RingCentral to Google Voice to Comcast Business Voice is VoIP.
Forwarding method: web portal or app. Some VoIP services also support star codes from the handset.
How to tell which one you have
The fastest test: who sends your bill?
Look at the provider on your monthly bill (or auto-charged credit card statement). Match it below:
Corded desk phone plugged into a wall jack, no internet router involved: landline (traditional analog).
Desk phone with an Ethernet cable running to a router/switch: VoIP.
App on your computer or phone (no physical handset): VoIP softphone.
Cordless base station with an adapter labeled "ATA" or "Voice Adapter": VoIP over traditional-looking handsets.
If you still can't tell
Call the number from a cell phone and listen for clues on the greeting / hold music / voicemail. If you hear "you have reached [carrier] voicemail," that's a strong signal. If you have to ask IT or a previous business owner - do that, it's the fastest path.
One common source of confusion: people sometimes mean "the number customers call" (could be any type), and sometimes mean "the landline that the phone company installed when we opened in 1982." These are often different numbers! Older businesses often have a landline that forwards to a newer VoIP line, which a manager then forwards to their cell.
If your business number is the result of multiple layers of forwarding already, pick the outermost one - the number customers actually dial - and change the forward there. Replacing a deep-layer forward won't help if the layer above it is still pointing at the wrong place.
Forwarding to an AI receptionist?
The whole reason you're reading this is probably to stop missing calls. If you're setting up call forwarding to send calls to a voice assistant, an answering service, or an AI, the steps above are the same - you just enter their number as the forward-to destination. Human Add AI gives you a dedicated AI receptionist that answers 24/7, captures every caller's intent, and texts you the details. Try it free for 7 days →
Every Human Add AI trial gives you a dedicated local phone number with a fully custom AI receptionist on the other end. Free for 7 days, $10 refundable activation.
The Human Add AI pricing page lists three tiers, and the differences between them come down to three axes: how many inbound calls per month, how many physical or logical locations are routed by the same agent, and whether outbound calling is enabled. Starter at $497 monthly handles up to 250 inbound calls, a single location, and inbound only. That works for the smallest single-truck operations, solo professionals, and any operator who wants to pilot the platform before scaling.
Professional at $997 monthly is where most service-business operators end up. The 750-call ceiling is generous for any single-location business with normal inbound volume, the multi-location routing lets a business with two or three offices share a single agent with location-aware booking, and the deeper CRM integration matrix removes the manual hand-off step between the receptionist and the field-service software. Professional is also the tier where the SLA tightens on the response-time guarantees and on the build-tuning cadence after launch.
Enterprise at $1,997 monthly is for high-volume operators who want unlimited calls without watching a meter, white-label phone numbers, a named tuning contact at Human Add AI, and the outbound module. Outbound calls billed at fourteen cents per minute give the platform missed-call callback, appointment reminder, lead-nurture, and review-collection use cases. The outbound meter is visible in the dashboard with a hard-cap option for any operator who wants to bound monthly spend.
Across all three tiers, the conversation quality, the booking automation, the CRM sync, the SMS lead alerts, the call recording with searchable transcripts, the dashboard, and the support team are identical. The platform is engineered so a Starter customer should never feel like they are using a worse product, only a smaller-volume version of the same product.
The questions worth asking before you switch
Can the agent handle a caller who interrupts or changes their mind mid-call?
Yes. The conversation engine is built around real conversational patterns, not menu trees. If a caller interrupts mid-sentence, the agent stops, listens, and responds to the interruption. If a caller changes their mind about the service halfway through (a common pattern when callers are still figuring out what they need), the agent rolls with the change and restarts the intake from the new point. Most generic AI receptionists fail on these two patterns, which is why the demo line at (617) 812-5251 is the recommended evaluation method.
What does the operator-facing dashboard look like on mobile?
The dashboard is a PWA (progressive web app), which means it installs on iPhone or Android home screen and runs full-screen without the browser chrome. The mobile view surfaces the call list, the booking calendar, the SMS lead alerts, the recovered-revenue math, and the agent knowledge base for in-the-field edits. Most operators run the platform from their phone after the first week of launch.
How does pricing compare to a part-time in-house receptionist?
A part-time in-house receptionist covering business hours only typically costs $2,400 to $4,200 per month all-in (hourly wage plus benefits plus equipment plus management time). Human Add AI Professional at $997 monthly covers the same hours plus the entire 5pm-to-9am gap plus weekends plus holidays. The operator gets fuller coverage at lower total cost, with the trade-off being that the answering is done by AI rather than a human. The right operator profile depends on the vertical and the brand voice expectations.
Does the AI accept payments over the phone?
Payment processing is available on the Professional and Enterprise tiers via Stripe integration. The agent collects the payment securely (PCI-compliant capture, no card numbers stored in plain text), processes the charge, and confirms the receipt by SMS. Most service operators use this for deposit collection on bookings, post-service balance collection, or estimate-acceptance fees. Standard Stripe processing fees apply on top of the monthly plan price.
What does the platform do during an internet or power outage at my office?
Nothing changes for the caller. The forwarding from your business line happens at the carrier level, which means it does not depend on your office internet or your office power. The agent runs in the cloud regardless of what is happening at your physical location. If your booking calendar is hosted on your local system (rare), the agent falls back to manual booking via SMS to your on-call dispatcher.
How does it handle robocalls and spam calls?
The platform runs a spam-detection filter on every inbound call that checks the calling number against the same spam-call databases used by major carriers. Suspected spam calls are dropped before reaching the agent, which saves both the operator's monthly call quota and the agent's processing time. Operators can adjust the aggressiveness of the spam filter from the dashboard or whitelist specific numbers that the filter mistakenly flags.
Is there an API for custom integrations?
Yes. The Human Add AI REST API covers webhook delivery for every call event (call-received, call-answered, call-completed, booking-created, lead-flagged, sentiment-detected), CRUD access to the knowledge base and intake script, calendar push for booking events, and a read-only endpoint for call recordings and transcripts. The full API documentation is available at /api-docs and access is enabled by request on the Professional and Enterprise tiers.
How do I evaluate it without committing?
The best evaluation is the public demo line at (617) 812-5251. Call from any phone and run a real scenario through the production agent. After the demo, the next step is the ten-minute onboarding form, which builds a custom test agent for the specific business. The test agent is free to run and use, and only converts to a paid plan once the operator decides to forward their real business line. The whole evaluation path takes about two business days end-to-end with no commitment.
What changes after the first month on the platform
After thirty days on Human Add AI, three things have changed for the typical operator. First, the recovered-revenue math has compounded into a concrete dollar number that the operator can see in the dashboard and in the bank account. For most single-location service businesses, the first-month recovered revenue lands between $6,000 and $25,000, against a $497 to $997 plan cost. The platform has paid for itself many times over, and the operator mental model has shifted from "evaluating a new vendor" to "operating a critical revenue tool".
Second, the agent has been tuned to the specific cadence of the business. Tuning continues forever (every business evolves, every season brings new call patterns, every new service line needs new intake questions), but the bulk of the agent customization is done in the first 30 days. After that, the operator can edit the knowledge base from the dashboard for most changes and only needs to ping the Human Add AI team for the larger script revisions.
Third, the operator has started thinking about the second-order use cases the platform unlocks. Outbound missed-call callback usually goes live in month two for operators on Professional or Enterprise. Appointment reminder calls usually go live in month three. By month four, the platform is doing both inbound and outbound work that previously required either a part-time staffer or a separate scheduling service, and the operator is running a tighter business with the same overhead.
What the platform does not try to do
Being clear about scope matters because every platform has things it intentionally does not do, and the operator should know those up front. Human Add AI does not try to be a unified CRM. It integrates with the CRM the operator already uses (Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, Salesforce, HubSpot, Clio, Dentrix, twenty more) but does not try to replace it. The platform sends the right data into the right system; it does not try to be the system of record.
It also does not try to be a marketing automation tool. There is no email sequence builder, no landing-page builder, no funnel analytics dashboard. The platform handles the phone (inbound and outbound calls plus SMS lead alerts) and stops there. Operators who want marketing automation use a dedicated tool for that and integrate the two via webhook.
It does not try to be a workforce management platform. There is no shift scheduling, no time tracking, no payroll integration. The platform delivers leads to the operator and the operator dispatches them through whatever workforce tools they already use. The narrow scope is intentional: Human Add AI is built to be the best at one specific job, not adequate at five jobs.
