{"id":690412,"date":"2025-12-19T13:05:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T18:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=690412"},"modified":"2026-07-05T11:43:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T15:43:02","slug":"undergraduates-launch-orbitphone-affordable-ai-receptionist-service-690412","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/undergraduates-launch-orbitphone-affordable-ai-receptionist-service-690412\/","title":{"rendered":"Undergraduates launch affordable AI receptionist service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walter McDonald \u201927 and Stephen Lim \u201927 created OrbitPhone to help small businesses manage calls and appointments.<\/h2>\n

When Walter McDonald \u201927 found himself stranded after his car broke down this summer and his favorite local mechanic was not answering his phone, the Ä¢¹½´«Ã½<\/a> student turned his frustration into a business idea. The third-year data science<\/a> and mathematics<\/a> double major knew his mechanic did great work but because he was a small business owner, he was often too tied up fixing cars to coordinate logistics with customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized that this is a problem a lot of businesses around the country face,\u201d says McDonald. \u201cWe are in an automated age and there are easy solutions, but a lot of business owners don\u2019t know about them because there\u2019s a technological gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

After getting his car fixed, McDonald teamed up with his roommate Stephen Lim \u201927 (majoring in computer science<\/a> and finance<\/a>) to create a simple-to-use system that allows small business owners to set up their own virtual receptionist powered by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

Building the technical foundation<\/h3>\n

McDonald gained crucial experience in voice systems and natural language processing over the summer working for Soleo Communications<\/a>, a position he secured through the summer internship program at the URochester-based New York State Center of Excellence in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence<\/a>. He was tasked with building AI voice systems that could take vocal instructions from customers, map them to back-end systems, and determine what insurance policies best matched the customers\u2019 needs. He used many of the same concepts he learned at Soleo for OrbitPhone.<\/p>\n

After a few months of development, McDonald and Lim launched their company OrbitPhone<\/a> in late November.<\/p>\n

Answering every call<\/h3>\n
\"Screenshot
(Image courtesy of OrbitPhone)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OrbitPhone provides a human-like assistant that can answer calls and book appointments, syncing to a client\u2019s digital calendar and providing quick summaries of each transaction. The product promises an easy setup that takes less than two minutes, and if a client already has a website the system can scrape it for information to make the process even faster.<\/p>\n

While products offering AI receptionists for large companies already exist, McDonald says OrbitPhone is intended to fill a gap in price point and ease of use for the small business market.<\/p>\n

Ariel Herrera-Molina, who owns Guava Spa in Homer, New York, was among the first to sign up for OrbitPhone. She and her employees are all estheticians who are often too busy with clients to answer phone calls. She said a mentor had advised her to explore using AI to help her business, and she was excited when Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ students reached out with a potential solution.<\/p>\n

\u201cI run a spa and I\u2019m the one doing the work, so I am in services all day long\u2014I\u2019m checking clients in and out, I\u2019m doing the marketing, I\u2019m doing everything,\u201d says Herrera-Molina. \u201cIt\u2019s literally impossible for me to be there answering the phone. I know that sometimes people are intimidated when they just get a voicemail, and sometimes they hang up before actually leaving a voicemail. I was hoping to find something to help capture any leads that I was missing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Expanding access to AI tools<\/h3>\n

McDonald and Lim hope their product can help level the playing field for small, local businesses trying to compete with larger corporations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to augment what people can do and democratize the technology,\u201d says McDonald. \u201cIt\u2019s not fair that larger companies are able to capture every single customer call and get all this valuable data while smaller businesses don\u2019t get the same opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Walter
AI FOR ALL CALLS:<\/strong> McDonald and Lim hope their product can help level the playing field for small, local businesses trying to compete with larger corporations. \u201cWe want to augment what people can do and democratize the technology,\u201d says McDonald. (Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since OrbitPhone launched, McDonald and Lim have been working to incorporate feedback from their customers to enhance the product. They plan to add features such as more voice customization and outbound calling to help clients follow up on leads.<\/p>\n

Lim says starting a company like this is a dream come true, fusing his interests in both software programming and business. He says Ä¢¹½´«Ã½\u2019s open curriculum<\/a>\u00a0gives him the flexibility to pursue both paths, and he is glad to have found in McDonald a collaborative friend and business partner with whom he can work toward a shared goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a whole learning process as we\u2019re building this and figuring things out ourselves,\u201d says Lim. \u201cI love getting first-hand, practical experience building a product. How can you not get excited to build something like this? It\u2019s what I came to school for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walter McDonald \u201927 and Stephen Lim \u201927 created OrbitPhone to help small businesses manage calls and appointments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1242,"featured_media":690462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[24292,40762,18802,23492,25592,18632,16072,42582],"class_list":["post-690412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sci-tech","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-class-of-2027","tag-department-of-computer-science","tag-department-of-mathematics","tag-goergen-institute-for-data-science-and-artificial-intelligence","tag-hajim-school-of-engineering-and-applied-sciences","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-undergraduate-business-program"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUndergraduates launch affordable AI receptionist service<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Walter McDonald 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