The voice agent

The voice agent picks up your phone number and talks to whoever called. It knows about your catalogue, your events and your membership, so it can answer the questions people actually ring about instead of reading a menu at them.

It is in beta.

The voice agent is enabled separately from phone numbers and SMS. If you cannot see it, ask us to enable it for your account.

First, it needs a number to answer on

Go to Phone & SMS then Voice agent. If you have no voice-capable number, an amber notice at the top says so, with a link to go and get one.

Turning the agent on does nothing at all until a number points at it. Every voice-capable number you own is listed under Answering on once one exists, and the agent picks up on all of them.

Switch it on

The first card is Answer incoming calls, with a single switch.

Its description tells you what is actually happening right now:

• On, and inside your hours right now. Callers reach the agent.
• On, but outside your hours. Callers go to voicemail, or to your forwarding number if you set one.
• Off. Callers go to voicemail if you switched it on further down the page.

Flip the switch, then remember to click Save voice settings at the bottom. The save bar stays pinned to the bottom of the page as you scroll.

How the agent sounds

The second card is the personality.

1. Name the agent gives. What it calls itself when it picks up, for example "Ada, from the studio". Up to 60 characters.
2. Opening line. The first thing the caller hears. Something like "Hi, you've reached the studio. What can I help you with?" works better than a formal greeting, because it invites the caller to say what they want.
3. How it should behave. Free-form instructions on tone and boundaries. This is where you tell it to be warm and brief, never to guess at tour dates, and to say it will pass a question on rather than inventing an answer. Worth spending a few minutes on.
4. Voice. Leave this on Default voice. There is a A specific voice option that takes an identifier, but the set of available voices is still changing during the beta, so only use it if we have given you an identifier to enter.

When it answers

The third card decides the hours the agent is awake.

Start with the Timezone. The line underneath tells you what time and day it currently is where your line is set, which is the quickest way to check you picked the right one.

Then choose how the hours work:

Around the clock

Leave Answer at any time switched on and the agent picks up whenever someone calls, day or night. This is the simplest setup and a fine place to start.

Set hours

Switch Answer at any time off and you get a row for each day of the week, pre-filled with a nine to five weekday schedule.

1. Use the switch on each day to mark it Open or Closed.
2. On an open day, set the start and end time in the two time boxes.
3. Click Add another window if the day has a break in the middle, for example mornings and evenings but not the afternoon. You can have up to four windows in a day.
4. Use the small cross next to a window to remove it, once there is more than one.

When the agent cannot help

The fourth card is the safety net, and it decides what happens instead of a caller hitting a dead end.

Take a message. Voicemail, on by default. Leave it on. It is what catches the caller if anything goes wrong mid-call, and the message they leave is transcribed for you.

Forward to a person. A phone number in full international format, starting with a plus sign and the country code. When it is set, the agent can hand the call over if the caller asks for a human. Leave it blank if there is nobody to forward to.

Record calls. Off by default, and it should stay off unless you have thought about it.

Safety limits

The last card holds three numbers. They stop a stuck or abusive call from running on indefinitely, and during the beta they are the only limits on your line, so keep them tight until you know your call pattern.

• Minutes a month. The total minutes the agent may spend on calls in a month. A call in progress is ended when the cap is reached.
• Longest call. In seconds, between 30 seconds and an hour. A call that hits it is ended.
• Calls at once. How many callers the agent will handle simultaneously, up to 50. Callers beyond this are turned away rather than queued, so do not set it to 1 unless you genuinely only ever get one call at a time.

When a call ends because of one of these, the call history says so explicitly, in amber. That is your signal to raise the limit.

Save

Click Save voice settings in the bar at the bottom of the page. You get a confirmation message when it lands. Nothing on this page takes effect until you do.

A sensible starting configuration

If you want to get going without thinking too hard:

1. Give the agent a name and a friendly opening line.
2. Under How it should behave, tell it to be brief, and never to guess at anything it does not know.
3. Leave Answer at any time on.
4. Leave Take a message on and Record calls off.
5. Set Minutes a month low, for example 100, for the first month. Raise it once you see what your real usage looks like.
6. Turn Answer incoming calls on and save.

Then call your own number and listen to what happens. It is the fastest feedback you will get.