01 / voice
Voice Agent
Answers and places calls, then books, qualifies, and hands off.
Practices and offices where the phone rings more often than the desk can answer it, especially after hours.
- Phone
- CRM
- Calendar
- Inbound answered
- Intent classified
- CRM write + book
- Human if unclear
Hands to a person the moment a caller asks for one, or when the request falls outside the script it was given.
A voice line on the number you already publish, answering the calls a desk cannot reach in time. It greets, works out what the caller wants, does the part it was built for, and passes everything else to a person with the context attached.
How this one gets built
What the first version covers
One call type, chosen because you are losing it. Usually that is the after-hours ring or the lunchtime overflow, and it is deliberately narrow: a line that handles one job properly is in production in weeks, where a line that handles everything is in design review for months. The second call type is far cheaper than the first, because the number, the routing and the trail already exist by then.
What it needs from your stack
A number or a SIP trunk, which is usually the one you already have rather than a new one; read and write access to the calendar it books against; and a system of record it can write the call to. Twilio and the major carriers are all straightforward. The awkward case is an internal tool with a login screen and no API, and that is workable too, though it is the part of the estimate that moves.
Where it stops
On a caller asking for a person, on anything outside the script it was given, and on whatever confidence threshold we agree. The transfer carries what it already knows, so whoever picks up is continuing a call instead of starting one. That handover is designed before the happy path, because it is the part that decides whether your team leaves the line switched on.
When this is the wrong answer
It is the wrong answer where being wrong in the moment is unrecoverable: clinical triage, a caller in distress, anything with a safeguarding dimension. Those want a human on the first ring and a routing rule that guarantees it.
FAQ
Questions about this one
Do we need to change our phone number?
No. In most builds the agent sits on the number you already publish, and the routing decides which calls it takes. Keeping the number matters more than people expect, because it sits on every invoice, van and directory listing you have ever paid for.
What happens if it cannot understand the caller?
It says so and transfers instead of guessing. Repeated misrecognition is one of the escalation conditions we set explicitly, because a caller who has repeated themselves twice is already deciding what they think of the business.
How long until it is answering real calls?
Typically 4 to 6 weeks for one production line after a short discovery. The voice is the fast part; the integration, the edge cases and the trail are where the time goes.
Last reviewed