How voice works

A customer dials your number and your agent answers: the same agent that answers on your website and on WhatsApp, with the same knowledge behind it. It speaks first, listens, answers, and hangs up when the conversation is done. Afterwards you get a transcript, a summary of how the call went, response-time figures and, if you turned it on, a recording.

This page follows an incoming call from ring to record. To set a number up, see Get a phone number and Manage a number. To place calls, see Outbound calls.

The path a call takes #

Customer dials your number
  → the number identifies your workspace and the agent on it
  → checks: agent present and not paused, voice minutes or credits available
  → the call is answered
  → recording notice, if recording is on
  → the agent's opening line
  → the conversation
  → hangup → transcript saved → the call is read for its outcome

Routing is by the number that was dialled #

The dialled number decides everything. Each number has exactly one agent on it, and its own settings: call language, opening line, engine, voice and recording. Two numbers in one workspace can answer with two different agents, in two different languages, with recording on for one and off for the other.

There is no workspace-wide voice setting and no fallback agent. A number with no agent does not answer, even if the workspace has agents.

What the agent uses on a call #

• From the number: the opening line and its language, the call language, the engine, the voice, the office sound and hesitations, recording, and the questions for callers. These change when you save them on Manage a number. A call already in progress keeps the settings it started with.
• From the agent: its instructions, persona and knowledge. These are read from the agent as it is saved, so a change you save on the agent reaches the next call on every number it answers. Test risky edits in the agent's playground before you save them. See Agents.

When a call is not answered #

Several situations stop a call before it is answered. The caller's call fails, nothing is charged, and no call record is created, so the Calls page shows nothing. The absence of a record is itself the clue.

One case is different. When a workspace is billing-suspended, the call is answered, a short out-of-service line is spoken, and the call ends with the outcome suspended. No agent runs. The call is recorded on Calls, so you can see who rang, and no minutes are charged for it. Pay the invoice first; nothing on the number helps until then, and calls are answered by your agent again as soon as it is paid. See When a payment fails.

A call that is already connected is never cut off for billing reasons. It runs to its natural end.

The agent always speaks first #

There is no silent pickup. The moment the call connects, the caller hears the recording notice if recording is on, then the opening line, and only then does the agent start listening. A caller who hears nothing for two seconds assumes the call failed.

The opening line is text you write for each number, up to 500 characters, spoken exactly as written in the opening language. See Opening line.

Recording #

Recording is off on every number until you turn on Record calls for that number. When it is on, callers are told in one of two ways, chosen per number under Recording notice:

• Agent says it in the greeting (default): the agent folds a short notice into its first line, in the call's opening language. In English: "Just so you know, this call may be recorded."
• Automated announcement first: a fixed recorded message plays before the agent greets: "This call may be recorded for quality and training purposes." It is played in the opening language; Odia calls hear the English message.

The recording is one audio file per call, with caller and agent on separate stereo channels (caller left, agent right) on one timeline, so you can hear exactly where an interruption landed. Play it from the call on the Calls page. Playback links are made when you open the call and expire after an hour; open the call again for a fresh one.

There is no automatic deletion schedule for call recordings today. Take that into account in what you tell callers and in your own retention policy.

After the call #

The transcript #

Every finished call has a transcript: an ordered list of turns, each from the caller or the agent, with its time from the start of the call. The Calls page shows them as m:ss, the caller labelled Caller and the agent by its name.

• There are exactly two speakers. Every turn is the caller or the agent.
• Times are relative to the start of the call. 0:14 means fourteen seconds in.
• An interrupted agent turn is recorded as what the caller actually heard, followed by —[interrupted]. Words the agent never got to say are not written down.
• Fixed lines are included. A hold line while the agent looks something up, a check that the caller is still there, a goodbye: each is written as an agent turn.

The call outcome and summary #

Every finished call is read after it ends, usually within seconds, and the Call outcome card on the call shows the result: how the call ended (such as Completed, Partly done or Asked to call back), whether the goal was met, the caller's mood, a short summary, the answers to the number's questions for callers, and the next step owed. See Calls and call-backs and Outcomes on incoming calls.

Response times #

Each call also carries response-time figures: the median, p95 and slowest turn, measured from when the caller stopped speaking to when the agent's audio started. The Calls page shows them under Response performance with a target of 1.5 seconds on the median. There are no per-turn figures.

Call statuses #

status is where the call is in its life. These are the strings on the call record and in the API.

Call outcomes #

outcome is why the call ended. It is empty while the call is live and set once when it ends.

Calls you place can also end as busy, rejected, invalid_number, unreachable or congestion, shown as Busy, Declined, Invalid number, Unreachable and Network busy. See Calls API.

Once a call has been read, the list on the Calls page shows how it went (such as Completed or Asked to call back) instead of the technical outcome. The call's own header keeps the technical outcome.

Which outcomes need your attention #

• caller_hangup, agent_hangup, agent_ended: nothing to do.
• idle: sample a few. A spike usually means the agent asked something the caller could not answer, or was silent too long.
• max_duration: read the transcripts. A call that runs ten minutes is rarely one that went well.
• setup_error, originate_error: not caused by the caller or the agent's instructions. Contact support if you see more than the odd one.
• suspended: billing. Fix it before anything else.

Finding a call #

Open Calls in the console: every call, incoming and outgoing, newest first, with filters, the call outcome, recording and transcript. See Calls and call-backs.

From your own systems, read a call with GET /calls/{call_id}, or subscribe to the call.started, call.ended and call.outcome webhooks. The public API has no endpoint that lists calls.

Troubleshooting #

Next #