The AI switchboard: phone calls
The same assistant that answers in chat can answer the phone. Same knowledge, same rules, same honesty: it knows what you taught it, books what the calendar allows, and when a question belongs to a person it hands it to a person. The difference is that on the phone the customer does not wait hours: either somebody answers, or the customer is gone.
How calls arrive
Two roads, and on neither do you change your number:
- Forwarding from your own number. Your number stays yours. You set up call forwarding to the switchboard's number: only when you are busy, only when you do not answer, or always. The panel gives you the activation codes ready for your phone carrier, and the forwarding comes off with an equally short code the day you no longer want it.
- A dedicated number. A new number, just for the switchboard, to put wherever you like.
What it does on a call
- It introduces itself as what it is. The call opens by stating that an AI assistant is speaking. That is a legal obligation, and the right way to treat a caller anyway.
- It answers from your information, the same Knowledge base it uses in chat. If it does not know something, it says so, and does not invent it.
- It books while the caller is on the line, under the same calendar rules: only genuinely free times, and phone bookings can wait for your approval first, if your approval policy says so.
- It takes contact details carefully. A foreign name or a dictated email arrives mangled over the phone, and the assistant knows it: it repeats what it understood and asks for confirmation, instead of writing down a guess.
- It speaks the caller's language. Italian and the main European languages, recognised automatically during the conversation: a tourist who opens in German gets the answer in German, from the same voice.
When a person is needed
If the caller asks something only you would know, the assistant does not improvise. It can transfer the call to one of your numbers, or do what a flesh-and-blood receptionist would: put the customer on hold and ask a colleague. The colleague gets the question on their phone or in the panel, answers in their own words, and the assistant comes back on the line with the answer.
If nobody answers in time, the assistant says so plainly and asks whether it may arrange a call back. It calls back only after an explicit yes, at sensible hours, and when it does it introduces itself and keeps the promise: it delivers the answer to the question that was left open. It never calls anyone on its own initiative.
From the panel, while the call is happening
A phone call should not be a black box:
- The transcript scrolls live. Open the panel and read the conversation as it happens, sentence by sentence.
- You can listen to the call live, from the browser, to hear how it is really going: the caller's tone, the pauses, whether it is time to step in.
- Every call stays in the log with start, end, duration, outcome (handled by the assistant, passed to a person, callback) and the full transcript, with the timing of every sentence.
Minutes, not conversations
The phone is measured in minutes, with monthly packs that attach to any plan, Starter included. When the pack's minutes run out, calls go straight to your own number: no call lost, no surprise charge. If you would rather the assistant kept going, you can turn on pay-per-use yourself, with a cap you choose. Prices and packs in Plans and limits.
What it never does
- It never pretends to be a person, even when the caller treats it as one.
- It never calls customers on its own initiative: the only outbound call is the promised callback, after an explicit yes.
- It never confirms what it does not know and never promises what you have not given it: everything that holds in chat holds on the phone.