AI Assistant

An AI receptionist that answers calls using information about your own business.

Before you start: Your Plivo number must be connected first. Setting up the AI assistant alone does not answer any calls. A routing rule also needs to point to it. See Call Routing and IVR.

How it works

When a call reaches your AI assistant, it speaks to the caller, listens to what they say, and answers using only what you have told it about your business: your hours, services, pricing, and policies. If a caller asks something outside that information, it takes their name and reason for calling instead of guessing, and saves it as a message for you to follow up on.

Setting it up

Knowledge base. A plain text description of your business on the AI Assistant integration page. Write it like you would explain your business to a new hire: hours, services, service area, pricing, and anything callers commonly ask about.
API key. Choose to use Orenyx's built in key, included in your subscription with nothing extra to manage, or connect your own Anthropic API key. Use the "Test Key" button to confirm your own key works before saving.
Enable. Turning this on does not route any calls by itself. You still need a routing rule set to "AI Assistant" for calls to actually reach it.

Your knowledge base is only ever used to answer calls to your own number. It is not shared with or visible to any other business on Voice Dispatch.

Behavior: custom instructions and rules

On the AI Assistant integration page, below the knowledge base, a "Behavior" section lets you shape how the assistant talks and reacts, beyond just the facts in the knowledge base.

Custom instructions. Free text guidance layered on top of the assistant's core behavior: tone, phrasing preferences, or things to always or never say. For example, always mention a current promotion, or never quote a price over the phone.
Specific rules. Explicit "when the caller does X, the assistant should do Y" pairs, for anything you want handled exactly the same way every time rather than left to the assistant's own judgment. For example, when the caller asks about parking, mention the free lot behind the building.

Transferring to a real person

Turning on "Let the assistant transfer to a real person" and selecting one or more team members lets the assistant hand a caller off live, the same way a routing rule's own transfer works, instead of only ever taking a callback message. The assistant uses this when a caller explicitly asks to speak with someone and it cannot resolve the request itself. If nobody selected is available, the call falls back to voicemail, exactly like an ordinary transfer.

Reference documents and links

Add a URL, for example your FAQ page or service menu, on the AI Assistant integration page, and the assistant can draw on its text alongside your knowledge base. The page is fetched once when you add it, not during the call itself, so a slow or temporarily unreachable site never affects a live call. Select "Refresh" any time the source page changes, or "Remove" to take it out entirely.

Custom voice with ElevenLabs

By default, the assistant speaks using Plivo's built in text to speech voice. If you connect your own ElevenLabs account on the ElevenLabs integration page, the assistant speaks every reply in your chosen ElevenLabs voice instead, and uses ElevenLabs for transcription too. This is entirely optional. If ElevenLabs is not connected, or the connection stops working mid call, the assistant falls back to the default voice automatically rather than dropping the call.

Connect your ElevenLabs API key on the ElevenLabs integration page.
Choose which of your ElevenLabs voices the assistant should use.
Disconnecting at any time reverts the assistant to the default voice immediately.

PreviousCall Routing and IVR NextTeam Availability