🤖AI Call Answering
What is AI Call Answering?
AI Call Answering adds an AI Agent node to the Call Flow Builder. The agent picks up the call, greets the caller in a natural voice, answers questions from your business knowledge, qualifies the lead, captures details like name and budget — and then routes the call back into your flow: book an appointment, transfer to a human, send an SMS, or end politely.
Unlike standalone AI receptionists, the agent is one node among many. It composes with everything else in your flow — Business Hours, Menu, Dial, Round Robin, Voicemail — and every AI outcome is a real branch on the canvas that you wire yourself.
Use cases at a glance: A 24/7 receptionist that qualifies leads before your team picks up, after-hours booking on your real calendar, spam screening that never creates junk contacts, and qualified-lead conversions reported straight to Google Ads.
Available on all plans — bring your own keys. The AI Agent runs on your own Twilio account and your own OpenAI API key (plus an optional ElevenLabs key for premium voices). Ring Tonic doesn't meter or mark up AI minutes; usage bills directly to your provider accounts.
Before You Start
The agent needs a few workspace-level credentials before it can take a call.
Twilio credentials
Your workspace must already be receiving calls through Twilio. Check Settings > Workspaces > Twilio Credentials — if your tracking numbers work today, you're set. See Setup Workspace.
OpenAI API key
The agent's brain. Add your key under Settings > Workspaces > your workspace > AI Automation.
See Set up AI Automation with OpenAI for how to create a key.
ElevenLabs API key (recommended)
Powers the agent's natural-sounding voice and lets you pick from your own ElevenLabs voices. Add it under the Voice & Audio section of the same workspace settings page.
Without it, the Voice tab of the AI node shows: "No ElevenLabs voices found. Add an ElevenLabs API key in Settings → Integrations to load your voices."
Google Calendar (only for appointment booking)
If you want the agent to book real appointments, connect your calendar first under Settings > Integrations > Google Calendar. See Appointment Booking below.
Live speech-to-text engine (optional)
Under the workspace Transcription tab, the AI call transcription (live) section controls which speech-to-text engine transcribes the caller during live AI calls. It runs on your Twilio account — no separate API key.
Leave it on Automatic — let Twilio pick the default (recommended) unless you have a reason to force Google or Deepgram.
Start from a Template
The fastest way to a working AI flow is one of the five built-in AI templates. Each ships fully wired — every outcome port connected, fallbacks in place — with a working persona you edit instead of writing from scratch.
Click Create Flow in the Call Flow Builder and pick one from the Templates tab:
AI Receptionist
The AI answers every call: handles FAQs, captures the caller's name and number, and transfers insistent callers to your team.
After-Hours AI Answering
Business hours ring your team as usual; nights, weekends, and holidays the AI answers and takes a complete message with a callback number.
AI Missed-Call Rescue
Rings your team first — if nobody picks up, the AI answers instead of voicemail and captures who called and why.
AI Appointment Booking
Booking-first: the AI finds a time with the caller and books it straight onto your Google Calendar.
AI Lead Qualifier
Built for ad campaigns: screens spam, asks your qualifying questions, and bridges qualified callers live to your sales line.
Each template comes with a realistic sample business (a plumbing company, a dental office, …) so you can place a test call immediately. Before publishing:
Replace the sample persona, business info, and FAQs on the AI node with your own.
Swap the placeholder phone numbers on the Dial nodes.
For AI Appointment Booking, connect Google Calendar first — see Appointment Booking.
The template personas encode behaviors that survive real calls — the agent confirms the caller's name and number back to them before transferring, never transfers or hangs up silently, and speaks a confirmation after booking. Keep those instructions when you customize the prompt.
Adding the AI Agent Node
Wire the outcome ports
Every conversation ends on exactly one outcome port. Wire each port you use to a downstream node — see Output Ports for recommendations.
Test, then publish
Run a real Test call from the toolbar before publishing — see Testing with a Real AI Call.
Configuring the Agent
Persona
Who the agent is and how it behaves.
Agent name
The name the agent uses for itself (e.g., "Riley").
Business name
Your business, referenced naturally during the conversation.
Tone
A short style hint, e.g., "warm, professional".
System prompt
The core instructions for how the agent should behave. Required to publish.
Goals
What the agent is trying to accomplish on every call.
Objectives — ordered sub-goals the agent works through, e.g., "Get the caller's name and reason for calling." Each objective can list the capture-field keys it must collect (comma-separated).
Capture fields — the structured data the agent extracts: a key (e.g.,
budget), a display label, a type (Text, Number, Yes/No, Date), and a Required toggle.
Every required capture field must be referenced by an objective. If you mark a field required but no objective asks for it, publishing fails with a clear error — the agent would never know to collect it.
Knowledge
What the agent is allowed to know and say.
Business info — free-text background: service area, pricing approach, anything the agent should reference.
Services — a short list of what you offer.
FAQs — question/answer pairs the agent answers verbatim from.
Answer from knowledge only — keep this on. The agent escalates ("let me connect you") instead of inventing answers it doesn't have.
Voice
How the agent sounds.
Language
A curated list — each language uses a hand-picked, natural-sounding voice.
AI model
The brain behind the agent. Leave it on Use account default unless a flow needs something specific — see Choosing a model below.
Voice
The ElevenLabs voice the agent speaks in (defaults to the language's curated voice). Loads from your own key.
Barge-in sensitivity
How easily the caller can interrupt the agent mid-sentence (Low / Medium / High).
Welcome greeting
The agent's opening line. The AI disclosure is automatically spoken before this greeting.
Choosing a model. Leave it on Use account default unless a flow needs something specific. Otherwise pick by use case — faster models start speaking sooner, smarter ones handle complexity better:
Fast & Cheap — simple, scripted calls: FAQs, basic reception, high volume.
Balanced (Recommended) — the everyday all-rounder: booking, qualifying, and most support calls.
Smart & Snappy — objections and light troubleshooting, while staying responsive.
Smartest — complex or regulated calls where accuracy matters most (a touch slower to respond).
Actions
What the agent is allowed to do. Branch-producing actions add their output port on the canvas automatically.
Set outcome
Lets the agent qualify or disqualify the lead, or flag spam.
Qualified / Not Qualified / Spam
Book appointment
Books a real slot on your connected calendar.
Booked
Transfer to human
Hands the call to your team with a spoken context summary.
Wants Human
Capture field
Saves extracted details (name, budget, …) onto the call and contact.
—
Add tag
Tags the call, visible in Call History, webhooks, and reports.
—
Send SMS
Fires a text mid-call (e.g., a booking link).
—
End call
Ends the conversation politely.
—
Two related sections live on this tab:
Transfer — choose Connected node (wire the Wants Human port) to route transfers through your flow (recommended), or Specific number to dial a fixed number. Turn on Speak context summary to the agent so your team hears a short AI-generated whisper ("Caller wants a roof estimate, budget $8k") before being connected.
Attribution context — inject the campaign, ad source, and keyword into the agent's awareness so it can acknowledge what the caller responded to ("Thanks for calling about the summer promo").
Safety
Guardrails and compliance.
Confidence threshold
If the agent qualifies a lead with confidence below this number, the call routes to the Low Confidence port instead — and no conversion fires.
Max turns
Hard cap on conversation length.
Wants-human phrases
Comma-separated phrases ("talk to a person, human") that immediately trigger a transfer.
Spam screening
Detects robocallers and routes them to the Spam port — without ever creating a contact.
AI disclosure
The legally-important opener telling callers they're speaking with AI. Always on — cannot be disabled. The wording is editable.
Recording
Inherit from flow (default) or Off.
The AI disclosure is mandatory. The FCC treats AI voices as "artificial or prerecorded", so every AI call opens with your disclosure text, spoken in the agent's own voice as the first sentence of the greeting. You can edit the wording, but you can't remove it — publishing enforces it.
Output Ports — and How to Wire Them
Every AI conversation ends on exactly one port. Three are required before you can publish; the rest are recommended.
Qualified
The agent qualified the lead at or above your confidence threshold.
Hangup with a farewell, or a Dial
✅ Required
Wants Human
The caller asked for a person, or the agent decided to transfer.
Dial, Round Robin, or Agent Queue
✅ Required
Error
Something went wrong mid-conversation.
Dial or Voicemail (a safe fallback)
✅ Required
Booked
An appointment was actually created on your calendar.
Hangup with a confirmation message
✅ When booking is enabled
Not Qualified
The agent determined the lead isn't a fit.
Hangup
Recommended
Spam
Spam screening caught a robocaller.
Hangup
Recommended
Low Confidence
Qualified, but below your confidence threshold.
Dial or Voicemail for human review
Recommended
No Input
The caller never spoke.
Voicemail or Hangup
Recommended
Errors block publishing; recommendations don't. Leaving a required port unwired shows a red "AI Agent is incomplete" toast and blocks the publish. Leaving a recommended port unwired publishes fine, but you'll see a "Published — AI Agent has recommendations" notice — an unwired recommended port ends the call with a plain hangup, which usually isn't what you want.
Appointment Booking
The agent can book real appointments during the call — and it only ever confirms a time after the event is actually created on your calendar, so it can't promise slots that don't exist.
How booking works on a call. The agent reads the date and time back to the caller and waits for a clear "yes" before it books anything — so a misheard time never lands on your calendar. If the requested slot is already taken, it says so and offers another time. Appointments are created in your workspace's timezone, so make sure that's set to your local zone for times to land correctly.
Connect Google Calendar
Enable booking on the node
Calendly appears in the provider list but isn't available yet. Selecting it currently blocks publishing — use Google Calendar.
Booked appointments count as conversions. A successful booking records a conversion the same way a qualified lead does — including the Google Ads upload when your Google Ads integration is connected.
Testing with a Real AI Call
Simulation mode covers flow logic, but an AI conversation needs a real call. The Test call button on the toolbar places one — from your browser, no phone needed.
Test calls are invisible to your data. They never create contacts, never fire conversions, and are excluded from every analytics surface and the public status page. They do use real Twilio/OpenAI minutes on your own accounts (a few cents per test).
Strict mode — require a passing test before every publish
For regulated teams (or during your rollout), workspace admins can turn on strict mode so AI flows can't be published without a saved passing test:
With strict mode on, publishing an AI flow without a fresh saved scenario fails with: "Strict mode is on for this workspace: run a passing test call and save it before publishing this AI flow."
"Fresh" means the saved test matches the current draft — any edit after the test puts the badge into Edited since last test and re-blocks publishing until you re-test and re-save.
The publish check never places a call by itself; it only reads your last saved scenario, so provider hiccups can't block a publish on their own.
What Happens on a Live Call
The agent answers — disclosure first, then your welcome greeting, in your chosen voice.
The conversation runs — the agent works through your objectives, answers from your knowledge, and captures fields as the caller volunteers them. Callers can interrupt mid-sentence.
Spam never pollutes your CRM — a screened robocall routes to the Spam port and no contact is created.
Real callers become contacts — once the conversation ends on a real outcome, the contact is created (or matched) and the AI-captured details are saved on it, kept separate from fields your team entered by hand.
Qualified means conversions — a qualified outcome (at or above your confidence threshold) marks the call qualified and feeds the same conversion pipeline as manual qualification, including Google Ads conversion uploads.
The flow continues — whatever node you wired to the outcome port takes over: dial your team with a context whisper, send the SMS, or hang up politely.
Where AI Shows Up in Your Data
Call History
On Analytics > Call Activity, every AI-handled call gets an AI Agent badge column showing its outcome (Qualified, Wants human, Spam, …). Two filters slice the list:
AI Handled — yes/no: only AI calls, or only human-handled calls.
AI Outcome — pick one or more specific outcomes (e.g., just Spam and Error).
Open any call's details:
The Details tab gains an AI Agent section — the outcome with its confidence, every captured field (name, budget, reason…), and the agent's one-line call summary.
The Recording tab shows the full AI Conversation — every Agent/Caller turn with the agent's response time — even when no audio was recorded.
Flow Analytics (per flow)
The Flow Analytics panel in the editor gains an AI Agent section with a card per AI node:
Resolution
Share of conversations the agent fully handled without a human or an error
Qualified / Booked
Qualification and booking rates
Transfer
How often callers were handed to a human
Spam blocked
Robocalls screened out
Outcome bar
Every outcome with its count — including escalations (Low confidence, No input, Error)
Avg turns
Average conversation length in agent replies
Avg / P95 latency
How fast the agent responds; flagged amber above 1s and red above 1.4s
Confidence
Average qualification confidence with a distribution chart
Analytics → AI Agent (whole workspace)
The AI Agent page under Analytics rolls the same metrics up across every flow: summary cards (with period-over-period change when comparison is on), then a table with one row per flow — click a row to expand its per-node cards. Flows with an AI node that received no AI calls in the range still appear with a "No AI sessions in this range" note, so a freshly published flow is never invisible. Date, campaign, source, and medium filters work like every other analytics page.
Monitoring & Alerts
Ring Tonic watches your agent's response speed continuously. If the 95th-percentile response gap degrades past ~1.4 seconds over the recent window, workspace admins receive an email — "AI Agent Response Time Degraded" — with the measured latency and what to check:
Your OpenAI account status and rate limits
The model selected on the AI node (a faster model improves latency)
Very large knowledge/FAQ blocks, which slow every reply
Alerts are throttled to at most one per hour per workspace.
Troubleshooting
"No ElevenLabs voices found" on the Voice tab
Add your ElevenLabs API key in the workspace's Voice & Audio settings, then reopen the panel.
"AI Agent is incomplete" when publishing
A required port (Qualified, Wants Human, Error — plus Booked if booking is on) is unwired, or the system prompt / disclosure text is empty. The toast lists exactly what's missing; click Open to jump to the node.
Publish blocked mentioning a calendar
Book appointment is enabled but no Google Calendar is connected — connect it under Settings > Integrations, or disable the action.
Publish blocked by strict mode
Run a Test call, get a passing result, click Save as scenario, then publish.
Test call stuck on "Connecting…"
Allow microphone access in your browser, and confirm your Twilio credentials are valid in workspace settings.
Every call routes to the Error port
Usually a missing or invalid OpenAI API key — verify it under AI Automation in workspace settings, then place a test call.
"AI Agent Response Time Degraded" email
See Monitoring & Alerts above.
Best Practices
Write the system prompt like a job description — who the agent is, what success looks like, what it must never do.
Keep the knowledge tight. Short, factual business info and FAQs beat long pasted pages — both for accuracy and response speed.
Wire every recommended port. Spam → Hangup and Low Confidence → a human reviewer turn "lost" calls into handled ones.
Test after every meaningful edit. The Edited since last test badge exists for a reason — conversations are sensitive to prompt changes.
Start with transfer generous, tighten later. Early on, let borderline calls reach your team; raise the confidence threshold once you trust the agent's judgment.
Watch the AI Agent analytics weekly. A rising transfer rate or falling resolution rate is your earliest signal that the prompt or knowledge needs attention.
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