Routing
The caller says why they rang, instead of pressing one.
The keypad menu was invented because a computer could not understand speech. Now it can, and the menu has stayed: four levels, one option that never quite fits, and a person who asks everything again from the start after the transfer anyway.
The assistant asks once what it can help with, places the answer in your categories, gathers the two or three details the operator would have asked for anyway, and transfers to the right queue with the context carried across.
What it replaces
This page is about replacing a poor mechanism with a better one: the keypad menu, the operator who transfers, and the repeated questions after the transfer.
Instead of a keypad menu
One open question, an answer in the caller own words, a correct route.
Ahead of a long queue
The context gathered during time the caller would have spent waiting anyway.
Filtering out the wrong calls
Cold sellers, misdials, and requests answered by a piece of public information.
Distributing across teams
Support, sales, billing, technical. With thresholds and rules you write.
Collecting the identifying details
The name, the company, the order or contract number, so the operator does not have to ask.
Thirty seconds, then a person
A first-line assistant has exactly one success metric: how often the call reaches the right person first time. Call length is not a virtue here.
- 01 One open question Not five options. The caller says freely what they want and the model places it, which is precisely what a menu cannot do.
- 02 Check the exceptions Emergencies and the cases that must skip everything else, defined by you as phrases rather than as judgement.
- 03 Gather two or three details Exactly what the operator would have asked. No more, because every extra question is another chance for the caller to hang up.
- 04 Choose the destination A queue, a specialist assistant, an extension or an external number, under the rules written on the route.
- 05 Transfer with what it learned The context goes across in the form you choose: the whole dialogue, the last few turns, only what the caller said, or a summary.
What you see after a month
The underrated part of this pattern: after a month you have an exact map of what people actually ring about, in their own words.
| The recognised intent | As structured output on every call, with the same values, so it can be counted. |
|---|---|
| The destination | Where it transferred, which shows whether the routing matches your real structure. |
| The context carried | What the operator received, in the form configured on the route. |
| The uncategorised calls | The ones it could not place, which are in effect the list of categories you are missing. |
What a first line does not solve
Good routing makes a call shorter. It does not make a call disappear, and it should not be sold as though it did.
- It does not reduce call volume It sends calls where they belong. If the team is understaffed, correct routing does not change that.
- It does not invent categories It places calls in your list. One that fits nowhere goes to a general queue rather than into a made-up category.
- It authenticates nobody It can ask for an order or contract number, but that does not identify a person.
- It does not take over queues on our own PBX What is proven end to end today is the Twilio route. Queues, ring groups and transfers through our own PBX are written and tested but have moved no real audio in this build.
- The transfer destination is free text It is not a picker of real queues, which means a typing mistake is a routing mistake. That is a roughness in the interface we acknowledge.
What people ask about the first line
Is it better than a keypad menu?
For most businesses, yes, for three reasons: the caller does not have to translate their problem into your options, categories can change without re-recording anything, and the context reaches the operator. For a structure with three genuinely clear options, a simple menu is still fine and cheaper.
How much context reaches the operator?
As much as you choose: the whole dialogue, the last few turns, only what the caller said, a summary, or nothing. Those are distinct modes configured on the route, and the summary costs an extra model call, so it is not free.
What happens if it does not understand?
It asks once more, differently, then transfers to the general queue. An assistant asking the same thing a third time is more irritating than the menu it replaced, and that is configured explicitly.
Can it route to other assistants rather than to people?
Yes. A squad of assistants can pass the call from one to another inside the same conversation, with routing rules on a tool, an intent, a variable or a condition. The assistants page describes the mechanism.
Where to go next
Telephony
Numbers, trunks, dial plan, queues, operators and campaigns, in one system.
Operator handoff
Queue, operators, skills, transfer, and what the supervisor sees.
Assistants
Transcriber, model, voice, tools, knowledge, and a way to prove it still works.
Pricing
Components at their published price, the platform on top, and what we cannot price yet.
See it working on your own business
Five short steps. At the end, if you want one, an AI assistant rings you and handles a call the way it would handle yours.
- 01 Your business
- 02 What we found
- 03 What it should do
- 04 Connections
- 05 Your number
What you get, and what it costs
- A telephone number of your own, answered by an assistant built from what your website says. You can ring it the same day, from the phone in your pocket.
- Five steps, about four minutes. Reading your site takes half a minute, and after payment the number is usually live in under a minute.
- One payment: €3.00 for the first month of the number, plus the credit your calls are drawn from — the smallest bundle is €10.00. No subscription, no contract.
Calls cost €0.12 a minute, whoever rings and from wherever.
- €10.00 roughly 83 minutes of talking
- €20.00 roughly 166 minutes of talking
- €50.00 roughly 416 minutes of talking
From the second month the number costs €3.00 a month, taken from the same credit. If the credit will not cover it the number keeps answering for 14 days before it goes back to the pool.
What the assistant knows is built by reading your website, and an automated reading can get things wrong. That is why step two shows you everything we found, with a link to the page each fact came from, and you correct it before you pay — not after your first real call.
Nothing is built and nothing is charged until you pay. What you fill in is saved, and the link brings you back to it.
Notes
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1
The tools named on this page are the ones in
App\Services\Integrations\ConnectorRegistrycarryingimplemented. Anything that is only in the catalogue, without that flag, is not named here as though it worked. -
2
The ways context is carried across a handoff are the values in
App\Enums\SquadHandoffContextMode. The possible destinations of a route are inApp\Enums\TelephonyDestinationType.