Get a number
In the web console, open Manage → Phone. If you have no numbers yet, that is what the page will tell you, and Get a number is the way out of it.
Numbers belong to your account rather than to a particular employee, so you can move one to a different employee later without the caller noticing.
Bind it to an employee
Binding is what makes a number ring somewhere. Pick the employee that should answer, and from then on inbound calls to that number reach it.
A number goes to one employee. If you want a call to reach different people depending on what it is about, that is the employee's job once it has answered, not the number's job before it does.
Outbound is a separate decision
Answering calls and placing them are not the same permission. Outbound calling has its own agreement to accept, because the rules that govern calling people are stricter than the rules that govern answering them, and they vary by where you and the recipient are.
Automated outbound calling is regulated, and the obligations differ by jurisdiction. Consent, calling hours, identification and do-not-call handling are your responsibility, not something the platform can decide for you. If you are not certain what applies, find out before you turn it on rather than after.
Keep a blocklist. Anyone who asks not to be called goes on it, and that request should survive you changing employees, numbers, or your mind about the campaign.
What the employee should do
A phone call is the least forgiving channel an employee works in: no draft, no review, no undo. Everything it says is said. Write the persona accordingly.
Disclosing that it is an assistant is not only courteous. In some places it is required, and in all places it prevents the moment a caller realises halfway through and feels deceived.
Set the gate
Anything with money in it, always. A call is contact with someone outside your company, so an employee that can also send follow-up mail or move a deal along should have those operations gated separately from its ability to answer.
Check it
- Ring the number yourself and listen to the whole thing as a caller would
- Confirm it identifies itself as an assistant in the first sentence
- Ask it something it should refuse, such as a price, and confirm it does
- Ask it to stop calling you and confirm that lands somewhere durable
- Ring outside business hours and check what happens
When it goes wrong
The number rings but nothing answers
Usually not bound, or bound to an employee that is not running. Check the binding first, then the employee.
It talks too much
Length that reads fine on screen is unbearable on a call. Constrain it explicitly: short turns, one question at a time, and stop talking after asking.
Callers do not realise it is an assistant
The disclosure is buried or conditional. Put it in the first sentence, unconditionally.
What is not here yet
Multi-step call trees, queues and overflow routing exist, but as part of the managed call centre rather than as something you configure yourself. If you need a caller routed through a menu into a queue with overflow, that is a conversation with us rather than a screen you can set up here.