Persona, voice and instructions

These settings decide who your voice agent is on the phone: its name, how it greets people, the voice it speaks with, its manner, and the standing instructions that keep it on track. What the agent knows comes from Knowledge. What it does with each kind of request comes from the playbook.

You'll find these settings in two places inside an agent:

• In the Call view, the Greets every caller moment holds the greeting and the settings a caller notices first.
• In the Settings view, the groups Business & persona, Agent instructions, Voice & language, AI engine, Conversation & speech and Guardrails & topics hold the rest.

Voice, language and personality appear in both places. They're the same setting, so a change in one shows in the other. As with everything in a voice agent, nothing reaches callers until you press Save draft and then Publish, or Update live for a live agent. If the editor layout is new to you, start with the overview.

The greeting

Open the agent, stay in the Call view and click Greets every caller.

• Opening line is what the agent says when it answers, for example "Thanks for calling Bayside Physio & Wellness. This is Maya. How can I help you today?"
• Keep things fresh lets the agent vary the wording of the greeting naturally from call to call instead of repeating it word for word. It's off to begin with.
• Start with "Good morning / afternoon / evening" adds the right greeting for the time of day. It's on to begin with.
• Voice and Language are described below.
• Personality sets the agent's manner: Professional, Friendly, Warm, Efficient, Enthusiastic or Custom. Each option has a short description beside it, such as "Patient and reassuring" for Warm. Choose Custom and a Describe the personality box appears for one sentence of your own, such as "Calm and unhurried, never chatty."
• Sign-off is how the agent ends a completed call.

If call recording is switched on, a note here reminds you that a recording disclosure is spoken before the call continues. The note has a link labelled Recording & guardrails. The link opens Settings at the group named Recording & privacy, where the disclosure text lives. The group name in Settings is the one to look for, because nothing in Settings is called "Recording & guardrails".

Business & persona

In Settings, this group is about who the agent is on every call.

• Business name and Industry. Industry is free text, such as "Physiotherapy clinic".
• What the business does gives the agent its background, up to 800 characters. It's the same text you wrote when you created the agent. Write it the way you'd brief a new receptionist: what you do, who you help, where you are and what people usually call about.
• Agent name is the name the agent introduces itself with.
• Role describes its job, such as "Clinic receptionist".
• Personality is the same choice as in the greeting.
• Main job is one sentence on what a successful call looks like, for example "Help every caller book, change or ask about an appointment, and pass anything clinical to the team."
• Human-style speech adds natural fillers like "let me see…" so the agent sounds less robotic. It's off to begin with.

Agent instructions

Instructions holds your standing rules for the whole agent, up to 1,000 characters. Use it for how the agent should behave on every call, for example "Keep answers brief and ask one question at a time" or "Always check whether the caller is an existing patient before booking."

Rules that only apply to one kind of request belong on that playbook row instead, in its own Agent instructions box. See The playbook and transfers.

Short, specific rules work better than one long paragraph. Put each rule on its own line.

Allowing general knowledge

Your agent answers from your approved knowledge, not from general knowledge it picked up elsewhere. If there's a purpose where general knowledge would help, say so in plain words in your instructions. A clinic might write "You may use general knowledge of the local area to give directions to the clinic."

When you publish, the publish window shows which general-knowledge topics the system understood from your instructions, quoting the words it relied on, or "none". You confirm that with Publish. Confirmed business facts and your other restrictions still apply, and general knowledge is never a live lookup, so it can't supply things like current traffic or today's opening hours.

Voice and language

The Voice & language group has the same Voice and Language choices as the greeting, plus speech pace.

• Voice lists the voices for the choice you made under AI engine. Standard and Advanced share one list. On those, Default uses Marin. Some voices carry a regional accent, and the list says so, for example "Quartz" and "Ripple" are Australian-influenced and "Vesper" is British-influenced. Grok has its own list: Default (Eve), Altair, Ara, Atlas, Aurora, Carina, Castor, Celeste, Cosmo, Eve, Helios and Helix. Press the play button beside the list to hear a short sample, and press it again to stop. Switching between Grok and Standard or Advanced resets the voice to Default.
• Language offers English, English (Australia), English (UK) and English (US). The variant steers the agent's accent and spelling, it doesn't change what the agent can do. Standard and Advanced always speak the language you choose, so other languages aren't available with them and you shouldn't plan a call around one.
• Follow the caller's language appears under Language only when the agent uses Grok. It's on by default.
  • On: the agent answers in whatever language the caller speaks and switches when the caller does. The Language list then only sets how its English sounds.
  • Off: the agent stays in the language you chose. If a caller speaks another language, it politely says it can only help in that language.
• Speech pace has three quick choices: Relaxed is a touch slower, Natural is the voice's own pace, and Brisk is a touch faster. The slider underneath sets any pace from 0.80× to 1.40×.

AI engine

How it handles calls offers the same three choices you saw when you created the agent:

• Standard handles everyday calls and requests.
• Advanced is for calls that need more involved reasoning.
• Grok is a separate engine. By default it answers in the caller's language and switches language with the caller. Choose it when callers speak languages other than English. See Voice and language for the Follow the caller's language switch.

Standard and Advanced sound the same. Advanced works through calls more carefully, which suits calls with more steps or more judgement. Grok has its own voices. Each choice shows its price per minute for your account. A choice your account can't use is greyed out, with the reason shown.

You can move an agent between Standard, Advanced and Grok in any direction. A change takes effect when you publish. Moving to or from Grok resets the voice to Default.

Grok is switched on per account. If the Grok card is greyed out, Grok isn't enabled on your account. Ask your provider or reseller to turn it on.

Once the agent is live, this group also shows a read-only summary of its spend.

An agent on an older engine An agent created before these choices existed shows a notice here instead of a selected choice. It keeps working as it is. Choose Standard, Advanced or Grok to move it across. The voice resets to the default when you do, and the move takes effect when you publish. It can't be undone, so the agent can't go back to its older engine.

Conversation & speech

These settings keep calls focused and predictable. The defaults suit most businesses.

• Max call length is the longest a call can last, from 1 to 60 minutes. The default is 10.
• Silence timeout is how long the agent waits for the caller to say something, from 5 to 120 seconds. The default is 20.
• Clarification tries is how many times the agent asks again when it doesn't understand, from 1 to 5. The default is 2.
• Interruptions decides what happens when a caller talks over the agent. Callers can interrupt is the most natural, because the agent stops talking as soon as the caller speaks. Finish the sentence first lets the agent complete its sentence. Never interrupt the agent is for notices and disclaimers that must be heard in full.
• Music on hold is what callers hear while they wait, for example during a transfer. Tenant default uses your account's usual music.

On an answering agent, Advanced at the bottom opens Runtime fallback extension. It's only used if the agent can't start at all, and the call goes to the extension you enter. Leave it blank for no transfer.

Guardrails & topics

This group sets what the agent may talk about, and limits it can't be talked out of.

• Topics the agent may discuss takes up to 10 short topics, such as "Appointments" or "Opening hours". Leave it empty to allow anything within the agent's brief.
• Topics that always go to a human takes up to 10 topics the agent must never handle alone, such as "Complaints" or "Clinical advice".
• If asked something outside its scope is what the agent should do instead, up to 400 characters. For example: "Explain you can't help with that, and offer to take a message for the team."
• Never give clinical or medical advice adds an emergency disclaimer and stops the agent discussing diagnoses, results or medication. It's recommended for any healthcare business, and the healthcare templates switch it on for you.

A note underneath lists the protections that are always on. There's always a path to a person, every failure has somewhere to go, and an error can't leave a caller stranded. Outbound agents also check they've reached the right person before sharing anything private.

The same three topic settings also appear in the Answers from your knowledge moment in the Call view, under Topic boundaries, with different labels. They are one setting shown in two places, so a change in one appears in the other.

Type a topic and press Enter, or press Add. Both places allow up to 10 topics in each list. The Settings box also stops the reply at 400 characters, so keep it short in either place. The knowledge moment is the quicker place to adjust them while you're working on what the agent knows.

Everyday tasks

• Change what the agent says when it answers → edit the Opening line in the greeting.
• Make the agent sound like your business → set the Personality, and write What the business does in your own words in Business & persona.
• Stop the greeting sounding identical on every call → switch on Keep things fresh.
• Slow the agent down for older callers → choose Relaxed under Speech pace.
• Keep the agent on topic → set Topics the agent may discuss and what to do If asked something outside its scope, both in Guardrails & topics.
• Give the agent facts to answer from → that's Knowledge. These settings shape how the agent talks. Knowledge shapes what it knows.