How do I set up an AI to answer my business calls?
You set up an AI to answer business calls by creating an AI employee for incoming calls, writing a brief for the enquiries it will handle, and routing calls to it, either by giving out its number or by forwarding your existing line. Outpero's AI employee then picks up 24/7, handles the enquiry, qualifies the caller, books appointments and logs every call.
What the AI does on an incoming call
Inbound works the way Outpero's outbound calls do, in reverse. The AI employee picks up, greets the caller in the business's name, works out what they need, replies from the facts in its brief, qualifies the enquiry, books a slot with the calendar action if enabled, and logs the recording, transcript, summary and captured fields. It does this at 3 am, on Sundays and during a festival rush, when a front desk cannot.
Set-up steps
- 01Create an AI employee for incoming calls and choose its language and voice tier. For a Chennai clinic that may be Tamil; for a Pune dealership, Marathi or Hindi. Every agent switches to English mid-sentence if the caller does.
- 02Write the inbound brief: the greeting, the main reasons people call, approved replies on timings, prices, location and documents, what to capture, and how to close.
- 03List what it should not resolve on its own, such as billing disputes or medical emergencies, and what to say instead: take the details and promise a callback from the team.
- 04Turn on the actions it needs: calendar booking for appointments, WhatsApp for the location or confirmation, a spreadsheet or custom API for lookups.
- 05Route calls to it: publish its number, or forward your existing line to it.
- 06Set the results webhook so each call lands in your CRM or sheet, and flagged requests reach the right person.
- 07Call it yourself from a few phones, as different callers, before switching real traffic.
Design the greeting and triage
Callers need to know within a few seconds that they reached the right business. A Hindi example: 'नमस्ते, Sunrise Dental में आपका स्वागत है, बताइए आज किस बारे में call किया?' (Hello, welcome to Sunrise Dental, tell us what you are calling about today.) Then sort calls into a few buckets, such as new enquiry, booking or rescheduling, existing customer question, and anything else, and give each a short path in the brief.
When a caller needs a person
The AI can transfer a call to your team when a person should take it. It can also capture the request, the caller's number and a good callback time, and flag it in the summary and webhook so the team can call back. Route those flags to an email, Slack or WhatsApp alert through Zapier or Make, and agree who handles them and how fast.
Want to hear an AI voice agent handle this on a real call?
Follow-up questions
Which businesses get the most from AI call answering?
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Businesses whose phones ring outside staffed hours or faster than one person can pick up: clinics and diagnostic labs taking bookings, real-estate projects fielding hoarding and portal calls, coaching institutes in admission season, and service businesses such as AC repair or packers and movers. If most of your calls are complex complaints that need a specialist, keep people in front and use the AI for overflow.