Quick Start: An AI Agent Answering Your Number
Six things have to be true before a caller hears an AI agent, and they have to be true in this order. Each one below is a summary plus a link to the full article. Work down the list once and the number is live.
If you only want the fastest possible test call, Your first call is the shorter version of this page. Come back here when you want to understand what each piece does.
The chain
| # | Step | Without it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Connect a telephony provider | No calls can arrive at all. |
| 2 | Get a phone number | Nothing for anyone to dial. |
| 3 | Connect an AI engine | The agent has nothing to think or speak with. |
| 4 | Create the AI voice agent | Nothing to route the number to. |
| 5 | Register the number with the engine | Callers reach voicemail on every engine except OpenAI. |
| 6 | Route the number to the agent | Calls to the number are dropped. |
1. Connect a telephony provider
The provider carries the call and bills you its own per-minute rate. You bring your own account, so go and open one first if you have not.
Go to Settings > Integrations and click Connect on the provider's card. Paste the credentials from that provider's console and Save & verify. WhautoVoice points the provider at itself, so there is nothing to copy back into their console.
The card must end up reading Connected. Saved, but not verified means the credentials were rejected. Providers differ in what they support: see Provider limitations before you commit to one.
2. Get a phone number
Open AI & Call Handling > Phone Numbers. There are two ways to get one onto the page:
- Buy number searches your provider for a number in the country and area you want, with the provider's monthly price beside each. Click Buy.
- Import owned brings across a number already sitting on your provider account. Pick the provider, tick the numbers, click Import.
Either way, WhautoVoice configures the number at the provider for you. Give it a name such as "Front desk" so it is recognisable everywhere else in the app.
Full article: Phone numbers.
3. Connect an AI engine
The engine is the AI that listens, thinks and speaks. You bring your own key here too, so the conversation is billed to you at the engine's published price.
Back in Settings > Integrations, connect one of:
| Engine | Good for |
|---|---|
| OpenAI | The easiest start. One connection covers every number, with no registration step. |
| xAI Grok | An alternative realtime engine with its own voices. |
| ElevenLabs Agents | The widest voice choice, and knowledge search that adds no delay on the line. |
| Sarvam AI | Indian languages, with the audio and the data staying in India. |
Full article: Connect an AI engine.
4. Create the AI voice agent
Open AI & Call Handling > AI Voice Agents and click New AI agent. Start from a template rather than a blank page: the templates already say the things that are easy to forget, like reading a booking back before confirming it.
On the Basics tab, set the name, the AI engine, the Instructions, the Greeting and the Voice. Press the sample button to hear the voice before you commit.
Then the two optional tabs, either of which can be left for later:
- Tools is what the agent can do: transfer to a person, end the call, write to the contact, take a message, call your own API, or book into your diary. See AI agent tools and Booking with Whautomate.
- Knowledge is what the agent can look up: prices, services, policies, opening hours. See Knowledge bases.
Full articles: Create an AI voice agent, AI agent templates, Writing AI agent instructions.
5. Register the number with the engine
This is the step that is easiest to miss, and its symptom is a number that quietly sends every caller to voicemail.
On Phone Numbers, open AI engines on the number's row and click Register next to the engine your agent uses. A yellow Register with (engine) badge in the AI engines column is telling you it has not been done.
OpenAI needs no registration. xAI Grok, ElevenLabs and Sarvam AI all do, one number at a time.
Full article: Connect an AI engine.
6. Route the number to the agent
Nothing is live until a number points at it. On Phone Numbers, click Routing on the row (or Set up routing if it has never been routed), choose AI voice agent under Route calls to, pick your agent as the Target and save.
While the dialog is open, decide two more things:
- Record calls, and whether your local law requires you to say so in the greeting.
- What happens outside business hours, once you have set them under Business hours.
Full article: Call routing.
Test it
Dial the number from your mobile. The greeting should start within a couple of seconds. Ask the agent something your instructions cover, then say "I would like to speak to someone" to check the handoff.
To take that handoff yourself, set your presence to Available in the header and answer in the browser. See The softphone and Human handoff.
Afterwards, open the call under Calls. The Timeline tab shows where the call went, and the transcript shows what was said. See Call details.
Work down AI agent not answering. It is ordered by how often each cause is the real one, and steps 1, 3 and 5 of this page are the top three.
Where to go next
- Put a menu in front of the agent. Let callers choose a department first, and send only some of them to the AI. See Quick start: an IVR menu.
- Invite your team so handoffs have somewhere to land. See Adding team members and Call queues.
- Let the agent call out. See Outbound campaigns.
- Watch what it costs. See Usage and allowances.
Email us at hello@whautovoice.com and we will get you sorted.