From creating the account to the first call answered, in order, with no technical help.
A receptionist who answers for you when you cannot, who speaks about your services in your words, and who sends you a written summary after every call.
You will also have heard her voice before a customer does, and you will have called yourself to check that the chain works end to end.
Allow an hour, half of it writing your instructions — that is the part that decides the quality of everything else, and the only one where nobody can stand in for you.
None of this is final: every item can be changed later, and the change applies at the next publication.
Name, address, main language, and your line of business. The section decides the questions the receptionist asks by default: a repair shop does not ask what a clinic asks.
Your services, your service area, your hours, what you want asked, and above all what the receptionist may not say: a firm price, a deadline, a warranty. Every claim she can make comes from this screen.
Listen to a preview before publishing. Tone matters more than people expect: the same sentence reassures or irritates depending on the voice saying it.
Publishing makes your instructions effective and keeps the version. Only then set up forwarding with your carrier — the numbers article gives the codes and the path for yours.
From another phone, call your business number and play the customer. The call should appear in your workspace within seconds, with its transcript and the request it produced.
Instructions come before the voice, and the voice before forwarding. A receptionist wired to your line before she has instructions still answers, but she answers thinly: she takes the name, the number and the request, and stops there. That is not wrong, it is simply far less useful than what twenty minutes of writing gets you.
The test call comes last because it checks the whole chain. Running it earlier only teaches you that forwarding works, which you knew when you dialled the code. Running it at the end teaches you what your customer will hear, and on day one that is the only thing that counts.
Your carrier sends the call to your Zenvox number. Your receptionist picks up, announces recording when it is on, then runs the conversation from your published instructions. She asks the questions your line of business makes useful, and the ones you added yourself.
At the end, the conversation produces three things: the transcript, a written summary sent to you, and a request attached to the person who called. Those three stay in your workspace, can be browsed by date, and reopen when the same person calls again.
That is not an obstacle. The website only serves to prefill your services and your service area so you do not have to type everything. Without one, you describe your business in a few lines and the result is the same — the first step simply takes a little longer.
Then start with conditional forwarding rather than total forwarding. Your handset rings first, and only the calls you let go through reach your receptionist. Plenty of owners stay on that setup and leave it there.
Declare them at the first step rather than afterwards. Each site carries its own hours, service area and number, and requests stay separate. Folding two sites into one declaration is hard to undo once calls have arrived.
Declare your main language, and the receptionist switches when the caller speaks the other one. Your instructions are reviewed in both languages on the same screen: an instruction written in only one language applies only to conversations held in that one.
Run a test call from your browser, inside your workspace. You talk to your own receptionist, with your real instructions, and nothing is forwarded. It is the quickest way to judge tone before wiring the line your business lives on.
A call under way keeps the version it started with. Run another test call after publishing, and look at the version noted on the call.
That is the sign your instructions are too thin. Add your answers to the three questions customers ask first: your call log will tell you which ones.
Carrier voicemail often answers before conditional forwarding does. Lower the number of rings before voicemail, or forward every call.
Take the last call that made you drop everything, and describe it. A useful urgency rule reads like a precise memory, not like a general category.
What owners ask before the first call.
No. There is no access key to create, no rule to program, no consultation to book. The five steps happen in your workspace and on your phone, and each one can be redone as often as needed.
As long as it takes to write your instructions, publish them, and dial the forwarding code. Publishing is immediate, and the test call confirms it within the minute.
Yes, and that is the expected way to work. Every change is published as a version, and the call keeps a record of the version that served it. That is what lets you explain an odd answer instead of guessing at it.
She says so, takes the request, and passes it to you. The unanswered question then comes back as an instruction to add, which you approve or throw away.
That loop makes the biggest difference over the first few weeks: your instructions get built from real calls rather than from guesses.
No. There is no installation, activation or onboarding fee: configuration is included, and you do it yourself.
A local number, 50 Standard calls a month, and the receptionist who answers, qualifies and summarises conversations for you. The pricing page gives the price of each section and what its base includes.
Every task has its own.
The two articles that follow naturally.
