A homeowner with a burst pipe at 11pm is likely to hire the first plumber who answers, and so will someone ready to book a consultation. According to CallRail data, 28% of calls to businesses go unanswered on average.
Voice Assist is CallRail's AI-powered voice assistant that answers calls, responds to customer questions, and captures lead information when your team can't pick up.
When setting up Voice Assist, playbooks make it easy to choose how and when you want calls handled. These ready-made templates let you set up a 24/7 front desk to answer every call, after-hours coverage for when you’re closed, or overflow coverage when your team can’t get to the phone. Choose the option that fits your business, and you can be up and running in minutes.
Pick a use case and the setup is done for you
Choose a playbook, and Voice Assist builds the call flow (how it greets callers, what questions it asks, and how it routes them) along with custom intake questions and voice settings for that use case. And that’s it! You can review and adjust any of it before you go live.
Playbooks are available now in the standalone Voice Assist experience and are coming soon to Voice Assist within the CallRail platform.
How to choose your playbook
Think about when your team needs phone coverage, who should answer first, and whether you want to filter out spam and unwanted sales calls.. Then choose the playbook that best fits how your business handles incoming calls.
Playbook
Who answers first
A good fit if
24/7 front desk & spam prevention
Recommended!
Voice Assist, on every call
You want Voice Assist to answer every call, day and night
After hours only
Your team during business hours, Voice Assist when you're closed
Calls come in after hours and on weekends
After hours + Overflow and Escalation
Your team, then Voice Assist if no one picks up in time
Calls go unanswered when your staff are busy
24/7 front desk with spam blocking
With the 24/7 front desk and spam prevention playbook, Voice Assist answers every call, day or night, giving your business its most comprehensive phone coverage while filtering out spam and unwanted sales calls. It greets callers, answers routine questions, and collects the details needed to understand their requests.
If you've connected a calendar separately, like Google Calendar or Calendly, it can book appointments during the call. If a caller asks for a person, it can transfer them to your team.
Answer questions and book consultations while staff stays with clients
On a Saturday afternoon, a med spa coordinator might be helping a client check out when the phone rings. The caller wants to know what a treatment costs and whether there's a consultation open today.
Voice Assist could answer, share the spa's pricing, check availability, and book a consultation while the coordinator stays with the client. The med spa can tailor the intake questions to capture which treatment interests the caller and whether they’re new or returning. Then the team gets that context before the client even arrives.
Even after-hours, someone inquiring from the spa's Instagram ad can get answers about packages without waiting for the front desk to reopen.
Your team only handles the calls that matter
Voice Assist screens out spam and sales calls, scores each lead, and writes a call summary so your team knows who to follow up with first. It filters out robodialers automatically, so your team only handles real callers.
And when someone asks to speak with a person, smart transfers route them to the right team member instead of a generic voicemail.
A law firm, for example, can review why each person called and how to reach them when returning the call.
After hours
Even when the last person heads home, the phone keeps ringing. Staffing or budget limits may keep you from covering the phones overnight, but some callers have emergencies that can't wait until morning. The after-hours playbook has Voice Assist answer whenever your office is closed, so callers still reach your on-call team and you don't have to add night shifts.
Routine calls captured, urgent ones escalated
Voice Assist captures what the caller needs and how to reach them, so your team can follow up first-thing in the morning.
Late one Saturday night, a homeowner called Almstead Tree and Shrub Care after a tree fell on their house. Voice Assist answered, recognized the urgency, and transferred the caller to the company's emergency line.
Following the emergency, Almstead updated their voice assistant’s escalation rules to route calls containing urgent keywords automatically to the emergency team, further strengthening its process for handling future after-hours calls.
Voice Assist ensured we did not miss a single detail, even at 2am.
– Merrick Lee, Head of Growth, Almstead Tree and Shrub Care
Advertise outside of business hours
Advertising in the evening and on weekends can cost less, and the after-hours coverage playbook lets you take advantage of those opportunities. If an ad brings in a late inquiry, Voice Assist can answer and take down the caller's details while your team is away.
After hours overflow and escalation
Multiple calls come in on a single line, someone is at lunch, and someone is busy helping a customer at the counter. The overflow playbook gives your team the opportunity to answer first, and has Voice Assist pick up if no one answers in time or your office is closed. It’s the safety net for the stretches that tend to overwhelm every business — busy seasons, holidays, and the days when your whole team is out.
At a personal injury firm, the intake coordinator could be on another line when a caller who was just in an accident phones from the ER waiting room. Voice Assist could then pick up, log the caller’s contact details, and ask intake questions to assess whether the inquiry matches the firm’s criteria.
The intake team can review the details and call back, while the coordinator stays focused on the person already on the line. When your team is occupied, Voice Assist makes sure you’re not handing leads to your competition.
Get more from every campaign with the right playbook
Playbooks are coming soon to Voice Assist within the CallRail platform, giving Call Tracking customers more flexibility in how they handle incoming calls.
Once available, you'll be able to assign different playbooks to different campaign tracking numbers. For example, you could use the 24/7 front desk for your paid search campaigns and after-hours coverage on your main line. If you have multiple locations set up as separate companies in CallRail, each can use a different playbook.
Call Tracking also shows which campaign brought in each call that Voice Assist answers, so you can see what your ads are producing.
Go live when you're ready, with expert help if you want it
Playbooks let you launch your voice assistant on your own schedule. You'll still need your calls routed to Voice Assist, and a connected calendar if you want it to book appointments.
Before going live, make a test call. Check that Voice Assist answers when you expect it to, asks the questions you care about, and books or transfers the way you intended. Then adjust the greeting or additional intake questions where needed.
White glove support from our team of specialists are available if you want extra help fine-tuning your setup.
Don’t have Voice Assist? Start your free trial.
