Voice
A Twilio phone line answered by the same chatbot — what the caller hears, warm transfer to a human, and how minutes are metered.
Connect a Twilio phone number and callers talk to the same chatbot that powers your widget — same knowledge base, same settings.
Voice runs its own pipeline and is not governed by the per-channel AI-replies toggle. A voice channel always answers with AI; what you configure is where it transfers to when a human is needed.
What you need
A Twilio account with a voice-capable number, its Account SID and Auth Token, and — if you want live transfer — a team phone number to forward to.
Connect
- 1Add a Voice channel on the chatbot's Channels tab with the Twilio
credentials and the number. Optionally set a forward number for live transfer.
- 2Copy the voice webhook URL shown after connecting.
- 3In the Twilio console, set the number's "A call comes in" webhook to that
URL, method
POST. - 4Optionally set the number's status callback to the channel's status URL,
so call completion is reported back.
The duplicate-number warning applies here too: a Twilio number already used by another chatbot for the same type maps to one webhook slot.
What the caller hears
Speech-to-text and text-to-speech run on Twilio, with a configurable voice and locale. The call is one continuous conversation: greeting → answer → "anything else?" — with barge-in, silence re-prompts, and goodbye detection so the call ends naturally.
Human handoff
When a caller asks for a person — or after a knowledge gap — the call is warm-transferred to your forward number.
| Situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| Forward number set, someone answers | The caller is connected; the conversation is marked as human-handled and appears in the Inbox |
| Forward number set, no answer | The caller is handed back to the AI rather than stranded |
| No forward number set | The conversation is flagged needs_human for inbox follow-up |
In the inbox
Calls land in the unified inbox tagged voice with a full transcript, linked to a contact by phone number, and enriched with the same intent, sentiment, and lead score as chat.
Metering
Voice costs more than chat, and is metered accordingly:
- Each minute debits credits at a per-minute rate, on top of the per-turn AI
cost.
- Billing is in six-second increments, rounded up, applied when the call
ends.
- Some plans carry a voice-minute soft cap, checked at call start. Over the
cap, the AI does not pick up and the call routes to your fallback — dial the team, or take a message — while chat keeps working normally.
- Resold client workspaces do not count against a cap.
If credits run out mid-service, the caller hears a graceful spoken message rather than silence. See Credits and top-ups.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause |
|---|---|
| Calls ring out | The "A call comes in" webhook is not set to the channel URL |
| Signature rejected | The Twilio auth token on the channel is wrong |
| AI never picks up | The plan's voice-minute cap for the month is used up |
| Transfers never connect | No forward number set, or nobody answers it |
Where to go next
- SMS — the same Twilio account.
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