Technical settings
The Conversation rules, Tasks and Voice & greeting tabs of the assistant editor hold the settings that govern how a call runs technically: how long it may last, whether it's recorded and whether the assistant saves requests. An Editor or Admin can change them. Changes save automatically and take effect on the next conversation. This article explains each of them, followed by the business-level data retention and GDPR settings.
All settings at a glance
| Setting | Where | Meaning | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| Max call duration (s) | Conversation rules | After this time the call ends, and never later than after 14 minutes. A transferred call carries on. | 900 seconds |
| Allow interruptions | Conversation rules | Whether the caller may talk over the assistant while it speaks. | On |
| Language switching | Voice & greeting | Ask first, switch straight away, or stay in the assistant's language. | Ask before switching |
| Pronunciation | Voice & greeting | Names, brands and product words the assistant should recognise. | Empty |
| Use earlier conversations | Conversation rules | Whether the assistant gets a short note and the first name for a number that was in touch before. See Contacts. | On |
| Record calls | Conversation rules | Whether phone calls are recorded. | Off |
| Announce that the call is recorded | Conversation rules | A fixed sentence right after the greeting. Only visible when recording is on. | On |
| Save requests | Tasks | Whether the assistant saves what a customer wants, with the urgency. | On |
| Voicemail | Tasks | Whether the assistant may offer to take a message and record it. | On |
| Max voicemail length (s) | Tasks | The maximum length of a voicemail message. After that the call is hung up. | 120 seconds |
Below you'll find what each group of settings does and when to change it.
Call duration and silence
Max call duration (s) is on the Conversation rules tab, on the Conversation limits card. Language switching and pronunciation are on the Voice & greeting tab.
Max call duration (s). You enter a value from 60 to 3600 seconds. A phone call never lasts longer than 840 seconds (14 minutes), though, even if you enter more. The default of 900 seconds therefore comes down to 14 minutes. At that point the call ends without a closing sentence. A transferred call does not end at this limit; it is only ended a little over an hour later. A reception call rarely lasts more than a few minutes. Lower the value if you mainly expect short calls and want to limit your usage.
If the caller stays quiet for about 6 seconds after the assistant has finished speaking, the assistant says something in its own words that suits the conversation: after a detailed answer it asks whether that was clear, after a short answer whether it can help with anything else, and after the opening, when the caller has said nothing for about 10 seconds, whether the caller is there. If it stays quiet, it asks once more after about 8 seconds. About 12 seconds later it says goodbye and the call ends. If the caller says something, this starts over. Silence does not count while the assistant is looking something up. It first says briefly that it is checking, and if it takes longer, such as a web search, it says after a few seconds and then now and then (three times at most), in its own words, that it is still on it. You cannot change these times.
Language switching. Choose what happens when the caller uses a language other than the assistant's. Ask before switching asks once, and switches only after the caller agrees. Switch straight away changes to the caller's language for the rest of the conversation. Stay in the assistant's language never switches. The greeting stays the text you typed. You do not need a line about this under Important rules.
Pronunciation. List up to 100 names, brands and product words. Write the spelling under Word, then press play. Play uses a fixed sample voice so you can check the sound. On a call, the assistant uses the voice you chose under Voice. If it sounds wrong, turn on Custom pronunciation, fill in how to say it under Pronunciation (Vaillant, pronounced VAL-yont) and play that. The play button moves next to that field, and you can still hear the spelling with Hear spelling. A caller who says the pronunciation means the word. When the word comes up, including in an answer from the collection, the assistant says the pronunciation. Meaning is optional: what the word is, so the assistant knows when it applies. It is not read aloud. Longer notes, such as how to read a postcode, belong under Important rules on the Instructions tab (in advanced mode, in Full prompt). If there is still text from the old pronunciation field, you'll see it on the Voice & greeting tab as Pronunciation (old note). That note keeps working.
Voice on the call
ChatGPT runs the phone call. Texts, WhatsApp, webchat and Chat in Try it out use the platform's language model; you do not choose that yourself. If ChatGPT cannot be reached, the caller hears that the service is unavailable and the call ends. Another voice does not take over. Which voice your assistant has and how it sounds is set under Voice and Speaking style on the Voice & greeting tab.
Allow interruptions
With Allow interruptions on, the assistant stops talking when the caller really starts saying something, just as in a normal conversation. This feels natural and quick. A cough or a brief sound is not a turn: it talks through those. If it stops anyway and nothing follows, it carries on where it was.
With it off, the assistant keeps talking through brief sounds and stops only when the caller clearly takes over. That's advisable when the assistant picks up a lot of background noise (a workshop, the street) and wrongly stops talking as a result. It is no guarantee that a sentence is always finished, so a caller can still interrupt an announcement.
Recording and announcement
With Record calls on (Conversation rules tab, Recording & transparency card), the phone call is recorded. You'll find the recording under Recording on the conversation in the Inbox. In after-call actions, the audioLink variable holds a link to that conversation in the dashboard, not an audio file. If the caller leaves a voicemail, the call recording stops as soon as the voicemail starts and the conversation shows the voicemail message instead of the call recording.
Tell callers you are recording
In many countries, including the Netherlands, you are legally required to inform callers that the call is being recorded. That's why Announce that the call is recorded is on by default as soon as you record. The assistant then speaks a fixed sentence right after the greeting, in the assistant's language, for example: "This call is recorded for quality purposes." You cannot edit the sentence. Leave the announcement on.
Recordings are kept for 30 days and then deleted automatically, even if the retention period for conversations is longer. The same goes for the audio of voicemail messages. The written text of a voicemail stays with the conversation until the retention period for conversations ends. If the retention period is shorter than 30 days, the recording goes along with the conversation sooner.
Saying it is an assistant
The assistant never pretends to be a person, and there is no setting for this. When someone asks whether they are talking to a human, the assistant says it is the automated assistant of your business. That is also why it speaks of "one of my human colleagues". It does not say so by itself in the opening, unless your Greeting on the Voice & greeting tab does. The default greeting already mentions it. Your own could be: "You're speaking to the digital assistant of De Vries Plumbing."
Save requests
With Save requests on (Tasks tab), the assistant gets access to the save_lead tool on every channel. When someone reports a job or fault, the assistant collects the details you need:
- name;
- address of the job;
- description of the problem;
- an urgency level: Emergency, Urgent, Routine or Unknown;
- preferred time, if known.
The phone number comes from the conversation itself. Emergency is, for example, flooding, a burst pipe, no water or a sewage backup. Urgent means today, Routine means this week or later. Questions that fit your trade go in Conversation flow or Important rules on the Instructions tab, or you choose a Template there.
The request appears under Inbox → Requests with a link to the conversation, and you get a notification by SMS and email. If the assistant saves no request during the conversation, the analysis afterwards checks whether it was a genuine request and creates it after all. With after-call actions you forward the details to your email, Google Sheets or job-management system. If you only use the assistant for information queries, you can switch this off. A callback request by SMS, WhatsApp or webchat still creates a request.
Voicemail
With Voicemail on (Tasks tab), the assistant can offer a message during a phone call when the caller wants to leave one, or when a transfer isn't possible. The assistant then says a fixed sentence: leave your message with your name and phone number after the tone, then hang up. ChatGPT then leaves the call, the caller stays on the line and hears the tone, and the message is recorded.
Max voicemail length (s) caps the length of the message: 15 to 300 seconds, 120 by default. At that length the recording stops, and a few seconds later the call is hung up. The message is written out as text. The text goes by SMS to the Notification phone and by email to the Notification email, both under Settings → Team. If no text comes out of the message, for example because the caller said nothing, you get no notification. The conversation appears in the Inbox with the outcome Voicemail, even if the caller says nothing after the tone, and the text is there under Voicemail transcription. With Record calls on as well, Recording plays only the voicemail message. How voicemail works together with transfer rules is covered in Transfers (call forwarding).
Data retention and GDPR
Retention isn't set per assistant but for the whole business under Settings → Business, on the Privacy & safety card. Only an Admin can change it; an Editor sees the value.
| Setting | Meaning | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Keep conversations (days) | Number of days (7 to 3650) that conversations are kept, with transcript, summary and messages. After that they are deleted automatically. Requests and contacts stay. | 365 days |
| Recordings | Call recordings and the audio of voicemail messages are deleted after 30 days at the latest; this is not configurable. The written text of a voicemail stays with the conversation. | 30 days |
A few points to bear in mind for GDPR:
- Deleting a contact. When you delete a contact under Customers → Contacts, the name and the link to that contact are removed from their conversations. The conversations themselves stay, with phone number, transcript and summary, until the retention period has passed. Requests and appointments remain. See Contacts.
- Privacy policy. State in your privacy policy that phone calls and messages are handled by a digital assistant, whether they are recorded and how long you keep data.
- Data processing agreement. Our privacy statement also serves as a data processing agreement. A separate data processing agreement is available on request; ask for one via Report a problem.
- EU storage. All data (conversations, recordings, contacts) is stored within the European Union. To hold a conversation, conversation fragments and voicemails do go to the language model, and telephony runs through our telecom provider. The privacy statement names these suppliers.
Temporary troubleshooting by support
To solve a problem, support can temporarily record your requests and the responses to them, with sensitive data made unreadable. This lasts at most 24 hours and then stops by itself.
- You always see it. While it is on, everyone in your business sees a notice at the top of the dashboard with the end time.
- You can turn it off yourself. Click Turn off in that notice. You need the editor or admin role for this.
- What it leaves out. Conversations, contacts and sign-in details are never recorded.