Small business replacing a phone answering service with an AI employee
The AI agent answers every call, handles common questions, and routes to a human when needed. No missed calls.
Phone Call Channel
Call a real phone number and talk to your AI employee out loud, the way you would call a colleague. It is planned as a full telephony channel: your employee answers inbound calls, can place outbound calls, and carries the same memory, tools, and approval controls it uses everywhere else. This channel is not available yet; it shows as coming soon in Settings.
Some work happens over the phone. Your employee handles that too. It makes outbound calls for sales outreach, appointment confirmations, and follow-ups. It receives inbound calls for customer support, scheduling, and intake.
Voice conversations are transcribed in real time and logged in the activity feed alongside chat and email interactions. Your employee uses the same memory, skills, and context on a phone call that it uses in chat.
Telephony integrates with your existing phone systems and supports call routing, voicemail, and call transfers. Your employee picks up the phone so your human team does not have to.
Where this stands today: the phone channel is planned and not switched on. There is no number to call, no inbound answering, and no outbound dialling, and it appears in your settings marked as coming soon rather than offering a setup that would lead nowhere. What follows describes the shape it takes when it ships, and no launch date has been announced.
A phone call is a delivery route rather than a separate product. The employee that picks up is the one you already hired and trained, running with the same skills, duties, tools, training, and memory it uses in web chat, and still stopping to ask you before anything that needs your approval. That is why shipping this is a connection and a mapping rather than building a second assistant that only knows how to talk.
What a caller gets back is a conversation rather than a menu. There are no numbered options to press and no script to fall out of, and the employee can look something up while the caller is still on the line instead of promising to check and ring back. Anything it cannot settle on its own comes to you afterwards with the transcript attached, so the next step is already obvious when you read it.
You do not have to wait to get an employee into a spoken conversation. Your employee can already join a Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams call as a named participant, listen for the whole meeting, speak when someone addresses it by name, and write the summary afterwards. That is the Meeting channel and it is live now. The phone channel extends the same idea to an ordinary telephone number with no meeting link involved.
AI Agents That Make and Receive Phone Calls
Sistava telephony gives your AI employee a real phone number it can use to make outbound calls and receive inbound ones. Every call is handled by the same agent you configure in the platform, with all the same skills, memory, and integrations available.
This is purpose-built for workflows that still happen over the phone: customer support, appointment scheduling, outbound follow-ups, lead qualification, and anything else where voice is the preferred or required channel.
Transcribed, Logged, and Searchable
Every phone call is transcribed in real time using high-accuracy speech recognition tuned for business conversations. Transcripts are saved to the conversation history alongside any tool calls the agent made during the call.
This means phone conversations become part of the same searchable, auditable record as everything else your AI employee does. You can review any call, understand what was said, and see exactly what actions the agent took as a result.
Full Agent Capabilities Over the Phone
Telephony in Sistava is not a scripted IVR tree. Your AI employee handles phone calls with the same natural conversational ability it uses in chat and voice, plus access to all its connected tools and apps.
If a customer calls to ask about their order, the agent can look it up in your system, update a record, and send a confirmation email, all within the same phone call. The phone is just another interface to a fully capable AI employee.
The same limits apply as anywhere else in Sistava. An employee that has to check with you before spending money, sending an email, or changing a record still checks with you when the request arrived over the phone, so putting a number in front of it never quietly widens what it is allowed to do alone. Everything said on the call is written into the employee's history in the workspace, which keeps a call and a chat in one record rather than two.
How It Works
Give your AI agent a real phone number so it can make and receive calls, take messages, and follow up.
Each agent can be assigned a dedicated phone number. Inbound calls are answered by the agent directly, with voice synthesis that sounds natural and a response time fast enough for normal conversation. The agent follows its skills and duties on every call, so a support agent handles calls the same way it handles chat. Calls are transcribed, logged, and accessible from the workspace.
Outbound calling lets the agent follow up on tasks autonomously. Schedule an outbound call, give the agent a goal and a contact, and it handles the conversation, takes notes, and reports back with a summary. This is useful for lead qualification, appointment scheduling, and any workflow that currently requires a person to pick up a phone. No telephony infrastructure on your end required.
Use Cases
Support team scaling phone coverage without hiring more agents
An AI employee handles incoming calls at any volume. Peak periods no longer require extra staff.
Sales team using an AI agent for outbound calling campaigns
The AI employee dials, qualifies, and logs the outcome. Your sales team focuses on the warm leads.
Operations team automating appointment reminders via phone
The AI agent calls contacts, delivers the message, and records the response. No manual dialing required.
Comparison
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Phone calls require a human available every time one comes in. | An AI employee answers and handles calls 24/7 with no staffing gaps. |
| Scaling call capacity means hiring and training more people. | The AI agent handles unlimited concurrent calls without adding headcount. |
| Outbound calling is manual, slow, and inconsistent. | The AI employee runs outbound campaigns automatically and logs every result. |
| Missed calls mean missed opportunities. | Every call gets answered, every time. |
FAQ
Can my AI employee make outbound phone calls?
Yes. You can trigger outbound calls directly from a workflow or have the agent initiate calls as part of a task, such as following up with a lead or confirming an appointment.
What happens when someone calls my AI employee's number?
The AI agent answers and handles the call using natural speech. It can answer questions, take information, look things up using its connected tools, and escalate to a human if needed, based on the instructions you have given it.
Are phone calls recorded?
Calls are transcribed and the transcript is stored, giving you a full record of the conversation. Recording policies depend on your configuration and applicable local regulations. You control whether audio recordings are stored.
Can the AI agent use its tools during a phone call?
Yes. While on a call, the agent has full access to its tools and integrations. It can query databases, update CRM records, check calendars, and take other actions in real time while the conversation continues.
Can my AI agent make and receive phone calls on behalf of my business?
Yes. Telephony support enables both inbound and outbound phone calls, so your AI employee can handle customer calls, book appointments, or follow up on leads. No separate call center software is needed.
Can I call my AI employee on a real phone number?
Not yet. The phone channel is planned and not switched on, so there is no number to dial and no inbound answering today. When it ships, a call to your connected number will be answered by the employee you mapped to it, using the same tools, training, and memory it uses in web chat. Your employee can already join a Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams call today.
When will phone calls be available in Sistava?
No launch date has been announced. The phone channel appears in Settings marked as coming soon, and that is deliberate: it is kept out of the channels allowed to carry traffic so a call can never quietly go nowhere. Slack, Telegram, email, web chat, and the Meeting channel are all live right now.
What is the difference between phone calls and the meeting channel?
The Meeting channel is live and covers video calls: paste a Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams link and your employee joins as a named participant, listens throughout, speaks when addressed by name, and writes a summary afterwards. The phone channel is the planned version for an ordinary telephone number, inbound and outbound, with no meeting link involved.
We gave our support agent a phone number for after-hours coverage. It answers, resolves about 60 percent of calls without escalation, and leaves me a summary of the rest. My support costs dropped significantly.
Where Phone Call Channel fits
Phone Call Channel is part of Ways you talk to them.
Chat in the app with live reasoning, speak to your AI voice agent over a call, message on Slack or WhatsApp, send an email, or embed a widget on your website. Every channel connects to the same AI agent with the same memory and capabilities. Switch channels mid-conversation and your employee picks up right where you left off.
- Ways you talk to them: Every channel. One conversation.
Read the guide
More in Channels
- Web Chat: Chat with any AI employee directly in the workspace, with a streaming reply, a live execution timeline showing what it is reading, thinking, and doing, and inline approve/reject buttons when it needs a sensitive action confirmed. It is the default channel: nothing to configure, works on desktop or mobile, and every conversation persists so you can pick it back up later.
- Voice Calls: Voice Calls is a planned channel for speaking to an AI employee out loud and hearing it reply in real time, instead of typing. It is not available yet: there is no voice button in the workspace today, and the feature is paused while the underlying voice flow is redesigned. When it ships, a voice call will run through the same skills, tools, and memory as a typed conversation.
- Connect an Email Provider: Point your own SendGrid, Mailgun, or Postmark inbound-parse webhook at a tenant-scoped endpoint and every email that lands there gets turned into work for an employee. Forward support requests, sales inquiries, or internal approval emails and the employee reads the sender, subject, and body, then acts on it in the background. You get a 202 response immediately; there's no waiting on the request.
- Personal Mailbox: Every employee gets its own email address on the shared Sistava domain the moment you hire it, no setup. Email it directly, CC it on a thread with other people, or forward something over, and it reads and replies within seconds. Free to send from, with a monthly cap by plan. Control the shared employee signature in Company Profile, or connect your own Gmail or Outlook when you want it sending as you, with no cap.
- Send from Gmail or Outlook: The built-in employee address is free and always on, but it sends as the employee, not as you. Connect your own Gmail or Outlook instead and an employee sends and replies from your real address, in your name, with no monthly sending cap on any plan.
- Talk to Your Employee on Video: In-App Video is a planned channel for live, face to face video calls with an AI employee, camera and microphone, directly inside the workspace. It has no working implementation today: it appears in Settings > Technical > Channels as a Coming soon placeholder only. Once it ships, it is meant to run on the same execution pipeline as every other channel, so the employee keeps its skills, tools, training, and conversation memory on a video call. If you need an employee in a live call today, it can already join a Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams meeting as a participant, which is a different capability and available now.
- Chat Widget: The Chat Widget will let you embed an AI employee directly on your public website so visitors can ask questions and get answers without leaving the page. It is on the roadmap and is not available to configure yet: today it appears in Settings > Technical > Channels as a Coming soon placeholder with no setup, embed snippet, or Manage action.
- SMS: SMS is a planned channel for reaching an AI employee by ordinary text message, with no app to install. It is on the roadmap and not available today: there is no SMS number, no inbound texting, and no way to turn it on yet. Until it ships, use web chat or Telegram for mobile access from any phone.
- WhatsApp: WhatsApp is a planned messaging channel for talking with an AI employee from your phone. It is not connected yet: the card shows as coming soon and cannot be set up today. When it ships, it will carry the same employee memory, skills, and guardrails as web chat, Telegram, Slack, and the mailbox. Telegram and Slack are live now and give you the same access from a phone, so nothing you set up today has to be rebuilt when WhatsApp arrives.
- Discord: Discord is a planned channel for bringing an AI employee into the servers and direct messages your community already uses. It will connect the same way Slack does today: authorize a bot through OAuth, then map it to one employee. It is not available to connect yet, so no Discord traffic reaches an employee until it ships. Slack, Telegram, each employee's own email address, and web chat cover the same job in the meantime.
- Calendar Invites: Add your employee's personal address as a guest on any Google, Outlook, or Apple calendar event and they show up for the meeting automatically, no RSVP or extra app on your side. Once the meeting starts, the employee joins the Meet, Zoom, or Teams call, listens, speaks when addressed, and writes a summary afterward. There is nothing to switch on for the invite itself, just turn on the Meeting Attender tool for that employee once.
- Slack Channel: Bring your AI employee into Slack as a real bot user your team can mention, DM, or trigger with a slash command. Every reply lands in the same thread, and memory, tasks, skills, and tools stay shared with web chat, so a conversation started on Slack continues anywhere else. You approve or reject requests right from Slack, and the bot only speaks when mentioned, DM'd, or already in a thread.