Help › Getting started

The setup guide

Every step of the dashboard's setup guide: your website details, voice, mobile, call forwarding and the test call.

The setup guide walks you through getting your receptionist ready. It opens by itself the first time you sign in, and you can open it again at any time from Settings under Setup guide, with Open the setup guide.

How the guide works

• The dots at the top show how far through you are.
• Next saves the step you're on and moves on. Back goes to the previous step.
• Finish later closes the guide. Anything you saved with Next is kept. Until you finish, the guide opens again each time you load the dashboard.
• The last button says Finish or Go live. Clicking it closes the guide and stops it opening by itself.

Finishing the guide doesn't switch anything on or off. Your receptionist answers whatever reaches it either way. The guide just makes sure it has the right details.

Which steps you see

Everyone gets the first step. If your plan includes phone calls, four more follow: voice, mobile, call forwarding and a test call. Without phone calls, the first step is the only one and its button says Finish.

The conversation flow editor is Coming soon. A few businesses are trying it out early, and they see an extra step, Set the conversation flow, straight after step 1.

Step 1: Tell your receptionist about your business

What it asks for: your website address.

Type it under Your website (for example yourbusiness.co.uk) and click Read my website. It takes about 20 seconds. Your homepage and up to four other pages that look like contact, prices, hours, services or team pages are read, then a draft appears below. You can try this a few times an hour.

If the site can't be read, you'll see a message saying so. Fill the details in by hand instead.

Check and change each part:

• Phone greeting. The first thing callers hear. Up to 300 characters.
• Opening hours. Switch each day on or off and set the times. Your receptionist uses these to know when you're closed.
• Services and prices. One row per service, with a price such as "from £60". Add a service adds a row, and the cross removes one.
• What callers ask about. Short facts such as "Free parking behind the building". Add a fact adds one.
• Plugins we'd suggest. Sometimes shown, picked from what your website says you do. Free plugins have a Switch on button. Paid ones show their monthly price and an Ask to add button, which sends a request to CallsCovered. Nothing paid is added until we approve it. See Plugins and Billing.

What happens when you click Next: the greeting, hours, services and facts are saved. Each service is saved as a fact, like "Haircut: from £30", alongside your other facts. You can change all of this later in Settings.

Step 2: Choose your receptionist's voice

What it asks for: a voice.

Use All, Female or Male to narrow the list. Click a voice to hear a sample and select it. Voices sound a touch softer on a real phone call than they do here.

What happens when you click Next: calls use that voice from then on. You must pick one to carry on.

Step 3: Your mobile

What it asks for: your Mobile number, and whether to Text me a summary after each call (on to start with).

Your mobile is used for two things:

• a text after each call saying what it was about, if the switch is on;
• the Take over button on a live call, which rings this number and puts the caller through to you.

Type it as you normally would, such as 07700 900123. If it doesn't look like a real number, you'll be asked to check it.

What happens when you click Next: the number is saved for taking over calls, and for summaries if the switch is on. Leave the box empty to skip it.

Step 4: Keep your number

Callers keep ringing the number they already know. Your phone provider forwards calls to your receptionist's line.

The step shows the number to forward to under Forward your calls to. If your line hasn't been switched on yet, the codes show the word NUMBER where that number will go.

Choose when calls should be forwarded:

• When I don't answer. Your team answers as normal, and your receptionist picks up if nobody does within about 20 seconds, including after hours.
• Every call. Your receptionist answers everything.
• When I'm busy. Calls that arrive while you're already on the phone.

Then dial the code for your kind of phone. The table on screen fills in your receptionist's number for you.

On a landline you need Call Diversion on your line. Ask your provider if you don't have it. For a business phone system (VoIP or a switchboard), set call forwarding, sometimes called divert or overflow, to the number shown, in the system's own settings.

What happens when you click Next: nothing is saved. Forwarding is set on your phone, not in the dashboard. More on your line: Your phone line.

Step 5: Make a test call

A checklist to try from your mobile:

• The greeting sounds right and uses your business name.
• Ask your opening hours.
• Ask the price of something you offer.
• Book an appointment, then check it appears under Bookings (or, without bookings, ask for a call back and check it appears under Callbacks).
• Say goodbye and hang up: the call ends politely.
• The call is in Conversations with a summary.

Tick each one as you go. If you click Go live with some unticked, you're asked whether to go ahead anyway.

What happens when you click Go live: the guide closes and won't open by itself again. More on testing, and what to change if an answer was wrong: Your first test call.

Still stuck? Write to hello@callscovered.ai with your business name and what you were trying to do, and a person will reply.