The AI phone assistant

The guided answering setup

After your line exists (see Phone setup), the guided answering setup is one configure screen, reached from the "Set up call answering" step of the "Finish setting up" banner at the top of the Phone inbox (or at <code>/dashboard/comms/phone/setup/answering</code>). It asks who answers:

• The assistant's name and the "Announce it's an AI" toggle, with a live preview of the greeting.
• On the business-line path only, a "Texts it answers for you" panel with two switches: "Text back new numbers" and "Text back existing customers" — both ON by default. Turning one OFF means the assistant never texts that audience back; their texts still land in the Phone inbox, a lead or service request is still created, and your team is notified on every such message so a human replies. Calls are completely unaffected by these switches.

The screen does not ask how new leads are handled, how far things go for existing customers, or how often to notify — those work the same for every company, and the "What it does on a call" panel states them: New leads — the assistant takes their name, address, and what they need and hands it to you to schedule; it never books or quotes. Existing customers — greeted by name, with their next visit and balance answered from their account; anything else becomes a message. Notifications — you're pinged once per new conversation, plus for every new lead and anything needing a human.

• Finishing the setup turns call answering on automatically ("[name] now answers your calls"). Forwarding-mode companies then get the dial-code step.
• Re-running the setup is safe: as of 2026-09-02 it no longer resets anything you have since changed on Phone → Settings. The Existing customers choice and Text notifications are only seeded the first time, when you have never chosen them; after that the Settings page owns them and the wizard leaves them alone. It also hydrates your saved values for the two texting switches. Even so, the everyday place to change who your assistant texts back is Phone → Settings → Texts → "Who it texts back", not the wizard.

What it does on every call

• Answers 24/7 and behaves identically at 2am and 2pm — it never says "we're closed" or "it's after hours" on a call.
• Speaks your business name naturally: trailing legal suffixes like "LLC", "Inc", or "Corp" are dropped automatically from everything spoken aloud ("thanks for calling Peachy Pools", never "Peachy Pools LLC"). Written surfaces — invoices, texts, emails — keep your full legal name.
• Recognizes existing customers by caller ID: greets them by name and doesn't ask for their name or a callback number — it already has both.
• Answers from the account, live: their next scheduled visit, their balance, and their recent completed visits (it looks the visit history up mid-call, which is why there may be a short pause) — "what did your guy do last time?" is answered from their actual service history, not guessed.
• Explains billing detail: what a specific charge is for, when an invoice is due, and whether a payment is still clearing — summarized in a sentence rather than read as an itemized list, with an offer to text the full breakdown. It never explains or negotiates a processing fee, and a billing dispute always becomes a message.
• Runs new lead intake for unknown callers: it takes their name, address, and what they need, and the lead lands in your Leads inbox for you to schedule. An email address is saved on the lead if the caller volunteers one; the assistant does not ask for email by default — contact support@poolfounder.com to have it ask on every call.
• Takes a message on anything it can't handle and tells the caller the owner — by first name ("Corey will get back to you as soon as possible") — is getting it. It never says whether a particular person is available, out, or busy, because it cannot know that.
• For balance questions it offers to text the balance to the number on file (when texting is live) rather than reading account details aloud, and it never recites the service address — it only confirms it.
• If it hits a problem mid-conversation, it apologizes, takes a message, and notifies your team — callers never get silence.
• Every answered call appears in the Phone inbox with its outcome, summary, any message taken, and the full transcript.

What it cannot see: it only sees what the customer portal would show that customer — never internal notes, costs or margins, technician personal contact info, routes, or other customers' data. It can't see water chemistry readings or equipment details either; those questions become a message. Technicians are referred to by first name only.

Ring my phone first — answer your own calls when you can

Business-line companies can have inbound calls ring the owner's own cell before the assistant answers. Turn it on with the "Ring my phone first" card under Phone → Settings → Calls (business-line path only — on the forwarding path your published phone already rings first by nature). You save the cell number to ring; changing it later is a "Change number" link on the same card. The switch is disabled while "Answer phone calls" is off — nothing rings anywhere while call answering is off.

• When a call comes in, your cell rings for about 20 seconds. Answering plays a short prompt — "Call for [your company]. Press 1 to answer." — and pressing 1 connects you to the caller.
• Your phone shows your business number as the caller, not the caller's own number — that's how you know it's a business call before you pick up, and it is what lets the call reach your phone reliably in every mode. There is no setting to show the caller's number on your cell instead. The caller's real number is still recorded on the call in the Phone inbox.
• Don't press 1, decline the call, or let it ring out, and the assistant answers exactly as it would have — the caller just hears a few more rings first. Your voicemail can never steal the call: voicemail can't press 1, so the call falls through to the assistant instead.
• Calls you answer live appear in the Phone inbox marked "Answered live by the team" — logged with duration and caller, but with no transcript (the assistant was never on the call).
• Changing the setting requires the "Manage phone & AI front desk" permission.

While "Ring my phone first" is on, an "If you can't answer" choice appears under it with three options:

• "Assistant picks up — press 1" (the default, described above). The most reliable: the assistant catches every call you miss — including ones you decline and times your phone is off or out of signal — because your voicemail can never fake the press-1.
• "Assistant if it rings out" — no "Press 1" prompt: answer like a normal call, and if it rings out (about 20 seconds) the assistant answers. The trade-off: a call you decline, or one arriving while your phone is off or out of signal, diverts straight to your cell's voicemail before the assistant can take it — the system can't tell that apart from you answering.
• "No assistant" — the business number behaves like a normal forwarded line. Calls ring your cell directly with no prompt, and every call you miss goes to your cell's own voicemail. The assistant never answers in this mode.

In the two no-prompt modes, connected calls show in the Phone inbox as "Rang through to your phone", with no transcript.

It never transfers calls — urgent messages are how emergencies reach you

Instead, urgent messages are how an emergency reaches you when your phone can't ring. Every message the assistant takes records when someone has to go out — right now, or the next business day — and if it can't tell from what the caller said, it simply asks. The question is about the pool, not the caller's mood:

• "Right now" means water leaking or flooding (a burst or broken pipe, a line spraying, a pool or equipment pad draining out), equipment running dry, sparking, or smoking, a chemical spill or fumes, or a safety problem like an open gate or a child at risk.
• A green pool, a missed visit, a billing question, or a quote request waits for the next business day — no matter how annoyed the caller is.

An urgent message alerts your team immediately at critical priority — the one priority that pushes through a user's quiet hours, so a 2am emergency still wakes the owner. The alert carries the caller's callback number so you can ring them straight back, and the call shows a red "Urgent message" block in the Phone inbox and in the mobile app.

It never states or promises visit times

The assistant never offers, agrees to, or hints at any day or time for a visit — not even tentatively, and not even when the customer suggests the day themselves. It can't see the schedule, and a guessed time reads to the customer as a promise. The one exception: it will state a visit already scheduled on an existing customer's account ("you're down for Wednesday the 22nd"), which is a recorded fact rather than a new commitment.

When the assistant proposes an appointment time for a new lead, the suggested slot goes only to your team on an approval card — the customer hears a time for the first time in the confirmation that goes out after a human approves it (see Pending Approvals below).

The promised-message safety net

If the assistant tells a caller it's passing a message along but fails to actually record one, the system catches that after the call from the transcript and still alerts your team. The notification reads "Phone message promised but NOT recorded" and points at the call transcript, so the callback is never lost. It's deliberately sent at normal (not critical) priority, since no urgency was captured. Seeing one of these isn't something you need to fix — it means the net worked.

Privacy and guardrails

• The assistant only sees what the customer portal would show that customer — never internal notes, costs or margins, technician personal contact info, routes, or other customers' data.
• It can take messages and capture leads, but it never books, reschedules, quotes prices, or changes billing without a human approving.
• Calls are transcribed, never audio-recorded.
• The assistant never places outbound calls — it only answers. Your staff can, though: from the web app with a "Call" button on the customer's page, and from the technician mobile app, where tapping a call button offers "Call as [your business number]" alongside "Call from my phone". The business-number option rings YOUR phone first — answer, press 1, and it dials the customer showing the business number as caller ID, so your personal cell stays hidden and callbacks land on the assistant. Both need the "Call customers as the business" permission and a business number; these staff calls are logged as outgoing in the Phone inbox with no transcript.

The Settings tab

Everything you can change about the assistant lives on Communication → Phone → Settings (<code>/dashboard/comms/phone/settings</code>). It is a real settings page: a section rail on the left — Assistant, Calls, Texts, Phone line, Notifications — and flat, always-visible cards on the right. Nothing expands and nothing hides; clicking a rail entry scrolls to that section and records it in the URL as <code>?section=</code>. Old <code>?tab=</code> bookmarks still work and land on the matching section.

Assistant

"Who answers for you, what it sounds like, and what it knows about your business." At the top is an identity card — your assistant's name, your number, whether it is answering, and a green or grey dot — then the three tiles that can stop something reaching a customer:

• Answer phone calls — the master switch for call answering. On: "Your assistant picks up day and night — books leads, takes messages". Off: "Calls ring through without the assistant".
• Answer texts — the master switch for text answering. It is locked until texting is live on a business number: "Carrier review in progress — this switch unlocks on its own when it clears", or "Register your business number for texting to turn this on".
• Automated texts — not a switch but a link through to the Automated texts tab, with a summary of how many automations are on and how many customers are reachable.

• Identity and greeting — "The name it gives, and whether it says up front that it's an AI." An Assistant name box, an "Announce it's an AI" switch, a live Opening line preview, and a Save greeting button.
• Voice — "How your assistant sounds on the phone. Saves instantly and applies from the next call." Curated voices with play-button previews. You cannot upload or clone your own voice.
• Existing customers — "How far your assistant goes when someone already in your customer list calls or texts." Three choices: "Just take a message", "Answer from their account" (marked Popular, and the default), and "Answer + log work orders" — the last also logs service issues as a work order for you to review, price, and schedule. Saves on click.
• Website knowledge — point the assistant at your website; see below.
• Standing instructions — "Rules your assistant always follows, in every conversation, on both calls and texts"; see below.

Calls

"What happens when someone dials your line. Calls are answered the same way around the clock — your assistant never keeps office hours." Two cards: Ring my phone first (with its "If you can't answer" choice, business-line path only) and Test a call — talk to your assistant out loud from the browser. "Nothing is booked, saved, or sent for real, and the call never shows up in your inbox."

Texts, Phone line, and Notifications

• Texts — "Your assistant replies to inbound texts — the ones your customers and leads start." Holds the texting registration card (until texting is live), "Who it texts back" (New leads / Existing customers), "Reply style" (Send right away / Draft and wait for me), Business hours, After-hours message, and a link to Automated texts. Full detail in texting and the Phone inbox.
• Phone line — "The number your assistant answers on, and how calls get to it." Your number (titled "Your assistant's line" on the forwarding path), Call forwarding with the per-carrier dial codes (forwarding path only), the "Make this your business number" upgrade card, and an Advanced group with Turn off call forwarding for companies that upgraded. See Phone setup.
• Notifications — "When your team hears about something your assistant handled." One card, Text notifications: a company-wide "Notify the team about incoming texts" picker with four options — Every message, New conversations only (the default), Only when the assistant needs help, and Don't notify. It saves instantly and applies to everyone. Underneath, the events your team is always notified about: assistant captured a new lead, assistant needs your approval, assistant needs help, and new text message. How each notification reaches a person (push, email, quiet hours) stays personal, under the AI Front Desk category in their own Notification Settings.

Changing anything here requires the "Manage phone & AI front desk" permission. The tab is visible to everyone regardless — without the permission it reads "Phone settings are managed by owners and administrators. You can still read every call and text in the inbox."

Standing instructions

Standing instructions are rules your assistant always follows (e.g. "never quote prices over text"). Manage the list at Phone → Settings → Assistant → Standing instructions ("Rules your assistant always follows, in every conversation, on both calls and texts"), where instructions can be added or deleted (needs "Manage phone & AI front desk"). There is no "Coach assistant" composer mode (on web or the technician mobile app) — to change what the assistant says, add a standing instruction, or take over the conversation and reply yourself.

Website knowledge

You can teach the assistant your own website: at Phone → Settings → Assistant → Website knowledge, enter your website address and click "Read my website". It reads your homepage plus a few key pages (services, about, areas, contact), distills what matters — the services you offer, the areas you cover, your hours — and uses that when callers or texters ask general questions like "do you do green pool cleanups?" or "do you cover Marietta?". The exact text it learned is shown on the card; "Re-read" refreshes it after you update your site, and "Remove" makes the assistant stop using it immediately. Needs the "Manage phone & AI front desk" permission.

Guardrails still apply: the assistant never quotes prices, even ones published on your website — pricing questions are captured as messages for you. If something on your site conflicts with a customer's account or one of your standing instructions, the account and your instructions win.

If you see "Your website host is challenging automated readers", that's a security setting on your website host (for example a bot check, CAPTCHA, or firewall), not a problem with your site or its content. Many hosts turn this on by default, so there may be no switch you flipped. The reader tries more than one way in, but some hosts block automated readers entirely — in that case website knowledge just stays off, and everything else (lead capture and account-based answers) keeps working normally. Adding more pages or content to your site will not change this. If the message instead says we couldn't reach the site or couldn't pull enough text, double-check the address and try again — sites that build their pages with JavaScript can leave too little readable text for the reader to use.

If we can't read your site for any reason, you can add the details yourself. When a read fails you'll see an "Add details manually" button (there's also an "Add your details manually instead" link if you'd rather skip the read entirely). Type in your services, the areas you cover, and your hours, then save — the assistant uses what you typed exactly the same way it would use a read of your site, and the same guardrails apply, so don't include prices. You can edit or remove it any time.

Pending Approvals

When the assistant proposes an appointment for a new lead, it appears under Pending Approvals — as a dismissible "N visits need approval" banner ("Proposed by your assistant") at the top of the Phone inbox, on the lead's page, and as a "bookings need your approval" banner and Approvals screen in the technician mobile app — for anyone with the "Approve scheduling" permission.

• Approving auto-texts the customer their confirmation when texting is live; otherwise the approver is told to call them to confirm.
• Declining notifies the team to follow up with the customer.

What still has no settings UI

Most of what used to be support-only is now on the Settings tab: the existing-customer depth choice is the Existing customers card, notification frequency is Text notifications, and business hours and the after-hours message are cards in the Texts section. What is left:

• Playbook customization — how the assistant runs lead intake is fixed. Contact support@poolfounder.com to change it.
• Business hours never affect phone calls, and there is no setting that makes them. They only shape after-hours wording on texts.
• Companies whose texting was enabled before the current settings layout have no switch to turn assistant texting off — contact support@poolfounder.com to change it.
• Some numbers provisioned before voice answering launched are texting-only — the "Answer phone calls" switch will say the number can't take calls and to contact support.
• There is no way to release or delete a phone number yourself. Nothing in the product hands a number back; contact support if you need to give one up.

Notifications and deep links

Assistant events — lead captured, approval needed, needs help, new text, answered a call — are the "AI Front Desk" category in each user's personal Notification Settings. Mobile push notifications open the exact conversation, call, or approvals screen. A "new lead" push opens the call that captured the lead, and that call screen has a "Lead from this call" link through to the lead itself; on the web, the same notification links straight to the lead's page.

Frequently asked questions

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