Inbound calls

Have an agent answer your incoming calls - routing, setup, and how inbound differs from outbound, in plain language.

Most of this guide is about outbound calls - your agent dialing out to a list. Inbound is the mirror image: a customer picks up their phone and calls you, and instead of ringing a desk or a queue, one of your published agents answers. Same agent, same brain, same voice - just pointed the other way.

Think of it as putting your best-briefed teammate on reception, permanently. It picks up on the first ring, at 2am or on a public holiday, greets the caller, figures out what they want, answers from your real documents, and hands the tricky ones to a human. No hold music, no “your call is important to us.”

The good news: setup is genuinely quick, because the platform wires up almost all of the plumbing for you. There’s exactly one part that can be a one-time manual step depending on how your numbers are provisioned, and we’ll be honest about that below.

The one thing to understand first: inbound routing lives on the number, not on the agent. You don’t “turn inbound on” inside the agent - you tell a number which agent should answer it. That’s the whole switch.

How inbound works (the 30-second version)

A customer dials one of your phone numbers.
The platform sees that number is routed to an agent, drops the call into a fresh room, and wakes that agent up.
The agent reads which number was dialed and who’s calling, greets them, and takes the call.
If nothing is routed to that number, or the agent can’t be reached, the platform politely apologizes and hangs up - the caller never gets dead air.

Everything in steps 2–4 is automatic. Your only job is step-1-and-a-bit: have a published agent, and point a number at it.

Set it up

1. Publish an agent that’s built to answer

Inbound needs a published (active) agent - drafts can’t answer live calls, and they won’t even show up as an option when you go to route a number. So finish your agent and hit Publish first. See Create an agent.

Design it for someone who called you, not the other way around (there’s a whole section on this below). At minimum, give it a warm opening and, ideally, a knowledge base so it can actually answer questions.

2. Route a number to it

Go to Numbers. In the Numbers tab, each number you own has an “Answers with” column with a dropdown.

Open the dropdown on the number you want to use for inbound.
Pick the agent that should pick up. (Only your published agents appear here.)
That’s it - the moment you select an agent, incoming calls to that number connect to it.

To stop a number answering, set it back to “Not routed.”

Inbound is a choice you make when you create the agent. A call agent is either outbound (it makes calls) or inbound (it answers them), and that direction is fixed when you create it. To enable inbound, create an agent with the Inbound direction and then route a number to it with the “Answers with” dropdown on the Numbers page. Routing a number is the on-switch.

Tip: you need the numbers permission to change routing. If the dropdown is greyed out or shows plain text instead, ask a workspace admin - see Team & roles.
Tip: you can keep using the same number as caller ID for outbound campaigns and route it to an agent for inbound. They don’t conflict.

3. (Maybe) the one-time telco step

This is the honest part. For a call to even reach the platform, the underlying phone number has to be pointed at our voice infrastructure at the carrier level (with Plivo, that’s a piece of carrier plumbing called a Zentrunk - a SIP trunk that forwards incoming calls to us). Two things can happen here:

Fully managed (the common case): if your workspace’s numbers were provisioned through us, this trunk is created and your number is attached to it automatically the first time you route it to an agent. You do nothing.
One-time manual attach: in some provisioning setups this last hop has to be done once, by hand, in the Plivo console - pointing the number at the inbound trunk. It’s a five-minute, once-per-number operation, and it’s the only manual step in the whole flow.

You’ll know which case you’re in: if you route a number, call it, and the agent doesn’t pick up, this trunk attach is almost always the missing piece.

In plain terms: the “smart” part - matching a call to the right agent, spinning up the conversation, billing, transcripts - is all automatic. The only thing that can need a human touch is the physical “make this phone number forward to us” wiring, and only once.

Design for inbound (it’s a different job)

An outbound agent interrupts someone’s day with a reason to call. An inbound agent greets someone who already has a reason. That flips how you brief it.

Open by welcoming, not pitching

An inbound agent has an Inbound greeting field, spoken first when someone dials the agent’s number - “Thanks for calling Acme, how can I help?” It takes the place of the first message on inbound calls. If you leave it blank, the agent uses a default greeting, so it never opens cold. But writing your own is better - it’s your brand’s first impression.

Lead with “how can I help?” and branch

You don’t know why they called, so the agent has to listen first and route second - support, sales, a billing question, a complaint. If your calls fan out into a few distinct paths, this is exactly what the Prompt & flow builder is for: one agent, several branches.

Attach a knowledge base

Inbound callers ask real, specific questions (“what are your hours?”, “what’s your refund window?”). Give the agent a knowledge base so it answers from your actual content instead of guessing. For inbound, this is close to essential - it’s the difference between a receptionist and a shrug.

Add a warm transfer for the calls a bot shouldn’t finish

Some calls need a person. Add the Transfer to human tool so the agent can warm-transfer: it dials your teammate, briefs them on the call so far, then connects the caller - who never has to repeat themselves. If nobody answers, the agent stays on and keeps helping rather than dumping the caller. A cold transfer hands off immediately instead of waiting for your teammate to pick up.

Critical: a transfer only works if there’s an approved number and a real person behind it. Set up your transfer numbers and make sure someone’s actually on the rota, or the transfer dead-ends. See Tools & actions.

A good inbound agent looks like: warm greeting → “how can I help?” → answers from your knowledge base → warm-transfers anything it can’t close, with context.

Office hours and a closed message

If you only staff calls at certain times, give the agent business hours. Open the inbound agent’s page and find the Office hours panel:

Pick a Timezone (for example Asia/Kolkata).
Tick the days you’re open and set the open and close times for each. Overnight windows work too.
Write a Closed message, for example “Thanks for calling! We’re closed right now. Please call back during business hours.”
Press Save.

Calls that arrive outside those hours hear your closed message and then the call ends, with no charge. If you enable no days, the agent answers around the clock.

How inbound differs from outbound

If you’ve set up campaigns, it helps to know what’s not the same:

No calling list. Inbound is caller-initiated - there’s no CSV, no contacts to upload, no dialing schedule. The caller decides when to call. If they’re not already in your contacts, the platform creates a contact for them on the spot, keyed to their phone number.
No campaign. Inbound calls aren’t part of a campaign; they’re attributed directly to the agent the number is routed to. You won’t see them under a campaign’s stats - you’ll see them in Calls.
Calling-window and DND rules don’t gate it. The calling-time window, Do-Not-Disturb scrubbing, and contact-frequency caps in your compliance pack exist to protect people you dial. When they call you, those gates don’t apply - the caller chose this moment. (Opt-out is a different story; see below.)
Recording works the same way. Recording is the Call recording setting, and it applies to inbound and outbound calls alike. Every call, inbound or outbound, gets a full transcript.
A greeting, not an opener. As above, inbound uses the Inbound greeting, not a pitch.

Everything else is shared: inbound calls are billed per minute from your wallet exactly like outbound, and they run the same AI-disclosure setting and opt-out handling.

Compliance on inbound

Inbound is not a compliance back door, and the platform is deliberate about this:

Your workspace still has to be verified (KYB). If your business verification isn’t complete, inbound calls are declined just like outbound ones. Getting called doesn’t skip the checks that let you go live. See Compliance.
Opt-out is always honored. If a caller asks not to be contacted, the agent records it - the same do-not-contact entry it would create on an outbound call. That request sticks for your future outreach.
The AI disclosure is your call. If the agent’s Speak AI disclosure setting is on (it is off by default), callers are told they’re speaking with an AI assistant, and that the call is recorded when recording is on.

Measuring inbound

Inbound calls land in Calls right alongside outbound, with full transcripts and dispositions, so you can see what people are calling about and how well the agent handled it. It’s one of the fastest ways to learn what your customers actually want - every inbound call is a free piece of research.

The Inbounds page in the sidebar is the home for it. Choose an inbound agent at the top and use two tabs:

Overview - calls answered, how quickly they were picked up, how many the agent settled without a human, and how many were handed to a person, plus charts for When people call, Why people called, and How calls ended.
Board - every call sorted into outcome columns, so you can work through follow-ups. See Dispositions & outcomes.
Tip: skim inbound transcripts weekly. The questions people ask over and over are exactly the FAQs to add to your knowledge base - which makes the agent better, which means fewer transfers.

Next: Calls & transcripts →