Phone numbers

Rent the numbers your agents call from and answer on - buying, costs, verification, and routing explained in plain language.

A phone number is the phone line your agents work through. It does two jobs, and it’s worth being clear about both from the start:

Outbound - it’s your caller ID. When a campaign dials someone, the number they see on their screen is one of yours. A recognizable local number gets answered far more often than an unknown one, so this isn’t a technicality - it directly affects how many calls connect.
Inbound - it’s the line people ring. When a customer calls you, they dial one of your numbers, and you decide which agent picks up. (Full inbound setup is in Inbound calls.)

One number can do both. You rent it from oyehello in a few clicks, and everything lives under Numbers in the sidebar. This page walks through what you need before you can buy, how buying works, what it costs, and how to put a number to work.

The short version: get your business verified → buy a number → point it at a campaign (to dial from) or at an agent (to answer calls). The rest of this page is the detail behind those three steps.

Before you can buy: get verified

You can’t buy a number the moment you sign up, and that’s deliberate - in India, owning a phone line for business calling means clearing telecom rules first. There are two gates, and the Numbers page shows you exactly where you stand with a Compliance stat at the top: Not filed → Under review → Approved.

Gate 1 - Verify your business (KYB)

What it is: a one-time check that your business is real and registered. You submit your legal business name, GSTIN, PAN, CIN/Udyam, and registered address, plus two documents - a registration certificate (Certificate of Incorporation or Udyam) and a tax proof (GST or business PAN). Documents are encrypted at rest.

Why it matters: nothing calls-related unlocks until this clears - not buying numbers, not live outbound calls. It’s the master switch for going live.

How: a banner across the top of the console prompts you to Verify KYB. Approval usually takes under a day. See Sign up & workspace for the full verification flow.

Gate 2 - Number compliance (filed for you)

What it is: the carrier’s own KYC on the numbers you’ll own. Here’s the good part - you don’t file this yourself. The moment your KYB is approved, oyehello automatically files your number compliance with the carrier using the details you already gave.

Why it exists: the carrier (Plivo) requires a compliance record tied to your business before it will activate an India number in your name.

How long: typically 1 to 3 business days after KYB approval. While it’s pending, the Buy number button stays locked and tells you why - “Your KYB is approved and we’ve filed your number compliance with the carrier. Buying unlocks once it’s approved.” Once the carrier accepts it, buying opens up on its own. Nothing more for you to do.

In plain terms: verify your business once, and the telecom paperwork takes care of itself. If the Buy button is greyed out, the banner at the top of the page tells you which gate you’re waiting on.

Buy a number

Once compliance shows Approved, hit Buy number (top-right of the Numbers page). A search panel opens.

Search for a number

You’re browsing live carrier inventory, so the exact numbers available change over time. You can narrow the list with:

Area code or pattern - e.g. type 80 to find Bangalore-style numbers, or a pattern you want the number to contain.
Region - e.g. Maharashtra, to get numbers local to where your customers are.
Type - Local, Mobile, or Toll-free (or Any type).

Each result shows the number, its city/region, its type, and its capability - most are marked Voice (and SMS where the carrier supports it). Voice is what matters for calling; SMS capability is a bonus where available.

Tip: pick a number local to your list. If you’re calling customers in Pune, a Maharashtra number feels familiar and gets picked up more than a number from the other end of the country. Caller ID is the first thing a person judges - make it look like someone they’d know.

Confirm and buy

Click Buy on the number you want. The rental charge comes out of your wallet up front, the panel closes, and the new number appears in your Numbers list.

Newly bought India numbers show an “· activating” tag for a short while. That’s normal - behind the scenes the number is being linked to your compliance record and moved onto your workspace’s own carrier account (more on that below). Once it flips to active, it’s ready to use as caller ID or for inbound.

What a number costs

Number rental is billed separately from per-minute call charges - think of it as a monthly line rental on top of what you pay for actual talk time.

It’s a flat monthly rate, set by the platform and shown to you at the moment you buy (so you always see the current price before committing).
You pay a few months upfront as one prepaid block, drawn from your wallet, and the number auto-renews each period from your wallet. If GST applies, it’s added on top (prices are quoted GST-exclusive) and a tax invoice is issued.
Per-minute call time is a completely separate charge - see Billing & wallet.

The Renewals tab on the Numbers page is your rental ledger: every purchase and every renewal charge, with dates and amounts, plus a heads-up on your next renewal date and what’s due. You’ll also get a reminder before a renewal lands.

If your wallet is short, the buy is blocked with a clear message telling you the rate and how much to top up. Turn on auto-recharge in Billing so a renewal never fails for want of a few rupees.

Releasing a number stops the bill going forward but doesn’t refund the current period. When you release, calls on that number stop immediately, the current prepaid period isn’t refunded, and future renewals stop. Release only when you’re genuinely done with a number.

Where you can buy - India today

oyehello is India-only right now. Every number carries an India flag, and search, buying, and compliance are all built around Indian telecom rules. That’s not an arbitrary limit - the whole verification-and-compliance machinery described above is India-specific, and the carrier account behind your numbers is an India-region account so that Indian numbers activate correctly.

If you try to search another country you’ll simply be told it isn’t supported. Support for more regions is a future thing, not a setting you can flip today.

Your own carrier account, behind the scenes

You don’t have to think about this to use the product, but it’s useful to know: each workspace gets its own isolated carrier (Plivo) subaccount. Your numbers, and the compliance tied to them, live in your account - separate from every other customer’s.

What you get from it: clean isolation. Your inventory, your compliance, your billing - none of it is mixed with anyone else’s.
What you don’t have to do: any of the setup. The subaccount is created for you automatically the first time your workspace needs it. If you ever see a “not provisioned for telephony yet” message, it just means to finish onboarding first.

Because a couple of carrier operations (activating an India number and linking its compliance) can only happen on the main account, oyehello handles the buy, the compliance link, and the move into your subaccount for you - which is why a fresh number briefly shows “activating.” You pick and buy; the plumbing is ours.

Use a number as caller ID (outbound)

A campaign needs to know which of your numbers to dial from. You set this in the campaign, not on the Numbers page.

How: in a campaign’s Settings (or during campaign creation), there’s a Call from number / Caller ID picker listing the numbers you own. Choose one.

A campaign can’t go live without a caller ID - you’ll be prompted to “Pick a caller ID number before activating the campaign.” If you have no numbers yet, buy one first.
Only numbers you own and that are active can be used as caller ID. oyehello never quietly falls back to a shared platform number - the number your customer sees is always one of yours.

Tip: the number must be DLT-registered for India to dial (this is part of the compliance you cleared above). Matching a local number to a local list is the single cheapest way to lift your pickup rate - see Campaigns for the full dialer setup.

Route a number for inbound (incoming calls)

To have an agent answer calls to a number, you route it right from the Numbers list.

How: each number has an “Answers with” dropdown. Pick the agent that should pick up, and incoming calls to that number connect to it automatically, around the clock. Choose Not routed to leave a number outbound-only.

Only published agents appear in the dropdown - an agent has to be live before it can answer real calls.
An unrouted number simply won’t ring an agent, so nothing happens by accident.

Design your inbound agent to greet callers rather than pitch them, and give it a knowledge base so it can answer real questions. Full guidance is in Inbound calls.

Manage your numbers

The Numbers page is organized into a few tabs, with quick stats up top - Active numbers, Answering calls (how many are routed to an agent), and Compliance status.

Numbers - your active, purchased numbers. Each row shows the number, type, capability (Voice/SMS), its compliance state, and the “Answers with” agent. Search by number with the box in the toolbar.
Renewals - your rental ledger (purchases and renewals), covered under costs above.
Released - numbers you’ve let go. A released number sits here so you can Re-buy it before the carrier returns it to the general pool - handy if you released one by mistake or want it back.
Sync - a button that re-checks your inventory against the carrier if something ever looks out of date.

To let a number go, use the ⋮ menu → Release on its row. Remember: release stops future charges but doesn’t refund the current period.

Bring your own carrier (BYOT): if your workspace has this enabled, a BYOT option lets you connect your own telephony provider and import your existing numbers instead of renting from us. Compliance still applies to every call either way - DND scrubbing, the calling window, and DLT don’t get bypassed by using your own carrier. Most workspaces won’t see this; rent-from-us is the default path.

Transfer numbers (for warm handoffs)

There’s one more kind of number worth knowing about, and it lives somewhere different. When an agent needs to hand a live call to a real person - a warm transfer - it can only dial a number you’ve pre-approved. This is a safety measure: it stops an agent ever being tricked into dialing an arbitrary or premium-rate number.

Where: these approved destinations are managed under Tools → Transfer to human, not on the Numbers page. (They’re a separate concept from the numbers you rent - you don’t rent a transfer destination, you just list a phone your team already answers.)

How: add each destination with a label (e.g. “Support desk”), the number, and a short description of what it’s for. That description matters - the agent reads it to decide when to transfer, so be specific (“escalations about billing disputes” beats “support”).

Transfer numbers must be a valid Indian mobile - +91 followed by a 10-digit number starting 6–9. International numbers, toll-free/premium lines, and short codes are rejected on purpose.
You choose warm (the agent waits for the human to answer, briefs them, then connects the caller - and records the full call) or cold (transfers immediately, human side not recorded).
Setting up a transfer number doesn’t make any agent start transferring - each agent (or flow node) still has to be given the transfer tool and pointed at the destinations it’s allowed to use. See Tools & actions.

Next: Inbound calls → - point a number at an agent and let it answer your incoming calls, day and night.