Completing Your Receptionist Setup
After completing the eight Receptionist Setup stages, your Cognivox AI receptionist has the core configuration and company knowledge required to represent your business.
Before finishing setup, review the information you have provided to make sure it accurately reflects your organisation.
What you have configured
Receptionist Setup has collected information across eight stages.
1. Call
You configured the basic identity and conversational behaviour of your receptionist, including:
- Receptionist name
- Voice
- Opening greeting
- Caller-name handling
- Reason-for-call handling
- Conversation behaviour
- Unknown-information handling
- Call-closing behaviour
2. Template
You selected the receptionist template that most closely represents your type of business.
The template helps Cognivox provide appropriate suggestions and guidance for your receptionist configuration.
3. Hours
You configured your normal business operating hours, including:
- Opening days
- Opening times
- Closing times
- Closed days
- Lunch breaks where applicable
These hours allow Cognivox to distinguish between the AI receptionist being available and your business itself being open.
4. Instructions
You created business-specific instructions explaining how the receptionist should handle customer enquiries.
These may include:
- Enquiry handling
- Caller-information collection
- Sales enquiries
- Support enquiries
- Appointment enquiries
- Escalation
- Security requirements
- Human follow-up
5. Overview
You provided a Company Overview describing your organisation.
This gives Cognivox general knowledge about:
- Who your organisation is
- What your business does
- Who you serve
- Your main areas of business
- Important company background
6. FAQs
You created Frequently Asked Questions containing answers to common customer enquiries.
These help your receptionist provide accurate and consistent answers during conversations.
7. Services
You described the products and services your business currently provides.
This allows Cognivox to understand what your organisation offers and answer relevant customer questions.
8. Additional
You provided other important company knowledge, operational rules and restrictions that do not naturally belong in the previous sections.
How Cognivox uses this information
Your receptionist configuration and company knowledge work together.
The receptionist configuration controls how the AI receptionist behaves.
Your company knowledge provides information about your business and what the receptionist knows.
Together, these allow Cognivox to provide conversations that are specific to your organisation rather than generic AI responses.
Review the generated content
Where you used Generate with AI, the final information displayed under Generated Content should have been reviewed before continuing.
The Generated Content is the important final result used for your company knowledge.
Check that it contains only information that is:
- Accurate
- Current
- Relevant
- Appropriate for customers
- Supported by your business
AI-generated information should always be reviewed before it is used by your receptionist.
Check for unsupported information
Make sure the configuration does not contain information that Cognivox should not communicate.
Pay particular attention to:
- Incorrect prices
- Outdated services
- Services that are not currently available
- Unsupported guarantees
- Incorrect opening hours
- Incorrect appointment rules
- Unverified integration availability
- Response-time promises
- Resolution-time promises
- Contractual commitments
If something is incorrect, return to the appropriate setup stage and correct it.
Check your receptionist instructions
Review the instructions that control how your receptionist handles callers.
Make sure they clearly explain:
- What information should be collected
- How common enquiries should be handled
- When an appointment should be offered
- When availability must be checked
- When a message should be taken
- When human follow-up is required
- When an enquiry should be escalated
Instructions should be clear and actionable.
Check your business knowledge
Review your:
- Company Overview
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Products and Services
- Additional Information
These sections form important parts of the knowledge available to your AI receptionist.
If the information is incomplete, the receptionist may not have enough information to answer some customer enquiries.
If the information is inaccurate, the receptionist may provide inaccurate answers.
Security review
Make sure you have not entered sensitive credentials anywhere in your receptionist configuration or company knowledge.
Do not store:
- Passwords
- Authentication codes
- API keys
- Secret keys
- Private access tokens
- Complete payment-card information
Business knowledge should contain information required to assist customers, not authentication credentials.
Test your receptionist
After completing setup, it is recommended that you test the receptionist before relying on it for customer calls.
Try several realistic conversations.
For example, ask:
- What does the company do?
- What services do you provide?
- What time are you open?
- Can I make an appointment?
- Can I speak with a particular employee?
- What happens if I call when you are closed?
- What happens if I ask something that is not in the company knowledge?
Also test enquiries that should require:
- Message taking
- Availability checking
- Human follow-up
- Escalation
Test unknown questions
An important test is to deliberately ask the receptionist something that has not been configured.
The receptionist should not invent an answer.
It should follow your configured unknown-information and receptionist instructions and offer an appropriate next step where possible.
Test appointments
If your business uses appointment scheduling, test the complete appointment process.
Check that Cognivox:
- Understands the appointment request.
- Identifies the appropriate employee where required.
- Checks actual availability.
- Offers an available time.
- Obtains the necessary caller information.
- Confirms the appointment only after the caller agrees.
- Creates the appointment correctly.
The receptionist should never assume that an employee is available without checking the appropriate availability information.
Test business hours
Test the receptionist's understanding of your opening hours.
Ask questions such as:
- Are you open today?
- What time do you close?
- Are you open on Saturday?
- What time do you open tomorrow?
The receptionist should use your configured business hours when answering these questions.
Remember that the AI receptionist may continue answering calls even when your business itself is closed.
Test the selected voice
Make sure the selected receptionist voice is appropriate for your business.
Consider:
- Clarity
- Pace
- Professional tone
- How easily callers can understand it
- Whether it suits your organisation
You can return to the Call stage if you want to select a different voice.
Your configuration can be updated
Completing Receptionist Setup does not mean the information can never be changed.
Your business will change over time.
You should update Cognivox when there are changes to:
- Business hours
- Products
- Services
- Frequently asked questions
- Employees
- Appointment arrangements
- Customer-handling procedures
- Receptionist instructions
- Integrations
- Other company information
Keeping your configuration current helps Cognivox continue to provide accurate information to your customers.
Setup complete
Once you have reviewed and tested the configuration, your core Cognivox Receptionist Setup is complete.
Your receptionist now has:
- A configured identity and voice
- Call-handling behaviour
- A business-specific template
- Business opening hours
- Receptionist instructions
- Company information
- Frequently asked questions
- Products and services information
- Additional business knowledge
You can continue refining this information as you learn how customers interact with your Cognivox receptionist.