Maintaining Your AI Receptionist
Once your Cognivox AI receptionist has been configured and tested, it is important to keep its information up to date.
Your receptionist relies on the configuration and company knowledge you provide.
As your business changes, Cognivox should be updated so that callers continue to receive accurate and relevant information.
Why maintenance is important
Your business information will naturally change over time.
You may:
- Introduce new products or services
- Discontinue existing services
- Change your opening hours
- Add or remove employees
- Change appointment arrangements
- Update company policies
- Add new frequently asked questions
- Change how particular enquiries should be handled
- Connect or disconnect integrations
If Cognivox contains outdated information, your receptionist may provide outdated information to customers.
Review your receptionist regularly
You should periodically review the information available to your AI receptionist.
Pay particular attention to:
- Call configuration
- Receptionist Instructions
- Business hours
- Company Overview
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Products and Services
- Additional Information
- Employees
- Appointment configuration
- Connected calendars and integrations
You do not necessarily need to change anything during a review.
The purpose is to confirm that the information remains correct.
Update Receptionist Instructions
Review your Receptionist Instructions whenever the way your business handles enquiries changes.
For example, you may need to update instructions if:
- A new type of enquiry becomes common
- Your sales process changes
- Your support process changes
- Different caller information needs to be collected
- Escalation procedures change
- Security requirements change
- Message-taking procedures change
- Human follow-up arrangements change
Instructions should describe your current business procedures rather than historical ones.
Update business hours
Change your configured business hours whenever your normal operating hours change.
Check:
- Opening days
- Opening times
- Closing times
- Closed days
- Lunch breaks where applicable
Remember that the AI receptionist may remain available outside your normal business hours.
The configured hours tell Cognivox when your business is normally open or closed.
Update your Company Overview
Your Company Overview should continue to accurately describe your organisation.
Update it following significant changes such as:
- Changes to the nature of the business
- New areas of operation
- Major changes to your organisation
- Changes to the customers or markets you serve
- Changes to important company background information
Avoid adding detailed product information to the Company Overview when it belongs in Products and Services.
Maintain Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs are particularly useful for improving your receptionist over time.
As customers interact with your business, you may discover questions that occur frequently but are not currently covered.
Add these questions and the correct answers to your FAQs.
You should also remove or update answers that are no longer accurate.
Examples include changes to:
- Policies
- Opening arrangements
- Appointment procedures
- Service availability
- Contact procedures
- Customer support processes
Learn from unanswered questions
Pay attention to questions that your receptionist cannot answer.
An unanswered question does not always mean the receptionist has behaved incorrectly.
It may indicate that the required information has not yet been added to your company knowledge.
If customers repeatedly ask a legitimate question that Cognivox cannot answer, consider adding the answer to:
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Products and Services
- Company Overview
- Additional Information
Choose the section that best matches the type of information.
Update Products and Services
Review your Products and Services whenever your business changes what it offers.
Update Cognivox when:
- A new product is introduced
- A new service is launched
- A product is discontinued
- A service is discontinued
- Product details change
- Service conditions change
- Appointment requirements change
- Availability rules change
Do not leave discontinued products or services in the knowledge available to your receptionist.
Be careful with pricing
If you include pricing information in Cognivox, make sure it remains current.
Prices can become outdated quickly.
Review any stored information relating to:
- Product prices
- Service prices
- Consultation charges
- Fees
- Discounts
- Promotional offers
If pricing depends on individual circumstances, it may be better to explain that pricing depends on requirements rather than storing a fixed amount.
Cognivox should not estimate or invent prices that have not been configured.
Update Additional Information
Review Additional Information whenever important operational rules change.
This may include:
- Security requirements
- Information restrictions
- Appointment rules
- Integration limitations
- Customer-handling requirements
- Telephony information
- Human follow-up procedures
- Other operational information
Remove rules that no longer apply.
Maintain employee information
Employee information can affect:
- Employee enquiries
- Appointment scheduling
- Availability
- Call routing
- Human follow-up
Update Cognivox when employees:
- Join the business
- Leave the business
- Change roles
- Change departments
- Become available for appointments
- Stop accepting appointments
- Change appointment duration
- Change calendar arrangements
Inactive or former employees should not continue to be presented to callers as currently available members of staff.
Review appointment configuration
If your business uses Cognivox for appointments, periodically test the appointment workflow.
Confirm that:
- Appropriate employees can receive appointments.
- Appointment durations are correct.
- Availability is being checked.
- Connected calendars are functioning.
- Appointments are being created correctly.
- Unavailable times are not being offered.
Changes to an employee's working arrangements may require changes to their Cognivox configuration.
Maintain integrations
Connected services can change independently of Cognivox.
Examples include:
- Google Calendar
- Microsoft 365
- Twilio
An integration that worked previously should not automatically be assumed to work indefinitely.
If an integration is disconnected, reauthorised or reconfigured, test the functionality that depends on it.
Review generated content after changes
When using Generate with AI to update company knowledge, always review the resulting Generated Content.
The generated result should be checked for:
- Accuracy
- Unsupported assumptions
- Invented information
- Outdated information
- Incorrect services
- Incorrect prices
- Unsupported guarantees
Remember:
Your Information is the source material used during generation.
Generated Content is the final information saved for use by your Cognivox receptionist.
Make sure the Generated Content is correct before saving it.
Avoid conflicting information
As your company knowledge grows, avoid storing conflicting versions of the same information.
For example, do not have one section saying:
We close at 5:00 PM.
while another section says:
We close at 5:30 PM.
Where possible, maintain information in the section specifically designed for it.
For example:
- Opening times → Business Hours
- Common questions → FAQs
- Product descriptions → Products and Services
- Company description → Company Overview
- Call-handling procedures → Receptionist Instructions
This reduces ambiguity and makes the configuration easier to maintain.
Remove outdated information
Adding new information is only part of maintenance.
You should also remove information that is no longer correct.
Examples include:
- Discontinued services
- Former employees
- Expired promotions
- Old policies
- Obsolete telephone procedures
- Unsupported integrations
- Previous appointment arrangements
Outdated information can be just as problematic as missing information.
Test after significant changes
After making an important change, test the receptionist.
You do not necessarily need to perform a complete test after every minor edit.
However, significant changes should be tested.
For example, after changing appointment configuration, make a test appointment enquiry.
After changing business hours, ask the receptionist when the business is open.
After adding a new service, ask the receptionist about that service.
Use real customer enquiries to improve Cognivox
Actual customer conversations can help identify gaps in your company knowledge.
Look for patterns such as:
- Questions the receptionist cannot answer
- Questions customers ask frequently
- Information callers find confusing
- Enquiries requiring unnecessary human follow-up
- Situations where instructions could be clearer
Use these observations to improve your Cognivox configuration.
Over time, this can make the receptionist increasingly effective at handling the enquiries your business actually receives.
Do not solve everything with instructions
When improving your receptionist, identify the underlying problem before adding more Receptionist Instructions.
If Cognivox gives the wrong opening time, correct the Business Hours.
If it cannot explain a service, update Products and Services.
If it cannot answer a common question, update FAQs.
If it does not know what your organisation does, update the Company Overview.
Use Receptionist Instructions primarily for how the receptionist should behave, rather than as a replacement for company knowledge.
Security review
Periodically check that sensitive credentials have not accidentally been entered into your company knowledge.
Never store:
- Passwords
- Authentication codes
- API keys
- Secret keys
- Private access tokens
- Complete payment-card information
If sensitive credentials are accidentally entered, remove them and follow the appropriate security procedures for the affected credential.
A useful maintenance routine
A simple maintenance process is:
- Review recent customer enquiries.
- Identify missing or inaccurate information.
- Determine which Cognivox section owns that information.
- Update the relevant configuration.
- Review any AI-generated content.
- Save the changes.
- Test the affected behaviour.
This keeps changes focused and makes your receptionist configuration easier to maintain.
Keeping Cognivox accurate
Your Cognivox receptionist is only as current as the business information available to it.
Treat your receptionist configuration as part of your operational business information.
Whenever an important customer-facing part of your business changes, ask:
Does Cognivox need to know about this?
If the answer is yes, update the appropriate configuration and test the result.
Regular maintenance helps ensure your AI receptionist continues to provide professional, accurate and useful assistance to your customers.