Understanding Your Receptionist Knowledge
Your Cognivox receptionist uses the information you configure to understand your business and handle customer enquiries.
Keeping this information accurate and well organised helps the receptionist provide better answers.
Receptionist Instructions
Receptionist Instructions tell Cognivox how you want calls and enquiries handled.
Examples include:
- Information to collect from callers
- How sales or support enquiries should be handled
- When to take a message
- When human follow-up is required
- Important security or escalation rules
These instructions primarily control how the receptionist should behave.
Company Knowledge
Your company knowledge provides the information the receptionist needs to answer questions about your business.
It includes:
- Company Overview — what your organisation does
- Frequently Asked Questions — common questions and answers
- Products and Services — what your business provides
- Additional Information — other useful business information
Business Hours
Business Hours tell Cognivox when your business is normally open or closed.
The AI receptionist may still answer calls outside these hours.
Keeping knowledge accurate
Only provide information that is current and correct.
If Cognivox does not have enough information to answer a question, it should follow your configured instructions rather than inventing an answer.
Where should information go?
A simple rule is:
- How should the receptionist behave? → Receptionist Instructions
- What does the company do? → Company Overview
- What do customers commonly ask? → FAQs
- What does the company provide? → Products and Services
- Doesn't fit elsewhere? → Additional Information
- When is the business open? → Business Hours
Keeping information in the appropriate section reduces duplication and conflicting answers.
Review your knowledge regularly
Update your receptionist whenever important business information changes.
After making significant changes, start a new test conversation and confirm that Cognivox uses the updated information correctly.