All topics
  1. Getting started
    1. Create your account
    2. Get started with the guided welcome
    3. Invite your team
    4. Keep your number and forward it to your agent
    5. Set up your first agent
    6. A tour of HiloVoice
    7. Get help
  2. Concepts
    1. What HiloVoice does
    2. The five kinds of agent
    3. Phone numbers and caller ID
    4. Campaigns and recipients
    5. Calls, leads and contacts
    6. Roles and permissions
  3. Building an agent
    1. How the builder works
    2. Describe the business
    3. Name the agent and give it a purpose
    4. Set your opening hours
    5. Handle each kind of caller
    6. Choose what the agent asks
    7. Give the agent answers
    8. Shape how a call sounds
    9. Give a Receptionist its number
    10. Write an outbound agent's opening
    11. Set a follow-up's goal
    12. Set when an outbound agent may call
    13. Give an outbound agent a caller ID
    14. Turn callers into leads
    15. Book appointments on a call
    16. Hand calls to a person
    17. Turn away callers you can't help
    18. Let the agent check your records
    19. Send messages after a call
    20. Review and go live
    21. Start a new agent from one you have
    22. Pause, archive or delete an agent
    23. Call new leads within seconds
  4. Agent playbooks
    1. Set up a receptionist for a clinic
    2. Confirm tomorrow's appointments
    3. Check the details you hold
    4. Ask for feedback after a visit
    5. Follow up on open quotes
  5. Testing and going live
    1. Test an agent with Try it
    2. Put a Receptionist on the web
    3. Check an agent before real calls reach it
    4. Your responsibilities on calls
  6. Campaigns
    1. How a campaign runs
    2. Create a campaign
    3. Import a campaign's recipients
    4. Set a campaign's calling hours and retries
    5. Monitor a running campaign
    6. Work the Needs a person queue
    7. Call a recipient again
    8. Read a follow-up's progress
  7. Day-to-day operations
    1. The Usage page
    2. Review your calls
    3. Follow up your leads
    4. Keep your contacts up to date
    5. Set up transfer destinations
    6. Put callers straight through to a person
    7. Block a number
    8. Keep up with notifications
  8. Integrations
    1. What you can connect
    2. Connect your own Twilio account
    3. Connect your calendar
    4. Send email from your own address
    5. Connect HubSpot
    6. Connect Salesforce
    7. Connect Slack
    8. Connect Zapier
    9. Send leads to your own system
    10. Add a lookup source
  9. Administration
    1. Change your organization's settings
    2. Manage members and roles
    3. Manage your phone numbers
    4. Plans, minutes and limits
    5. Make and revoke API keys
    6. Check who did what in the activity log
    7. Manage your own account
    8. Join the HiloVoice affiliate program
  10. Reference
    1. Glossary
    2. Campaign statuses
    3. Recipient statuses
    4. Follow-up dispositions
    5. Call statuses and outcomes
    6. Agent builder fields
    7. CSV columns
    8. Error messages
    9. Frequently asked questions

Name the agent and give it a purpose

For BuildersChecked against the app on October 1, 2026

Voice & Purpose is the second step for every kind of agent. It sets who callers hear: the name the agent gives and the voice it speaks in. It also holds the agent's Purpose, one sentence on what a good call achieves, and its Personality. A Follow-ups agent has no Purpose box: its purpose is the goal on its Goal step.

Before you start

  • You're an Owner, Admin or Builder.
  • Turn your sound on. Every voice can be heard before you pick it.

Steps

  1. Open Agents and click the agent.

  2. In the step rail, click Voice & Purpose.

    A Receptionist's Voice & Purpose: the name callers hear beside its voice, Voice settings and Add another, the purpose, and the personality traits.

  3. Under Name it gives callers, click the voice box beside the name. Search, or narrow the list with Female or Male, and click the play button beside a voice to hear the greeting in it.

    The voice list open beside the name: a search box, Female and Male, and a play button on every voice.

  4. Click the voice you want. The name box takes the voice's name, unless you've typed a name of your own.

  5. To use another name, type it in the name box, such as Riley. A real first name works better than a job title.

  6. In Purpose, write one sentence on what a good call achieves, such as Book the caller in, or take the details someone at the practice needs to call them back. Or click Write it for me. The agent comes back to it whenever a conversation wanders.

  7. Under Personality, pick up to three traits, or click Suggest. Point at a trait to see what it does. Opposites replace each other, such as Formal and Casual; with none picked, the agent sounds plain and warm.

The step gets a tick once the agent has a name, a voice and a purpose.

Answer as more than one person

An agent can answer as up to six people, each with a name and a voice of their own. Each call is taken by one of them, a different one each time: the greeting says whoever it is, and the call's page shows who spoke.

  1. Under Name it gives callers, click Add another. The new row opens its voice list.
  2. Pick a voice. The row takes the voice's name; type over it to use your own.

The step then says who takes calls, such as Calls are taken by Sarah, Tom or Priya — a different one each time. To remove someone, click the X at the end of their row. Removing the first row hands its place in the greeting to the next person with a name and a voice.

Voice settings

Voice settings, beside Name it gives callers, holds what is the same for every voice the agent speaks in. Each change saves as you make it; click Done to close it.

Voice settings: the language, the voice quality, how the voice speaks, and the background sound.

SettingWhat it doesDefault
LanguageWhat the agent speaks: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish or Swedish. A caller who starts in another language is followed for the rest of the call.English
Voice qualityFastest, Balanced or Most natural. The more natural, the slower it answers. Most natural suits languages other than English.Fastest
Delivery, Stick to the voice, PaceHow evenly it speaks, how close it stays to the voice, and how fast it talks. Hear it plays the greeting with them; Back to the defaults resets them.Default
Background soundThe room the agent seems to sit in, such as Quiet office or Restaurant, and how loud it is.Quiet office, for a new agent

Tip: Leave Voice quality on Fastest unless you've heard something you want to change. On a phone call, a pause before each reply is what callers notice most.

Voice quality and Pace don't apply while Expressive voice is on, on the Conversation Style step: it sets its own pace, and Pace can't be changed until it's off.

What happens next

  • The agent speaks in the voice you chose, and gives callers the name beside it.
  • Review & Go Live sums it up under In short, such as Speaks in the <voice> voice, with a quiet office in the background.
  • The name callers hear isn't the agent's name in your list of agents. Change that one with Rename, in the … menu next to the agent's name.
  • On a live agent, callers get your changes when you publish them.

If it does not work

You seeWhyWhat to do
The play button beside a name is greyed outThat row has no voice yetPick a voice in the row.
Pick a voice, or remove the row. or Give them a name, or remove the row.An extra person is half set upFinish the row, or click its X.
The <voice> voice is no longer available for calls — pick another.That voice can't be used on calls any morePick another voice for that row.
That voice is no longer available. Choose another one.The same, found when the agent was saved or publishedPick another voice on this step, then publish again.
A trait is greyed outThree are picked alreadyUnpick one first. A picked trait's opposite stays available, and picking it swaps them.
Add another is greyed out, and the step says An agent can be up to 6 people.The agent answers as six people alreadyRemove someone first.
Couldn't write that just now. Try again, or write it yourself.Write it for me or Suggest didn't work this timeTry again, or type it yourself.
On Review & Go Live, The agent needs a purpose.Purpose is emptyWrite one sentence in Purpose.
There's no Purpose boxThe agent is a Follow-ups agentWrite its goal on the Goal step.