Glossary

The words HiloVoice uses, in alphabetical order. Where the app shows a word on screen, the entry uses that spelling. Terms in italics are defined elsewhere in this list.

Agent A phone persona you build in HiloVoice. It has a name, a voice, and a job, and it either answers calls on a number or makes calls from one. See Agent type.

Agent type What kind of job an agent does. There are five: Receptionist (answers calls), and four kinds of outbound agent: Confirmations, Detail checks, Feedback and Follow-ups. The type is chosen when the agent is created and cannot be changed afterwards. A duplicate is the same type, so make a new agent for another.

Answers calls for The relationship between a phone number and the one Receptionist that picks up when it rings. A number answers calls for at most one agent. Outbound agents never "answer calls for" a number; they use a Caller ID.

Archive Take an agent out of use without deleting it. An archived agent stops answering and calling, keeps its history, and can be restored. Archiving clears the agent's Caller ID.

Attempt One real try to reach a recipient in a campaign: the phone rang and either someone answered or it went to voicemail or no answer. A dropped line, or a call that fails on HiloVoice's side, is not an attempt; it is a technical retry.

Block list (the Blocked numbers page) Numbers HiloVoice will not call, text, or answer. Checked before every outbound call and the moment an inbound one rings. A person who says "do not call me" on a Follow-ups call is added here automatically.

Builder (role) A member who can create and edit agents and campaigns. See Roles.

Call again Put a recipient that did not finish (Not completed, Skipped, Needs a person) back on the list, while the campaign is still going. It refuses a Done one: see Reopen and call again.

Call window The days and hours an outbound agent is allowed to call, set on the Calling Hours step. A campaign only calls inside it; a callback requested for a time inside the window beats the schedule.

Callback A time the person asked to be called again, captured by a Follow-ups agent. The next attempt is made at that time if it falls inside the call window.

Caller ID The number an outbound agent shows on the recipient's phone. It is set on the agent's Caller ID step. Several outbound agents can share one caller ID, and a caller ID can be the same number a Receptionist answers; the two do not interfere.

Campaign A list of people, an outbound agent, and a schedule. HiloVoice works through the list inside the call window, retrying according to the retry policy, until every recipient is settled. Campaign statuses: Draft, Scheduled, Running, Paused, Completed, Cancelled.

Contact A person in your address book (the Contacts page). Everyone you import to a campaign appears here; you can also add one by hand. Not the same as a lead or a recipient.

Confirmations An outbound agent type. Calls people to check they are still coming to an appointment or booking, and offers to move it if not.

Detail checks An outbound agent type. Calls people to confirm the record you already hold is right, and captures corrections.

Disposition How a Follow-ups call ended, in one word, as recorded by the agent. Drives what happens next. The full list is in the reference chapter; the common ones are goal completed, partial progress, callback requested, needs more time, blocked, not interested, voicemail, and do not call.

Disqualification A rule on a Receptionist that ends a call early because the caller is not someone you serve (wrong area, wrong service, under age). Set on the Caller Screening step.

Draft (agent) An agent that has been saved but not published. It cannot take or make calls.

Escalation What the agent does when it cannot or should not continue: hand the caller to a person, take a message, or read out the outage number. Set on the Call Transfers step.

Feedback An outbound agent type. Calls people after a visit or a job and gathers what they thought.

Follow-ups An outbound agent type. Calls a person repeatedly, on a schedule, until a named next step is done (a quote accepted, a document sent, a payment made) or the agent decides it cannot be.

Hand-off See Transfer.

Integration A connection to another product: your calendar (Calendly, Cal.com, Acuity Scheduling, Google Calendar, Square Appointments, YouCanBookMe), your CRM (HubSpot), Slack, Zapier, SendGrid for email, your own system through the Lead endpoint, or your own Twilio account if your numbers are already there. Managed under Settings → Integrations.

Knowledge Base The answers the agent may give, from information you give it: typed questions and answers, uploaded documents, or your website. Set on the Knowledge Base step, on every kind of agent.

Lead A record a Receptionist creates from a call when the caller matches what you asked it to look for. Leads are Open, Qualified or Disqualified, and are worked on the Leads page.

Lead endpoint An integration that sends each new lead to a web address you own.

Lookup / Lookup source Data an agent can search while the caller is on the line, to recognise them or find their record: a CSV you upload, the people your agents have already spoken to, your campaign contacts, or your own API. Sources are set up under Settings → Lookups and switched on per agent on the Data Lookups step.

Member A person with a login in your organization. Every member has one role.

Needs a person A recipient status. The agent decided a person should take over (the person asked for one, or the situation was outside its brief). Nobody is called again until someone deals with it.

Organization Your company's account in HiloVoice. Agents, numbers, campaigns, members and integrations all belong to one organization. A login can belong to more than one.

Outage number A phone number the agent reads out when it cannot help and cannot transfer: "call this number instead". The last resort on the Call Transfers step.

Owner (role) The member who created the organization, or was made an owner since; there can be more than one. Can do everything, including changing the plan and handing ownership over. See Roles.

Paused (agent) A published agent that has been switched off temporarily. Its number still belongs to it; calls are not answered or made until it is resumed.

Paused (campaign) A campaign that has stopped calling. You can pause one yourself; HiloVoice pauses one itself when it cannot continue — for example when the agent has no caller ID. The reason is shown on the campaign.

Progress (Follow-ups) What a Follow-ups agent has learned about a recipient across attempts: facts established, the current blocker, the next step, and one line per attempt. Shown on the recipient and read by the agent before it calls again.

Public agent page A web page, with its own link, where anyone can talk to an agent from their browser without calling a number. Useful for testing and for putting on your website.

Publish Make an agent's current settings live. A Receptionist starts answering its number; an outbound agent becomes available to campaigns. Editing a published agent does not change the live version until you publish again.

Purpose One sentence on the Voice & Purpose step saying what a good call achieves. The agent comes back to it whenever a conversation wanders.

Receptionist The inbound agent type. Answers calls on a number, finds out who is calling and what they need, answers questions, books appointments, creates leads, and hands off when it should.

Recipient One person on a campaign's list, with everything the campaign knows about them. Recipient statuses: Waiting, On a call, Done, Needs a person, Not completed, Skipped, Cancelled.

Reopen and call again Put a Done recipient back on the list to be called again. The only way a finished recipient is called again; Call again refuses one.

Retry policy How a campaign behaves when an attempt does not settle the recipient: how long to wait before the next attempt (by default one day, then two, then three), whether to try again after partial progress, and how many technical retries to allow.

Roles What a member is allowed to do. Four roles: Owner, Admin, Builder, Analyst. See Roles and permissions.

Sensitive topics Subjects where the agent follows your protocol instead of its own judgement — a medical question, a complaint, a legal threat. Set on the Call Transfers step.

Technical retry A fresh attempt after the line dropped or the call failed on HiloVoice's side. Does not count as one of the person's attempts; the campaign allows a fixed number of them before marking the recipient Not completed.

Transfer / Transfer destination Putting a caller through to a real phone line. The lines an agent may use are kept under Settings → Transfer destinations; a number saved from an agent's Call Transfers step lands there too.

Transfer list People who are put through to a person immediately, without the agent asking anything — a partner, the accountant, a key client. Under Settings → Transfer list.

Try it The panel on the agent builder that lets you talk to the agent from your browser exactly as it is set up right now, before or after publishing. Call me has the agent ring you instead.

Usage The home page of the app. Shows how the organization's agents are doing and what has been used.

Voice The synthetic voice an agent speaks with, chosen on the Voice & Purpose step. You can hear each one before choosing.