Configuring your assistant
Your assistant is your digital employee: one persona that answers the phone and — if you enable it — handles your mail and WhatsApp too. You decide how she sounds, what she knows and what she may do. It all lives on one page in the main menu under Assistant.
Before you start: an assistant only answers once a phone number points to her. Arrange that under Buying or attaching a phone number.
Persona and instructions
Name and tone — The name she introduces herself with and the tone of the conversation — for example "warm, businesslike, to the point".
Instructions — A free text field that steers how she uses her capabilities — for example "Always answer in Dutch. When in doubt, do nothing." Instructions can never add new actions or bypass approvals.
Draft it for me — Don't feel like writing? With one click Cleo drafts instructions based on a short description of your business.
Channels: where does she work?
Phone — Attach a phone line (or create one with New phone line). Everything phone-specific — voice and greeting, recording settings, transfer rules — is managed via Voice settings.
Mail & WhatsApp — Enable the channel and pick a sender name and signature. On text channels Cleo never executes on her own: she prepares proposals for you to approve. One assistant per organization can serve the inbox.
Capabilities: what may she do?
Every capability has its own switch per channel: Disabled, Enabled for existing contacts (only callers linked as a contact to a dossier or administration) or Enabled for everyone. For the phone, these are the capabilities:
Knowledge-base answers — Answers questions live using the Library — see Answering questions from the Library.
Schedule appointments — Books appointments in your calendar — see Scheduling appointments.
Take a message — Takes a message or callback request.
Transfer calls — Transfers to colleagues according to your rules — see Transferring to a colleague.
Propose follow-up task — Proposes a follow-up task after the call, which only starts after your approval.
[ screenshot: Assistant detail page with persona, channels and the capability matrix ]
How to take her live
1
Fill in persona and instructions
A name, a tone and a few sentences of instruction are enough to start.
2
Attach the phone channel
Connect a phone line and assign a number to it under
Settings → Phone → Phone numbers.3
Enable capabilities and test
Start small — take a message and knowledge-base answers — and launch a test call in the browser to hear the result.
Common problems
The assistant doesn't answer
Check that a number points to her phone line (Phone numbers → "Route calls to") and that the number has status "active".
She doesn't schedule appointments or transfer calls
Check that the capability is enabled on the assistant, and that the matching configuration exists: a connected calendar (for appointments) or transfer rules (for transferring).
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