The AI agent on the phone

When a customer calls you on WhatsApp, the AI agent can pick up instead of the team. It speaks with the voice and greeting you chose, checks real availability, books, changes or cancels a booking, and answers questions from your knowledge base. Whatever it can’t do, it passes on to the team, who reply to the customer by message.

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At a glance

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Turn the agent on for calls

1. First turn on WhatsApp calls: Settings → Integrations → WhatsApp → Calls (see WhatsApp calls).
2. Open Settings → AI Agent → Phone.
3. Under When the agent picks up, turn on Answers calls.
4. Pick As a fallback or Always, then check the voice and the greeting.
5. Click Try the agent to call it from your browser before your customers do.

The first time you turn it on, 30 trial minutes are given, once.

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Settings

The rest comes from the AI agent’s configuration, shared with messages: its persona, its knowledge base, its tools (book, change, cancel) and its schedule. To change what it can do, edit it in Configuration.

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The delay and the voicemail

In As a fallback mode, the agent must pick up before the voicemail. The agent’s delay is therefore capped at the voicemail’s, minus 5 seconds. If you later shorten the voicemail’s delay, the screen shows The voicemail answers too fast for the agent: lengthen the voicemail’s delay or shorten the agent’s. The voicemail is still useful: it takes the call when the agent can’t (outside its schedule, no minutes left, service unavailable).

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What the agent does on the phone

The agent always follows these rules, whatever your settings:

• It reads the booking back before confirming (day, time, party size, name). Without an explicit “yes” from the customer, nothing is created. “Yes, but 9 pm instead” isn’t a yes: it checks again.
• It never asks for the number again: it’s the WhatsApp number of the call.
• It never makes up availability: every slot it offers comes from EatNow.
• It answers in the customer’s language (French, English, Spanish, and your agent’s other languages), formally.
• It hangs up after the goodbye, never while it’s checking something. If the customer goes quiet, it asks whether they’re still there, then hangs up.

Set menus and products stay with messages: the agent doesn’t offer them on the phone.

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When the agent hands over

The agent passes the request to the team when it goes beyond what it can do: a private event, a complaint, a question missing from your knowledge base, a technical error, or a customer who asks to talk to someone. It tells the customer: “I’m passing your request to the restaurant team, who will reply on WhatsApp.” On the team’s side:

• the customer’s WhatsApp conversation moves to Conversations to handle;
• under the call line, a note says Passed on by the AI agent, with the customer’s exact words;
• you reply by message: the call opened the 24-hour window, so it’s free.

As with messages, Save as FAQ turns the customer’s question into an answer the agent will give next time. See Knowledge base.

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Try the agent

The Try the agent button, at the top of the Phone tab, lets you call the agent from your browser, with your microphone, as a customer would.

• The agent uses your real settings and checks real availability.
• Nothing is booked, changed or cancelled: an accepted booking shows as Simulated booking.
• The transcript shows live next to the call.
• A test call uses no minutes and doesn’t appear in the log or the analytics.

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The calls log

The Calls tab of AI Agent → Phone lists the calls the agent took, over 7, 30 or 90 days:

• at the top, the calls the agent took (out of all calls received), the bookings it made with their covers, the questions it answered, the calls passed on to the team, and the time spent on the phone;
• for each call: the customer, the outcome (Booking, Change, Cancellation, Question, Passed on, No request), the duration and a one-sentence summary.

Click a call to see its summary, the booking it created or changed (one click to open), the full transcript, and Open the conversation to find the customer’s WhatsApp thread. In the WhatsApp conversation, and in the EatNow app, the call line carries the same summary: you know what was said without opening the log.

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Minutes and billing

The agent on the phone is counted in minutes, to the second, on the time it’s on the line. Every AI agent plan includes minutes each month; a Voice add-on and packs add more. See Plans.

• The month’s minutes go first, then the packs’.
• At 80% and then 100% of the minutes used, the team gets a notification.
• With no minutes left, the agent no longer picks up: calls ring for the team, then the voicemail. The calls it couldn’t take are counted in the analytics, to help you pick the right add-on.
• Calls picked up by the team and test calls use no minutes.

Follow them in AI Agent → Analytics & usage, Calls view. See Understanding agent analytics.

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When the agent doesn’t pick up

At the top of the Phone tab, a The agent isn’t picking up right now banner tells you why: In every case nothing is lost: the call follows its usual path (team, then voicemail).

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Data and recording

• Transcripts and summaries are kept 6 months, in the calls log.
• Audio isn’t recorded by default. On request, EatNow can turn on recording for the agent’s calls (to look into an issue, for example): an announcement tells the customer at the start of the call, and the audio is kept 30 days.
• Calls taken by your team are never recorded.

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FAQ