Set up the phone receptionist

Once Torqix has switched on a voice line for the shop, Voice opens Phone receptionist, the shop's one place for what the receptionist says, the work it may leave for a person, written answers, and the call log. One Torqix-managed ElevenLabs agent supplies the voice for every shop, but each admitted call is bound to one shop's signed call token and tenant-scoped policy.

Check the phone line

Torqix staff set up the shop's phone line and sealed Twilio credential. The answering line is the dedicated voice number, or the Torqix-set texting number when there is no dedicated one. Until either line is ready, Voice says Torqix is setting up your phone line. Once a line is shown, Voice shows the receptionist as On. Provider keys, account identifiers and connection checks stay with Torqix staff; they do not appear in the shop app.

Review what it says

Owners and managers set these controls. Under What it says, Opening line is the greeting whose first words tell the caller that they have reached the shop's AI assistant and that calls are recorded. Number to put callers through to is the fixed human destination; the receptionist cannot choose another number. Enter a 10-digit US number, or start with + and the country code; Torqix saves it in the one form the phone network dials and refuses a number it cannot dial. Hours are read from the shop schedule. Follow Edit hours to change them.

Owners and managers choose the permitted jobs. Under What it may do, the three switches are Take messages and callback numbers, Answer hours, address and directions, and Transfer to a person. Each switch controls the whole plain-language job it names.

Owners and managers use Written answers for short shop-specific facts a caller may ask for. Add a question and the answer the receptionist should give. If the shop has not saved a fact or enabled the matching job, the receptionist says it does not know instead of guessing.

Choose its languages

English is always on. Under Languages, owners and managers tick the other languages callers may use: Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese (Mandarin), Korean, Tagalog (Filipino), Russian, Arabic, French, Portuguese and Hindi. Save languages keeps the choice. A shop that has never chosen has Spanish on.

When a caller speaks one of the ticked languages, the receptionist switches to it, tells them in that language that they have reached the shop's AI assistant and that calls are recorded (unless Torqix has turned the shop's opening notice off), and carries on in their language. A caller speaking any other language gets a short answer in English and an offer to take a message for a call back. The same rules hold in every language: it never gives a price, never books, and never claims to be a person.

English and Spanish have Torqix's fullest checks on what the receptionist says. In the other languages a written amount is always stopped and the common price words are caught, but an amount spelled out in words may not be, so a caller asking about a price in those languages is best answered by a person.

Choose its voice

Under Voice, owners and managers choose the voice callers hear. Recommended for phones lists voices that hold up on a phone line. Press ▶ to hear one, use Open on ElevenLabs to read more about it, and Use this voice to choose it. Browse all voices searches the whole library by name, gender, accent, language, age and use case, a page at a time. Use the default voice goes back to Torqix's standard voice.

The chosen voice speaks every call, in every language the receptionist uses. Torqix adds it to its own voice account for you; you never handle a voice provider key. Until that has happened, or if the voice's creator withdraws it from the library, callers hear the default voice and the Voice page says so.

Every line is the shop's own voice

Everything a caller hears is said in the shop's AI voice, not a robot voice from the phone company. That includes the lines Torqix itself says around the conversation: “One moment while I put you through to the shop” before a transfer, the polite closings when the receptionist cannot continue or nobody could pick up, and, for the person answering a transfer, “Summit Auto is transferring a caller to you. Press 1 to accept and speak with the caller.” Torqix records each of those lines once in the shop's chosen voice and plays the recording. Saving a new voice or new languages records them again in the background.

Only if the voice service itself is down and a line has never been recorded does a call fall back to the phone company's voice for a closing, so a caller is never left in silence.

What a caller hears first

Torqix answers the shop's Twilio number and puts the call straight through to the receptionist. There is no key to press and no separate recorded announcement. The receptionist's own first words tell the caller that they have reached the shop's AI assistant and that calls are recorded, inside the shop's opening line: “Thanks for calling Summit Auto, you've reached the shop's AI assistant. Calls are recorded. How can I help?” A known customer whose saved language is Spanish hears the same in Spanish.

The shop's opening line sets the words around it, such as the shop's name and the closing question, but it cannot remove either disclosure. Torqix's voice provider requires both before any conversation, and some states treat a transcribed call as a recorded one.

Torqix staff can turn this opening notice off for one shop when the shop owner asks, from the shop's Voice & AI tab in the Torqix admin console. With it off, callers hear the shop's greeting and question without being told that they have reached the shop's AI assistant or that calls are recorded, and the same holds after a language switch and when a transfer comes back to take a message. Under Opening line, Voice then says that Torqix has turned the notice off for this shop. The shop cannot turn the notice off or back on itself.

Turning it off is at the shop owner's risk. Torqix's voice provider requires callers to be told they are speaking with AI and that the call is recorded before the conversation starts, and Washington, California and other all-party-consent states require recording notice. Torqix staff record who turned it off, when and why.

Asked again whether they are talking to a person, a robot or an AI, in any language it speaks, the receptionist says plainly that it is the shop's AI assistant and offers to take a message or put the caller through to someone, whichever the shop allows. It never claims to be a person, and a sentence that would is replaced before the caller hears it. That holds whether the opening notice is on or off.

A disabled receptionist or a failed service takes the policy's human path. Torqix tries the shop's configured transfer number when a transfer is available; otherwise it gives a polite closing. An unknown number and a webhook with a missing or invalid Twilio signature get the same fixed response, so the call never becomes a way to discover which numbers belong to a Torqix shop.

Torqix does not record audio. The disclosure the caller heard becomes the call record's first turn as evidence; with the notice off, the first turn records that no notice was given. After that, the transcript can keep the words spoken by the caller and receptionist, but there is no recording to play back.

What the receptionist can do

• Read the shop's saved hours, address, directions and enabled written answers.
• Recognize an exact known caller by first name only. It does not read private customer or vehicle details aloud merely because a caller supplies a name.
• Take a message and callback number as a draft lead for a person at the shop to review.
• Offer an available time and create a draft appointment request. It says that the request is not in the diary until somebody at the shop handles it.
• Put the live call through to the fixed transfer number when the shop's policy allows it. It says “Sure, connecting you now” first. The person answering hears, in the shop's voice, that the shop is transferring a caller, and presses 1 to take the call; voicemail cannot press 1, so it never takes the caller. The call shows the shop's own number as its caller ID. If nobody picks up within about twenty seconds, the caller comes back to the receptionist, which apologises, says again that it is the shop's AI assistant and that calls are recorded (unless the opening notice is off), and offers to take a message.

It talks like a front desk: short answers, one question at a time. It reads a name, a callback number or a plate back to the caller before writing it down, says a short goodbye when the caller is done and then ends the call, and stays quiet if the caller asks it to hold on.

A message is work rather than a promise. In the call log, All shows the newest calls, plus any older call with an open call message; Needs a call back gathers callers waiting for a person in one place; Today narrows the same log to today's calls. A number spoken on the phone is a callback note, not permission to send text messages.

Each call row shows the caller, time and outcome. Use Read transcript to read the retained words. Owners and managers use Block this number to stop later calls from a full caller number. Private or anonymous caller IDs cannot be blocked. Blocked numbers keeps the list together, and Unblock this number lets later calls through again.

For a call with retained words, use Review this call. The Assistant draft checks whether the transcript captured the customer's name, the car's year, make and model, the concern, and an appointment offer. It also flags a promised phone price because prices are not quoted without an estimate, then gives one sentence on what went well and one specific thing to try next time. Reviewing sends no customer message and changes no customer, call, or repair order. The review itself is not saved. When a model is used, its token usage is recorded in the AI usage meter.

When the model is offline, the assistant switch is off, the allowance cannot fit a review, the provider fails, or its answer cannot be validated, the same panel is labelled Basic check and uses only deterministic checks over that call's transcript. It says that the check is limited instead of pretending a rules check understood the conversation.

What the receptionist cannot do

• It never states or estimates a price.
• It cannot book, cancel or change an appointment. An appointment request is a draft that a person confirms through the ordinary booking flow.
• It cannot change a customer, vehicle, repair order or any other shop record.
• It cannot send a text or treat a callback number as texting consent.
• It cannot choose a different transfer destination or use a caller-supplied number as the transfer number.

Those limits are the receptionist's closed tool list, not suggestions in its prompt. Its only shop-data writes are drafts and transcript turns. AI drafts; a human confirms what happens to shop work.

A failed tool returns to a person

A model or tool failure does not leave the caller listening to an error page. The receptionist gives a short apology in the call's language, in its own voice, and offers the configured human transfer. If that transfer is unavailable, it says it cannot continue the call and closes it politely. If the transfer rings out or the line is busy, the call returns to the receptionist to take a message, when the shop lets it take messages; otherwise it closes politely. It never falls across to another shop's receptionist, facts or number.