Quickstart
From an empty account to a real answered phone call. Roughly ten minutes, most of it optional.
This is the shortest path through the product. You can stop after step 4 and still have a working agent you can talk to — the phone number only matters when you want real callers to reach it.
Tip
The panel keeps the same checklist on your Dashboard — verify email, get a number, add knowledge, add credits, make your first call. It disappears once you've done all five.
Before you start
You need an email address. You do not need a credit card, a phone number, or any technical knowledge. The free trial includes real calling minutes for testing.
Step by step
- 1
Create your account and verify your email
Sign up at app.vocallie.com/signup. You'll get a verification email — click the link in it.
Verification isn't cosmetic: until your email is verified, the system blocks calling and phone number provisioning. If the mail hasn't arrived in a minute, check spam, then use the resend button on the verify screen.
- 2
Build your agent
Go to Agent → Agents. You have three ways to start, and they end up in the same editor:
- Create with AI — the fastest. It asks you a few questions about your business in plain language, then writes the whole agent for you. About a minute.
- Templates — pick your industry (15 of them, with several use cases each) and get a ready-made agent built on what usually works in that trade.
- Blank — an empty agent you fill in yourself.
Whatever you pick, open the agent afterwards and read the Instructions tab. That's the agent's brain, in plain sentences. Fix anything that isn't true about your business.
Full detail: Agents.
- 3
Give it something to know
Go to Agent → Knowledge and add what your callers actually ask about — prices, opening hours, services, the return policy, parking. You can paste text, upload a file, or point it at a page on your website and let it import.
This is the difference between an agent that says "our standard clean is £120 and takes about two hours" and one that says "I'm not sure, let me take a message". It never invents an answer it wasn't given.
Full detail: Knowledge base.
- 4
Talk to it in your browser
Go to Test call (or hit Web test from inside the agent editor). Allow microphone access and just talk to it like a customer would.
Try the awkward stuff: ask for a price you didn't write down, interrupt it mid-sentence, ask for a human. How it handles those is what you're tuning.
There's also a Chat test if you'd rather type, and a Call test that rings your own phone.
Full detail: Testing your agent.
- 5
Get a phone number
Go to Telephony → Numbers. Either buy a number in a couple of clicks, or connect a number you already own through your existing carrier (BYO SIP).
Then map that number to your agent, so the system knows which agent answers which line.
Full detail: Phone numbers.
- 6
Add credits
Go to Account → Billing and top up your wallet. Calls are charged per minute against this balance; when it hits zero, calls stop rather than silently running up a bill.
Full detail: Billing & wallet.
- 7
Ring your own number
Call it from your mobile. Have a normal conversation. Then go to Telephony → Calls and look at what got recorded: the transcript, the summary, the outcome, the cost.
That call log is where you'll spend most of your time in the first week — it's the fastest way to see what your agent is getting wrong.
You're live
Inbound calls are now answered 24/7. Everything below is optional — it's about making the calls do more work for you.
What to set up next
Roughly in order of how much they pay you back:
The single biggest upgrade. The agent checks your real availability and books during the call.
If every line is busy, the caller is captured and rung back automatically instead of lost.
"When a call ends with no answer, schedule a follow-up in 2 days." Rules instead of admin.
Listen back, and get a one-line AI summary of every call instead of reading transcripts.
Upload a list, let the agent work through it inside your calling hours.
Invite people and control exactly which parts of the panel each of them can see.
If something doesn't work
The three things that stop people at this stage, in order of frequency:
- The agent answers but knows nothing — the knowledge base is empty, or you tested a different agent than the one you edited. Check which agent is marked default.
- Calls don't connect — email not verified, wallet empty, or the number isn't mapped to an agent yet.
- It sounds robotic or talks over you — that's tuning, not a fault. See Agents → voice and behaviour.
More in Troubleshooting.