Create and route a Call Assistant

Build an AI voice assistant — name, prompts, voice, tools, and status — then connect it to a call route.

A Call Assistant is an AI voice assistant that answers a call, talks to the caller, and uses the capabilities you enable — booking an appointment, texting directions, transferring to a person. Creating one defines how it behaves. Nothing reaches it until you separately point a phone number, call menu, or no-answer path at it.

Prerequisites

• Call Assistants enabled for the selected phone system. It is a paid add-on: when it is off, the page shows a feature overview with Contact sales and Book a demo instead of your assistants.
• An account that can view call assistants. Creating, duplicating, and deleting need change access on top of that; without it you can still open an assistant and read its settings.
• Greetings and instructions you are willing to have spoken to callers. Never put passwords, keys, or unnecessary personal data in a prompt.
• Anything a tool you plan to enable depends on — transfer destinations for Transfer Call, booking services for the scheduling tools.

Create an assistant

1. Open Call Assistants > Assistants and confirm the phone-system name in the header.
2. Select Create Call Assistant and choose how to start:
   • Blank Assistant — an empty form you fill in yourself.
   • A template under From Template — creates the assistant immediately from Steer Phones’ starter configuration and opens it for editing.
3. On a blank assistant, Use a Profile (optional) appears when Steer Phones publishes Profiles you can use. Leave it on Custom (no Profile) to configure the prompt and tools yourself, or pick a Profile to have Steer Phones manage them. See Use a Steer Phones-managed Profile.
4. Work through the cards below, then select Create Assistant.

A template skips that last step: the assistant is created the moment you pick one, and the form you land on is already saved, so its button reads Save. From then on, both paths behave the same — reopen the assistant from its card in the list and select Save after each change.

Name and speed dial

Name is how the assistant appears in the list and in every routing picker, so make it describe the job: After-hours booking, not Assistant 2.

Speed Dial is optional and assigns one of the codes *71 through *79. Dialing that code from a desk phone on this phone system connects straight to the assistant, which makes it the quickest way to hear a change you just saved. Each code belongs to one assistant per phone system — codes already taken are shown but cannot be selected, and saving a code that another assistant grabbed in the meantime fails with a message naming the conflict.

Prompts

Four fields shape what the assistant says, and they combine in a fixed order at call time:

System Prompt is read-only in the dashboard. On an assistant with no Profile it is labelled Managed by Steer and you can read the text; on an assistant that follows a Profile the text is replaced by a Managed by Profile badge naming the Profile and its published version.

Custom Prompt is yours on every assistant, including one managed by a Profile. Use it for shop-specific instruction — Always offer to book an appointment at the end of the call. It accepts these tokens, which are filled in from your phone-system settings when the call starts: {{shop_name}}, {{spoken_name}}, {{shop_address}}, {{business_hours}}, {{closed_hours}}, {{current_date}}, {{current_date_time}}.

New Customer Greeting is spoken to a caller the assistant does not recognize. It accepts {companyName} and {spokenName}.

Existing Customer Greeting is spoken instead when the caller’s number matches a customer in your connected booking system. It accepts {firstName}, {lastName}, {fullName}, {companyName}, and {spokenName}. Leave it empty and every caller hears the new-customer greeting.

To edit the phone-system-wide text, select Global Prompt on the Assistants page. It accepts the same tokens as the Custom Prompt, it is read-only unless your role is Admin or Super Admin, and what you save there is prepended to every assistant on the system — keep it to facts that are true of the whole shop.

Voice and conversation style

• Voice — pick from the named voices offered; the assistant’s card shows the chosen voice so you can compare assistants at a glance.
• Allow Interruptions — when on, the assistant stops talking and listens as soon as the caller starts speaking. Interrupt Sensitivity then appears: Low, Medium, or High, where higher means the assistant yields more readily. High is the default.
• Allow Response Updates — lets the assistant revise a partial answer when new information arrives mid-response.
• Additional Languages — enable Spanish or French to let a caller switch between English and that language during the call.

Call tags

Tags selected on the Call Tags card are applied to every call this assistant handles, which is what makes assistant-handled calls easy to filter later in call history. Tags themselves are created under Call Analysis > Tags; if none exist yet, the card says so and offers nothing to pick.

Enabled tools

Enabled Tools lists the capabilities the assistant may use during a call. Steer Phones defines what each tool does and you choose which ones this assistant gets. Enabling Transfer Call reveals the Transfer Destinations card on the same page. Full detail, including what each tool needs before it works on a live call, is in Enable Call Assistant tools.

Status

The Status switch is the on/off control: an inactive assistant keeps all of its configuration but stops handling calls, and a caller routed to it hears that the assistant is unavailable. Leave a new assistant inactive until its behavior is ready, then switch it on.

An assistant Steer Phones has put in a Testing state shows a read-only badge instead of the switch. Save the assistant as usual — the testing state is preserved. Only an active assistant answers routed calls; anything else, testing included, sends the caller to the unavailable message.

Save your changes

Save stays disabled until something changed and the name is not empty. Discard returns every field to the last saved values. If a save fails, the error appears above the buttons and names the field the server rejected. Tag changes are saved separately from the rest of the form, so a rare partial failure reports “Saved, but some tag changes failed” — reopen the assistant and confirm the tags.

Connect it to calls

1. Open the phone number, call menu, extension, or call group that should hand off to the assistant.
2. Choose the Call Assistant action in the applicable incoming, menu-option, or no-answer setting.
3. Select the saved assistant and save that routing surface.
4. Place a controlled test call — or dial the assistant’s speed-dial code from a desk phone — and walk the greeting, the expected conversation path, and any transfer you configured.

If your phone system announces AI-handled calls, that disclosure plays before the assistant starts talking. It is configured once for the whole system on the compliance settings page, not per assistant.

Duplicate or delete an assistant

Duplicate creates <name> (Copy) with the same prompts, voice settings, and tools, plus a copy of its transfer destinations. The copy starts with no speed dial and no call tags, and a warning toast tells you if any destination failed to copy.

Delete is permanent and is blocked while anything still routes to the assistant. The error counts what still points at it — routing actions, routing rules, call menu options, call menu no-input routes, call assistant transfers, or call campaigns. Repoint those first, then delete.

Expected result

The assistant appears on the Assistants page with its status badge, its voice, its speed-dial code, and either its tools or its Profile name. Calls reach it only through routes that name it, and a test call plays the greeting you wrote in the voice you chose.

Troubleshooting

• The page shows a feature overview instead of your assistants: the Call Assistants add-on is not enabled for this phone system. Use Contact sales or talk to your account manager.
• The page says you do not have permission: your account cannot view call assistants for this phone system. Ask an administrator for access.
• The System Prompt cannot be edited: that is expected. It is managed by Steer Phones, or by the Profile the assistant follows. Put your own instructions in Custom Prompt.
• A speed-dial code is greyed out: another assistant on this phone system holds it. Free it on that assistant or choose a different code.
• The Global Prompt dialog is read-only: editing it requires an Admin or Super Admin role.
• A card warns that no transfer destinations are defined: the assistant enables Transfer Call but has nowhere to send a caller, so the transfer fails on a live call. Add at least one enabled destination.
• A card warns that no AutoOps services are linked: the assistant enables a booking tool but no booking service is assigned to it, so that tool fails on a live call.
• Duplicate fails on an assistant that follows a Profile: its prompt lives on the Profile, not on the assistant, so there is nothing to copy. Create a new assistant and select the same Profile instead.
• The assistant is missing from a routing picker: confirm it belongs to the active phone system and has been saved.
• Callers hear that the assistant is unavailable: its status is not active.

Related guidance

• Use a Steer Phones-managed Profile.
• Enable Call Assistant tools.
• Set up transfer destinations.
• Configure business hours and incoming call routing.
• Create call groups and call menus.
• Review compliance settings.
• Review call recordings, transcripts, and AI analysis.