Voice assistants

At the centre of OnCore is the voice assistant: an AI agent that answers your phone line, speaks with callers the way a great receptionist would, and follows the rules, tasks, and tone you give it.

What it is#

An assistant is OnCore's core product: an AI agent that picks up the phone, greets the caller with an opening line you write, and holds a natural spoken conversation powered by a large language model. You decide how it behaves — the rules it follows, the tasks it walks callers through — and how it sounds, by picking its voice, its AI model, and its speech-recognition engine from OnCore's catalogues. Attach it to a phone number and callers reach it just by dialling.

What you can do with it#

• Answer every call with your own greeting — the assistant opens each call with a first message you write ("Hi! You've reached Joe's Pizza — how can I help?") and closes with a goodbye you choose.
• Make it follow your house rules — plain-language instructions like "always ask for a callback number" or "never quote prices over the phone" shape what the assistant says and does.
• Walk callers through structured flows — task groups turn a job like taking a booking into an ordered sequence the assistant follows step by step: collect the name, collect the date, confirm.
• Sound like your brand — the voice catalogue is tagged by gender, accent, and personality, and each voice lists the languages it can speak, so you can match the assistant to your business and your callers.
• Handle silence gracefully — if you configure idle handling, a caller who goes quiet is gently prompted with messages you write instead of sitting in dead air.

How to set it up#

Everything is configured through OnCore's REST API. First browse the read-only catalogues of voices, language models, and transcribers and pick one of each — see Voices, Models & Transcribers. Then create the assistant with its name, opening line, instructions, and behaviour settings; the full lifecycle, field by field, is in the Assistants guide. To shape behaviour further, point the assistant at a reusable system prompt, add short custom instructions, or build task groups for structured flows. Finally, connect a phone number so callers can reach it.

Limits & FAQ#

• Each voice speaks the languages listed on its catalogue entry — some are English-only, others multilingual — so pick a voice whose language list covers your callers.
• Idle handling is opt-in: after a silence window you set (up to 60 seconds), the assistant speaks one of your idle messages, up to a maximum you set (at most 10 times); if the caller still doesn't respond, the call ends rather than hanging open.
• Calls have no length cap by default; you can set one anywhere from 10 seconds to 12 hours.
• An assistant can carry up to six custom instructions; longer or broader behaviour changes belong in its prompt.

Can callers ask for a human? Yes — assistants hand calls to your team on request or by topic, including warm transfers with a spoken briefing. See Call transfers.

Can we run more than one assistant? Yes. Create as many as you need — a reservations assistant, an after-hours assistant, one per location — each with its own voice, instructions, and phone number.

Can the assistant text as well as talk? Yes — SMS can be switched on per assistant so the same assistant handles text conversations on its number. See the SMS channel.

Are calls recorded? Only if you want them to be — recording is turned on or off per assistant.