How to activate and configure your AIRO intelligent voice agent in your IVR

The AIRO AI voice agent welcomes your callers 24/7, qualifies their requests, and seamlessly routes them to your teams or business tools. By integrating it directly into your switchboard (IVR), you optimize caller management, even outside your opening hours. In this article, you will learn how to enable AIRO and configure automatic call forwarding to your AI voice agent within your switchboard.

1. Key features of the AIRO AI voice agent

AIRO brings conversational intelligence to your call answering service to automate call management:

• 24/7 Availability : A virtual agent available 24/7 to automatically answer incoming calls with zero wait time. 
• Qualification and routing : AIRO accurately identifies customer needs from the very first call, handles simple requests, or routes callers to the right departments. 
• Smart transfer : Calls are forwarded to a human agent for complex cases, while passing along the conversation history and context. 
• CRM Synchronisation : Your call data, conversation summaries, and transcripts are automatically synchronised with your business tools. 

2. Enable AIRO on the Ringover Marketplace

The AIRO add-on is enabled directly from the admin interface: 

1. Log in to your Ringover Dashboard. 
2. Go to the Store > Marketplace tab.
3. Search for the AIRO solution and click enable. 

3. Configure call forwarding to AIRO in your IVR

Once the add-on is enabled, you can directly integrate your AI voice agent into any greeting scenario in your switchboard: 

1. Go to the IVRs / Auto-attendants section on your Ringover Dashboard. 
2. Select the auto-attendant of your choice and click on the time-based scenario you want to edit (for example, the weekend scenario "Sunday").
3. At the very first step of scenario distribution, choose the "Forward to AIRO" option.
4. Click the gear icon to open the selection pop-up and assign the AI voice agent you want to link to this scenario.
5. Save your changes to make call forwarding operational. 

4. Set up the agent's profile and identity

Define the personality traits and language model that will power your virtual agent:

1. Click "New agent" at the top right of your AIRO interface.
2. Select the agent template that matches your business field.
3. Fill in your agent's name, spoken language, and the language model (LLM) of your choice.
4. Customise its voice (using the available catalogue), tone, and humour level.
5. Enter the welcome message callers will hear during their first interaction.
6. Draft the custom prompt to define its purpose, goals, and behaviour by completing the key sections:
   • Personality : Your agent's style of expression.
   • Environment : The company's work context.
   • Goal : The priority tasks it must perform.
   • Tone and communication : How to interact with callers.
   • Mandatory questions : Key information to collect systematically.
   • Rules to follow : Strict guidelines and limits not to cross.

5. Expand the knowledge base

Provide your AI voice agent with the documentation needed to answer caller questions autonomously and accurately:

1. Go to the knowledge base tab on your agent's profile.
2. Click the "Add new resource" button.
3. Select the import format for your data:
   • Web Page : By URL, automatically extracting content from a webpage.
   • File : Upload procedure documents (PDF, Word, etc.).
   • Raw Text : Direct entry of information or FAQs.
   • Q&A : Direct entry of FAQs.
   • Audio : Import audio files (call recordings, guides, or voicemails) 
   • Integrations : Direct synchronisation of your documentation bases from third-party apps (Google Drive, Notion, internal wikis, etc.) without manual import.
4. Click "Link" to validate and link these documents to your agent's learning memory.

6. Connect your tools and enable MCP servers

Deploy advanced interactive scenarios and automate your agent's business processes:

1. Functions & Connectors : Click  "Add functions" to set specific call conditions. This is where you can program seamless transfers from your AI voice agent to a user or human agent group when a request becomes complex.
2. MCP Servers : Click "Add MCP" to create smart automations with your external tools (via Zapier, Make, and two new connectors recently added to our catalogue). This allows you, for example, to schedule an automatic  appointment booking directly in your calendars or CRM.

7. Adjust conversation settings and test the agent

Optimise dialogue pace and dynamics to ensure a smooth experience:

• Turn wait timeout : Adjust the pause duration (in seconds) after the user's last word before the agent automatically responds (enter  -1 to wait indefinitely).
• Silence hang-up timeout : Define the maximum silent duration (in seconds) allowed before hanging up (enter -1 to never end the call automatically).
• Max call duration : Set a time limit for each session (adjustable from 60 seconds to 1 hour).
• Keywords : Enter your industry-specific terms and phrases separated by commas to improve the agent's speech recognition accuracy.

Assign a phone number

To make your virtual agent reachable and complete the setup:

1. Go back to the main AIRO page.

2. Assign a phone number to your AI voice agent to fully activate it and put it live. 🎉

    

FAQ

If I add a new AI voice agent, does billing start automatically with the Pay-As-You-Go option?

Yes. The Pay-As-You-Go option is active by default. AIRO billing applies automatically as soon as you create or use an AI voice agent. Your costs are calculated based on your actual usage, with no extra setup fees. 

Related articles 📰

• How to create and customise your first AIRO AI voice agent
• Everything you need to know about your IVR builder

🎉 You now know how to enable AIRO on your account and set up call forwarding in your IVR switchboard to hand over call management to your AI voice agent!