Glossary

Every term these docs use, in plain English. If something in another page was unclear, it is probably here.

Building blocks

Agent

The AI that talks on the phone. It holds the instructions, the voice, the language and the model. One agent can handle many simultaneous calls — it is not a phone line. See Agents.

Instructions (or system prompt)

The plain-English description of who the agent is and what it should do, re-read before every reply. The single biggest lever on quality.

Greeting

The exact first sentence, said before the caller has spoken. Where recording notice and AI disclosure go.

Model

The AI doing the thinking. Claude Haiku 4.5 by default — fast, which on a phone call reads as intelligent. Kimi K2.5 and GPT-4o are alternatives.

Knowledge Base

Documents and web pages the agent searches when a caller asks something it needs. Reference material, as opposed to instructions, which are policy.

Tool

An action the agent can take mid-call: transfer, hang up, send an SMS, call your webhook. See Tools.

Integration

A connection to a whole application — HubSpot, Google Calendar, Zoho — that the agent can read from and write to during a call.

Attaching

Giving a specific agent access to a connected integration. Separate from connecting, and the step most people miss.

Variable

A placeholder filled in per call — {{first_name}}, {{date}}. Lets one set of instructions serve every caller.

Calling

Inbound

A call someone makes to you. Your agent answers it.

Outbound

A call your agent makes. Campaigns and lead callbacks are outbound.

Campaign

A contact list plus an agent plus a schedule. Vociply dials through the list, retries what did not connect, and stops when it is done.

Concurrency

How many calls a campaign runs at once. Should not exceed the number of humans available to take transfers.

Transfer

Handing the live call to a human. Every production agent should be able to do this.

Warm transfer

A transfer where the receiving person is told what they are picking up first — via a whisper — before being connected.

Whisper

A short line played only to the person receiving a transfer: “qualified solar lead from Facebook”.

Handoff

Passing the conversation from one Vociply agent to another mid-call — a front-door agent routing to a specialist.

Voicemail detection

Recognising an answering machine so the agent does not deliver its script to a beep. Turn it on for every outbound agent.

Caller ID

The number shown on the recipient’s screen. Local numbers are answered far more often than unfamiliar ones. Not proof of identity — it is spoofable.

Analysis line

A Call IQ number that records a call and forwards it on. Calls that do not pass through it are not analysed.

Turn-taking

Deciding when the caller has finished speaking. The four wait timers on the Voice step. Interruptions and lag are both this.

Leads

Speed to lead

The time between someone enquiring and you calling. Seconds beats hours by a large margin, which is the entire premise of Lead Callback.

Trigger

One lead source and everything that should happen to leads from it — which agent calls, when, what counts as qualified, whether to transfer.

Field mapping

Telling Vociply where the phone number, name and email live in the data your form sends. Written as dotted paths like data.phone_number.

Calling window

The days and hours calling is allowed. Judged in the lead’s own timezone where known — a legal boundary, not a preference.

Consent evidence

Proof that the person agreed to be called, usually a checkbox on your form. Can be made mandatory on a trigger.

Qualification

Working out after the call whether a lead is worth a human’s time. The AI extracts what was said; your rules decide the verdict.

Lead event

A notification emitted as a lead moves through the flow — lead.qualified, lead.exhausted and four others. Queued and retried, never sent inline.

Exhausted

Every attempt used, never reached. A lead you paid for and never spoke to — worth routing to a human.

DNC (do-not-call)

People who have asked not to be contacted. Must be honoured immediately, permanently, and across every campaign.

Technical terms

E.164

The international phone number format: a plus, country code, then the number — +254712345678. Always use it. Local formats like 0712345678 are ambiguous and will not dial reliably.

Webhook

A URL that something calls when an event happens. Vociply calls yours in two directions: your form posts leads in, and agents call your endpoint out.

Trigger secret

The credential proving a lead really came from your form. Sent as a header. Shown once — copy it when you create the trigger.

OAuth

Connecting by signing in at the provider rather than pasting keys. The connection acts as whoever authorised it, which is why a shared account beats a personal one.

Speech-to-text

Turning the caller’s audio into words. When an agent answers a question nobody asked, look here before blaming the model.

Text-to-speech

Turning the agent’s reply into audio. What “voice” selects.

Noise suppression

Cleaning the caller’s audio before the agent tries to understand it. Worth turning on for callers in noisy places; it costs a little processing time.

Overage

Minutes used beyond your monthly bundle, charged at a per-minute rate set by your plan, your market and the destination you called.

SOQL

Salesforce’s query language. The Salesforce integration accepts one, as an escape hatch when a standard lookup is not enough.

OData / SOAP

The two web service protocols the Business Central connector uses. Without SOAP configured, live balance and mini-statement lookups are unavailable.

Something missing? Tell us at support@vociply.com and it gets added.