A deep dive on adjusting your agent

Last updated: July 29, 2025

Whether you’re making outbound calls or handling incoming ones, telli’s voice AI agents give you fine‑grained control over how your brand sounds and behaves. This guide walks you through every setting you can tweak today—so you can deliver consistent, on‑brand experiences that delight your customers.

1. Set Your Agent’s Persona Name

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  • It matters: A clear, memorable persona name helps contacts recognize who’s calling and sets the tone from the first word.

  • How to customize:

  1. Navigate to Agents → Settings → Persona.

  2. Enter your desired persona Name

  3. Save to apply.

Tip: Reference the persona name in your agent’s greeting (see next section) to reinforce brand recognition.

2. Craft Your First Message

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telli supports two distinct “first message” templates—one for outbound calls and one for inbound:

Call Type

Purpose

Where to Edit

Outbound

What the agent says when it initiates the call.

Agents → Settings → Outbound First Message

Inbound

What the agent says when someone calls your telli number.

Agents → Settings → Inbound First Message

  • Insertion tip: Use {{personaName}} in your script to auto‑insert the name you set above.

  • Examples:

    • Outbound:

      "Hi, this is {{personaName}} from Example Company. Am I talking with {{salutation}} {{lastName}}?"

    • Inbound:

      "Hello! You’ve reached {{personaName}}. How can I help you today?"

3. Choose Background Noise

Add realism or ensure clarity by selecting one of our built‑in noise profiles:

Option

Description

None

Crystal‑clear, studio‑quality voice only.

Office

Subtle ambient sounds to simulate a busy office.

Find this under Agents → Settings → Audio → Background Noise.

4. Pick a Voice

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Our library includes dozens of professional, voice‑cloned personalities. To choose:

  1. Go to Agents → Settings → Voice.

  2. Browse or search (e.g. “friendly female,” “British male”).

  3. Click Select to apply.

Custom cloning: Want your company’s exact voice? Submit a request to have us clone one of your spokespeople for ultimate brand consistency.

5. Built‑In Tools

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telli agents can perform special actions—called “tools”—during a call. Here are the defaults plus appointment booking tools:

Tool

What It Does

End Call

Gracefully terminates the conversation when the script completes.

Voicemail Detect

Listens for voicemail tones in the first 10 seconds; if detected, it hangs up. (Agents cannot leave voicemail.)

GetAvailableSlots

Calls your calendar endpoint to fetch and present all available time slots to the user.

BookSlots

Uses your calendar endpoint to book a slot at the time specified by the user.

Currently, you'll need to contact us at telli to unlock tools for your Agents.

6. Dive Deeper with the Prompt Editor

For advanced behavior tweaks—like adjusting tone, adding branching logic, or embedding FAQs—use our dedicated Prompt Editor. We cover that in detail in our separate article:

📄 User Manual: Agent Prompt Editor

7. Learn to Make Calls & Use Advanced Settings

Ready to launch campaigns, set up callback flows, and analyze call data? Check out our full guide on Using telli Voice Agents for step‑by‑step instructions on placing calls, configuring call routing, viewing transcripts, and more:

📄 How telli Agents make calls

That’s It!

With these settings at your fingertips, you can tailor every aspect of your telli agent’s behavior and sound. Dive in, experiment, and let us know if you need more help—our support team is always here to ensure your voice AI delivers the perfect greeting, every time.