Your AI employee can have a real phone number, the way it has an email address. People call the number and talk to your employee: its voice answers at once and its own judgment is behind every answer, exactly as in a meeting. You watch every call in the Phone app on the Employee Computer and manage the number in the Settings app. Your employee can also place calls, to people who expect them, once you have verified your business (see Outbound Calling below). Calls only for now; texting is next.
Every employee's computer shows the Phone app. Until the employee has a number, the app has one screen: "{Name} doesn't have a phone number yet." with an Ask {Name} button.
The number belongs to your employee: it appears on its profile and in its email signature. Give it to customers and partners, put it on a website, or forward your own business line to it at your carrier. One number per employee.
A number in another country. Your employee can hold a local number in any country the carrier sells them in (the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Japan, Mexico, Brazil and about forty more; the list is the carrier's and the Phones page shows it). Ask in chat: "Get yourself a UK mobile number." Most countries require the business to be registered with the carrier first, with the documents that country asks for (a company registration extract, a proof of address, sometimes a representative's ID); the employee tells you when that is the case and the record is filled once, on the Phones page, under Compliance, Countries. Canada and the United States need no registration. A local number means people in that country reach your employee without dialing abroad, and your employee's calls to them show a local caller ID.
Your employee answers. Its voice picks up within seconds, in the same voice it uses in meetings, on the same standing briefing: what the platform knows about it plus the briefing the employee keeps for itself (its positions, what it is working on, the questions it expects). Callers are told at the start that they are talking with an AI employee at your company.
The employee's judgment is behind the voice. Anything that needs a decision, its memory or a commitment goes to the employee itself while the conversation continues, the same way it works in a meeting. Every call wakes the employee: the phone rings for a few seconds while it joins, and the voice already knows who is calling when it picks up. The call is transcribed (no audio is recorded), and the employee reads every word.
It can hand the call to you. Once you have verified your own phone number in Settings (below), the voice can transfer a caller to you.
One call at a time. Your employee holds one live conversation at a time, whether in its chat, in a Google Meet or Zoom meeting, or on the phone. A second caller hears a busy signal, and the call shows in Recents as missed; the employee sees it and follows up the way a person would, for example by email if it knows the caller. The same happens when the phone is off or your balance cannot fund the call.
No voicemail, no message taking. An AI employee is always there, so there is nothing between the caller and your employee. A caller who wants to leave a message just says it; it is in the transcript with everything else.
Some things the employee never does on the strength of a call alone: it does not commit your company to dates, prices, scope or promises, and it does not send, schedule or change anything without its normal approvals. If you call and ask it to do something that needs your approval, it confirms with you in chat before acting.
Once the employee has a number, the Phone app looks like the phone app you already know. On a phone-sized screen there are two tabs at the bottom, Recents and Contacts; on a desktop the list is on the left and the detail on the right. The header shows the number (tap to copy) and a live dot while a call is on.
One row per call: who called or was called (the name when the employee knows them, otherwise the number with its city and state), a direction glyph (an outgoing arrow for a call the employee placed; missed and declined calls in red), the time, the duration, and the one-line notes the employee wrote after the call. A call the employee is placing shows "Calling…" with the live dot until the person answers. Chips filter All and Missed. The app badge counts missed calls since you last looked.
Who called or was called and their number, when, how long, the outcome (for a call to the employee: answered, transferred to you, missed because the employee was busy, or declined because the phone was off or the balance could not fund it; for a call the employee placed: answered, voicemail, no answer, busy, failed or cancelled), the employee's notes ("Notes pending" until it writes them), what the employee did afterwards (the task it created, the email it sent), the full transcript, and the credits charged. For a call the employee placed, the detail also shows why it called ("Placed for") and on what basis the person expected the call, and a Do not call mark when the person asked not to be called again. A call in progress shows the transcript as it lands and an End button.
People the employee knows who have a number: past callers, people the employee called, your leads with a phone, and you. Tap a person to see their calls. Contacts are for reading; nothing is dialed from here.
Once more than one employee has a phone, you want one place for all of them. Phones, under Apps in the sidebar, is that place: every number in your organization on one screen, what is happening on each right now, and the business the carriers see behind them.
Numbers. One row per number: the number and its city, the employee holding it, its state (Answers calls, On a call now, Calling, Phone off, or Held until a date after you release it), calls today and this month, the credits those calls used, how many calls it has placed today against its daily limit, and when it was set up. Employees without a number are named under the table; ask them in their chat. Click a number to open it: its facts, the phone on/off switch, its recent calls, a link to the employee's Phone app and its chat, and Release. While any employee is on a call, a Now band at the top lists the live calls with End on each.
Calls. Every call across the organization, newest first, with filters for missed calls, one employee, calls received or placed, domestic or international, and the outcome. Each call is classed by the countries on both ends: a call from a UK number to a UK number is domestic, from a US number to a UK number international. When your numbers span more than one country, a strip above the table shows each country's numbers, its calls this month by class, and its registration state. A row opens the call in the employee's Phone app, transcript included.
Compliance. Everything the organization needs before the first placed call lives here, and a strip under the page title shows its state every day:
The page reads the same records the Phone app does; releasing a number or turning a phone off here is the same action as in the employee's Settings.
Add your own phone number under Phone in the employee's Settings app and confirm it with the code you receive. It is one number for your account, so every employee you own knows it.
Once verified, two things change: the voice can transfer a caller to you, and when you call your employee's number, it knows it is you. A call from you is you speaking, the same as a message in the chat: your employee treats it as your instruction, and the sidebar shows the same meeting tile you see for a meeting in the chat, with an End button (the audio is on your handset, so there is no mute). Anything that needs your approval still confirms in chat.
Your employee can place calls from its own number, to people who expect the call and know your business: an applicant for a job you posted, someone who asked to be called back, a customer, a partner, a person who opted in to calls from you. It never calls strangers.
Every call your employees place goes out under your business, never under CellCog: the carriers see your business as the caller, and your legal business name is the caller name where the network shows one. The phone networks score the identity behind a number, so a registered business keeps your employees' numbers trusted and answered. Before the first call, verify your business on the Phones page (under Apps in the sidebar), under Compliance, Business identity. An organization admin fills it in once, for every employee:
Your business registration. The form asks for the identifier your country issues and picks the type from your business address: an EIN in the United States, a Business Number in Canada, a Company Number in the United Kingdom, an ACN in Australia, a CIN in India, a VAT number in the European Union, a DUNS number anywhere, or another registration you name (a trade license, for example). The address is your business's real address in its own country. A business does not need to be in the United States to verify.
The carriers' signature and caller name. The phone networks sign calls (so they are not labeled as likely spam) and show a caller name only for businesses registered with an EIN or a DUNS number. A business verified with any other registration places calls under its own name without that signature; its status says so and offers Add an EIN or DUNS number, which reopens the review. A DUNS number is issued free by Dun and Bradstreet to a company anywhere in the world.
A personal account (one that signed up with a consumer email address) cannot verify a business: the carriers require a business registration. It keeps everything on this page except placing calls; booking calls to businesses are the one exception (see Calling businesses for you). Every organization admin gets an email when the registration is sent to the carriers, when it is approved, and when it is rejected. If it is rejected, the carrier's reason shows in the same block with the fields to change, the email says the same with a button back to the form, and you can edit the form and submit again. Until the business is verified, an employee asked to place a call tells you so in one line, with the link to the Phones page.
This registration covers calls placed from US and Canadian numbers. A number in another country places calls under that country's own record, the one on the Phones page under Compliance, Countries; once the carrier approves it, the employee holding that number can place calls from it.
One sentence in chat: "Call Priya Shah at +1 415 555 0123 about the PM role; she applied Tuesday; ask her availability for an interview next week." That sentence is the go-ahead, and it tells the employee why the person expects the call. The employee dials from its own number right away, or sets a one-time routine when you name a time. An employee working from a standing task with nobody in the chat needs a standing approval that names the kind of call, for example "interview scheduling calls to applicants, up to 10 a day".
The employee's voice, the same one it uses on every call. It knows it is calling on behalf of your company and what about, and the person is told they are speaking with an AI employee at your company. The employee's own judgment is behind the voice from the first ring, exactly as on an incoming call. The Phone app shows the call in Recents while it runs, with End.
Your employee can phone a business for you as its customer: book a table or an appointment, change or cancel one, or ask about availability or hours. Ask in chat: "Book me a table for two at Lucali on Friday at 8." You name the business and what you want; the employee finds the number the business publishes on its own website or map listing and calls it. It never picks businesses to call on its own, and it never calls a business to sell, pitch, survey or collect anything.
In the Settings app on the Employee Computer, the Phone section holds:
Deleting an employee releases its number the same way.
A phone number is a small recurring monthly charge in credits, the carrier's own price for that country and number type; your employee quotes the exact figure from its receipt when it offers you numbers, and it appears in your credit history each month. If your account cannot fund a month's renewal, the number is renewed once on credit (your balance goes negative by that amount) and you get an email naming the date it is released unless the account is funded by then; still unfunded at the next renewal, the number is released and callers hear a busy signal for 30 days. Calls are metered from what they used: the seconds of voice time, the quick-answer model's work and the carrier's charge for the call, each at cost with the usual credit conversion, and the employee's own thinking bills as it always does; each call's record shows the credits charged. A call the employee places is metered the same way as any call; a call nobody answers costs nothing. Calls to numbers outside the US are priced separately from US calls; the Billing Guide carries those figures once set. Verifying your business is free. See the Billing Guide, "What Work Costs".
Records are kept with the employee and are deleted when the employee is deleted.
Yes. Every call, whether someone called the employee or the employee placed the call, opens with the fact that they are talking with an AI employee at your company.
It calls people who expect the call and know your business: applicants, people who asked to be called back, customers, partners, people who opted in. It does not cold call strangers, and it never calls a number that asked not to be called again. It reaches numbers in the US and in every other country CellCog has opened for calls (see Outbound Calling). Your business must be verified first (see Outbound Calling). It can also call a US business you name to book, change or cancel something for you, with no verification needed (see Calling businesses for you).
The second caller hears a busy signal and the call shows as missed in Recents. The employee sees the missed call and follows up as a person would.
You can read the transcript as it lands in the call's detail, and end the call from there. There is no live audio in the browser; if you want to talk, call the number yourself.
No. The Phone app shows you what happened; the employee is the one on the phone. To have it place a call, ask it in chat (see Outbound Calling). Texting is coming next.
Yes, in every country the carrier sells numbers in; the Phones page lists them. Most countries require your business to be registered with the carrier first, with the documents that country asks for; you fill that record once on the Phones page, under Compliance, Countries, and the employee gets the number in chat once it is approved. Canada and the United States need no registration. The United Arab Emirates, India and Singapore are not sold to us today; your employee can still call numbers there from its US number, at international pricing.
Yes. Verify the business on the Phones page with the registration your country issues (a Company Number in the UK, a CIN in India, a VAT number in the EU, a trade license named as another registration, and so on); the form picks the type from your business address. Only an EIN or a DUNS number earns the carriers' signature and a caller name on US networks; add a DUNS number (free, from Dun and Bradstreet) to get both. A business in India, the United Arab Emirates or Singapore holds a US number (or one from another country the carrier sells) and calls home at international pricing, since no number is sold to us in those countries.
Not by porting it yet. You can forward your existing line to the employee's number at your carrier.
The transcript is kept; the audio is not.