Your first 14 days with an AI voice agent

The trial at a glance

A trial plays out in three stages: set everything up, test everything, then observe your real calls and make corrections. Here is the order we recommend.

Before the trial: listen with no commitment

Two things can be done without a bank card. First, the demo: a free three-minute call in which the agent calls you back and plays the receptionist for your trade. Second, setting up your own agent: you create your account, then your agent guides you, in writing, on WhatsApp or with a form, as you prefer. In France, it finds your business in the register from its name or its SIRET; elsewhere, you give your VAT number or company number and your registered office address. It asks you for the name to say on the phone, then reads your website to write the business profile. You then choose its first name, its voice and its greeting, and you confirm with “Create my agent”. Ready in 5 minutes. Nothing is confirmed without your action or your “yes”, and you can go back over every step: it is a draft to correct, not a finished result.

Take the opportunity to settle the question of the voice: you listen to each voice before choosing. Our guide to choosing a voice tells you what to listen for.

The trial conditions are simple: when you start it, your card details are requested and your number is assigned. Nothing is charged for 14 days, and nothing at all if you cancel before the end of the trial, at any time. The free trial page sets out these conditions in detail.

Day one: setting up the agent

The guided settings

Once the trial has started and the agent's number has been assigned, Sayelo offers you “Guided settings”, one by one: “Your agent's instructions”, “Opening hours”, “Forwarding your line”, “Call transfers”, “Closures”, “What it can answer”, “Appointments”, “SMS to the caller”, “Alerts and summaries”. For each one, “Let's go” or “Later”. Follow them in order on day one: they cover most of what follows.

Checking your business information

This is the step that makes or breaks the trial. Read through and complete:

• your opening hours, and upcoming exceptional closures, holidays, long weekends or public holidays, in “What it does” → “Opening hours”;
• the address and how to get there: floor, parking, entrance;
• your services, and above all what you don't do;
• the area you cover, if you travel to customers;
• the questions you get asked all the time, with the answer you usually give;
• the transfer instructions: which calls to put through to you, to which number, at what times;
• what the agent does when it doesn't know: take a qualified message, or transfer the call.

For an electrician, for example, the difference between an urgent fault to transfer and a quote request to note must be written down in black and white.

Choosing the number

You keep your current number, whichever you prefer: by forwarding calls to your agent or, in France, by porting, on all plans. A new number is also included from the start of the trial, if you would rather start from scratch.

During the trial, the simplest option is conditional call forwarding: your phone rings first, and the agent only takes the calls you let through. You stay in control while you build up confidence. The codes depend on your line and your operator: for French lines, our guide for Orange lines details them step by step, and the how-to guide to conditional forwarding covers the other cases. Number porting (in France), possible on all plans, is not needed to try it out: you can think about it once you have made your decision.

Day two: connecting the calendar

Connect Google Calendar, Outlook / Microsoft 365 or Cal.com, in “What it does” → “Connected calendar”. The agent reads your calendar live, applies a lock against double bookings, confirms, reschedules and cancels. Create at least one appointment reason: if no reason is set up, the agent does not book any appointments.

Then set your appointment rules: a length for each appointment reason, the slots open for phone bookings, buffer times. At a hair salon, a cut and a colour don't take the same time, and the agent needs to know this before offering a slot. Confirmation SMS and reminders the day before are switched on by default: read through their wording. Our Google Calendar guide details these settings.

Days two and three: test calls

Start with the “Test call”, always at the top of the screen: you talk to your agent through the microphone, from your browser, and nothing is recorded or billed. Then, before letting your real customers through, call your agent from another phone, and ask someone close to you to do the same. Act out each type of call:

1. a simple appointment booking;
2. moving an appointment, then cancelling it;
3. a practical question: opening hours, address, service;
4. an emergency, which should be transferred according to your rules;
5. a call outside your opening hours;
6. a caller who speaks quickly, hesitates or spells out a difficult name;
7. a question the agent doesn't know the answer to.

After each call, check three things: the summary received by email, your calendar, and the SMS that arrived on the test phone. If any of the three doesn't match, correct it before moving on to the next scenario.

Week one: reading every summary

Your real calls start coming in. After each one, you receive an email summary: overview, key points, actions taken during the call, actions still to do, caller sentiment, and the full transcript. In the first week, read them all, with three questions in mind:

• Did the agent understand the request?
• Did it do what was needed: appointment, transfer, message?
• Did it say anything inaccurate or vague?

Note every discrepancy on a list. Questions the agent couldn't answer come up in “What it knows” → “Knowledge”, and your agent puts them to you in “Talk”: you write the answer once, in one sentence, and it knows it from the very next call. Nothing is learned without your approval.

Week two: adjusting, one thing at a time

Go back to your list and make corrections: a piece of information, a transfer instruction, an appointment length, a wording. One change at a time, followed by a test call: otherwise, you won't know what made the difference. You can make the change on screen, or ask your agent for it in a message, for example “Change my greeting message”: each change appears in the thread, with “Undo” when it can be reversed.

You are not on your own with these settings. The team sets up and fine-tunes the agent with you. In “Account” → “Help”, you will find guided tours, “Ask a question” and “Write to support”, with tracking of your requests. The tutorials show the steps on video.

Use this week, too, to look at the figures for your own business in “Activity” → “Statistics”: calls, minutes, average duration, successful calls, compared with the previous period. You can also simply ask your agent: “What happened today?”

The last few days: deciding

Three questions are enough:

1. Does the agent handle most calls without you having to correct anything?
2. Do the summaries save you time, or do they force you to call back to understand?
3. What volume have you seen in minutes, and do your calls often come in at the same time?

The third question tells you which plan to choose.

No commitment, 14-day free trial. With annual billing, you pay for ten months out of twelve. Up-to-date details are on the pricing page.

If you continue, choose the plan that matches the volume you have seen: you can change it at any time, at no cost. Monthly billing has no commitment; annual billing means paying for ten months out of twelve. If you are weighing it up against another solution, our comparison of AI voice agents for small businesses puts the trial, the entry price and the setup side by side, and the pricing page details each plan.

If you stop, cancel before the end of the trial: nothing is charged. And remember to switch off call forwarding on your line, so that your unanswered calls go back to your voicemail.