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This walks you from an empty account to a real answered call in about fifteen minutes. You will create an agent, let it learn about your business, hear it answer in your browser, then give it a phone number and call it yourself.

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Before you start

  • A Brilo account. The Free plan is enough for everything up to the phone number step.
  • Your website address, if you have one. Brilo can read it and set your agent up for you.
  • Your phone, for the test call at the end.

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Step 1: Create your agent

In the dashboard, go to Agents and start a new agent. Brilo asks how you would like to set it up and gives you two options:
  • Scan my website reads your pages and picks up your opening hours, services, and prices.
  • Tell us about my business asks you a few short questions instead.
Choose Scan my website if your site is public and up to date, then enter your address and how much of the site to read. My main pages suits most businesses. Otherwise choose Tell us about my business and answer the industry and use case questions. Brilo then builds your agent, which takes about a minute. Pick a voice and language on the last screen and continue.

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Step 2: Check what your agent knows

Open your agent and read the instructions Brilo wrote. This is the single most valuable five minutes in this guide, because everything your agent says on a call comes from here. Fix anything wrong, and add the things a website never says out loud: your actual opening hours, what you want it to do when someone asks for a person, and anything it must never promise. See Write what your agent says. If you have a price list, a menu, or a set of FAQs, upload them now. See Add a document or website.

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Step 3: Talk to your agent in your browser

Before any phone number is involved, talk to your agent from the dashboard. Ask it the three questions your customers ask most. This is where most people find their first real problem, usually a wrong opening time or a question it cannot answer. Fix those before moving on. See Test your agent yourself.

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Step 4: Give it a phone number

You have two choices:
  • Buy a number from Brilo. Takes about two minutes and needs no phone company account. One number is included with every paid plan. See Buy a phone number.
  • Use the number you already have. Forward calls from your existing number to Brilo, which takes minutes and is reversible. See Use your existing number.
Attach the number to your agent, or your agent will not answer it.

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Step 5: Call it yourself

Ring the number from your own phone and have the conversation a customer would have. Try to book something, ask a question your agent should know, and ask for a person. Listen for the pace, whether it says your business name correctly, and whether it actually finished the job rather than promising to pass a message on.

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Step 6: Turn it on for real callers

When you are happy, turn your agent on so it answers real calls. See Turn your agent on, and run through the go live checklist first if this number is your main business line.

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You will know it worked when

  • You called your own number and your agent answered.
  • It answered a question using something you uploaded or wrote.
  • The call appears in your call history with a transcript and a Pulse Score a minute later.

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What to do next

The setup is done. What makes an agent good is the next few days: listening to real calls and fixing what you hear. Your first week is a day by day checklist for exactly that. Most people’s next step after that is letting the agent do something rather than just talk, usually booking appointments. See Book appointments.

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If it did not work

The scan found very little about your business. Your site may be behind a login or built mostly of images. Switch to answering the questions yourself, then upload your material. You call the number and nothing happens. The number is probably not attached to an agent, or the agent is not turned on yet. See My agent is not answering. Your agent answers but gets things wrong. That is a knowledge and instructions problem rather than a setup one, and it is the normal state on day one. See Why it answered wrong.

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FAQ

About fifteen minutes to a call you answer yourself, most of it spent reading and fixing the instructions Brilo wrote for you. Buying a number adds about two minutes. Getting the agent genuinely good takes a few days of listening to real calls.
Yes, and you should. Talk to your agent from the dashboard first, which costs nothing and finds most problems. Only get a number once your agent handles your three most common questions properly.
No. Nobody reaches your agent until you attach a phone number and turn it on, so you can build and test in private for as long as you like. If you forward an existing business number, that is the moment real callers arrive, so test first.
Yes. Forward your existing number to Brilo, which takes minutes and changes nothing at your provider, or import the number into Brilo so your agent answers it directly and can text from it. See Use your existing number.
No. Your agent is saved as you go, so you can stop after any step and come back. The one thing to avoid is attaching your main business number before you have called the agent yourself.
It says so rather than inventing an answer, and you can tell it what to do next: take a message, offer a callback, or pass the call to a person. Deciding that in advance is one of the highest value things in your instructions.
Check the number is attached to an agent and that the agent is turned on, since a number with no agent rings and nothing answers. If both are set, see My agent is not answering.