Getting started

Set up in an afternoon. Setting up and practice calls are free; real calls start with a plan.

Ora is an AI caller and receptionist for your business. It answers your phone (incoming calls) and makes the sales calls you approve (outgoing calls). It only says what you’ve approved, and it always says it’s an AI.

The app has five places:

Home: your setup checklist until you’re set up, then the week at a glance.
Incoming calls: every call people make to you, and how calls are answered.
Outgoing calls: your call lists, the rules for sales calls, and the calls made.
Leads: the people your calls turned up, and your follow-up tasks.
Settings: what you set once: your business, your caller, your phone line and your plan.

After you sign up, Home shows six steps. Each takes a few minutes, and you can come back any time:

Teach it your business.
Name your caller and choose a voice.
Decide how incoming calls are answered.
Practise a call.
Choose a plan.
Connect your phone line.

Teach it your business

It reads your website, you add what the site doesn't say, and you approve every line.

Go to Settings, then See and edit what it knows.
Enter your website. Under Anything else to add, write what the site doesn’t say: specials, the areas you cover, what you never do, how you like to be described.
Press Read and draft. It takes about a minute.
Check every line: what you do, what you offer and don’t, prices, opening hours and common questions. Change anything, add or remove lines.
Press Approve and use on calls.

Nothing reaches a call until you approve it. Your caller only states approved facts. If it’s asked something they don’t cover, it says it isn’t sure and offers to have you follow up, so it never invents a price or a promise.

Extra information (in Settings) is for things that change often. It’s used on every call as fact, so only add what’s true.

Your caller and voice

Give your caller a name, choose how it sounds, or record your own voice.

Name: a first name it introduces itself with. Your greeting updates to match.
How it describes your business: used on sales calls, for example “It’s Aroha from Kōwhai Cafe, a family-run cafe in Ponsonby.”
Voice: press Preview to hear a voice, or Hear greeting to hear it say your own greeting, then Use this voice. Search by accent to find New Zealand voices.
Record your own voice (needs a plan): read the passage on screen for 30 to 60 seconds in a quiet room, or upload a recording. Only record your own voice, or someone who has agreed in writing.

Whatever its name or voice, your caller always says it’s an AI assistant, and says so again if asked.

Connect your phone line

Your caller uses your own Twilio account and number, so the line is yours and Twilio bills you directly.

Ora makes and takes calls through Twilio, a phone service for businesses. You keep the account and the number, and Twilio charges you for the line and the call time directly.

Sign in at console.twilio.com, or create an account.
Buy a number that can make voice calls (Phone Numbers, Buy a number). New Zealand numbers need Twilio’s address check first, which Twilio walks you through.
On the console’s home page, under Account Info, copy the Account SID and the Auth Token (press Show).
In Ora go to Settings, Your phone line, paste both and press Connect Twilio. They’re checked with Twilio, then stored encrypted.
Your numbers appear. Press Use this number on the one your caller should use.

Keep your existing number

Customers can keep ringing the number they know: forward it to your Ora number. On most mobiles, dial **21* then the number then # to forward every call, or **61* for calls you don’t answer. ##21# turns it off. For a landline or business phone system, ask your provider for call forwarding.

Incoming calls

When someone rings you, your caller answers, helps from your facts, and takes the details.

Go to Incoming calls. At the top, How calls are answered says it in one line. Press Change to set:

Answer incoming calls: on or off.
Outside opening hours: answer as normal, or only take messages (name, number, what it’s about).
Put callers through to: a number for when someone asks for a person or it’s urgent. Leave it empty and your caller takes a message instead.
Greeting: the first thing callers hear. It must say it’s an AI assistant.

Press Practise a call to play a caller yourself in the browser. Nothing is dialled and practice is free.

After every real call you get the transcript, a short summary, the caller as a lead with a follow-up task, and an email (set where it goes in Settings, Call summaries). Calls show up within a minute or two of hanging up.

Outgoing calls

Call lists of New Zealand businesses, approved by a person each day, called inside your hours.

Go to Outgoing calls. At the top, the rules every sales call follows: on or off, your calling hours (between 8am and 8pm, on your open days) and the most calls a day. Press Change to set them.

Make a call list

Press New call list. Say what you’re calling about and what you want from the call, for example “Find out if they’d like a free tasting, and if so take a name and email”.
Upload a CSV file with a Business column and a Phone column. Name, Email, Notes and Website columns are used too (a website helps Ora look the business up). Up to 2,000 rows.
Tick who to call, type your name and press Approve ticked for today. An approval lasts 24 hours.
Press Practice on any business to play them yourself first. Nothing is dialled.
Press Call the next one for one call, or Start calling to work through the list.

Ora looks them up first

When you approve a business, Ora looks it up before calling: its website, listings and reviews. Under each business, What Ora found shows what it does, things worth knowing, and where it might need help, in any area, not just the obvious one for its trade. On the call, Ora uses this to ask better questions and finds out what they really need, instead of assuming. If it can’t find them, the call still goes ahead with open questions. Press Research now to look a business up yourself.

The rules it always follows

Only New Zealand business numbers on your lists, never private numbers you haven’t listed, never premium-rate numbers.
It says who it is, who it’s calling for, and that it’s an AI, in its first reply.
At most two tries per number, four hours apart. If it reaches voicemail it hangs up without speaking.
Anyone who asks not to be called again goes on your do-not-call list straight away, and is never called again.

Reading a call

Every call comes with a summary, what they wanted, how warm they are and the next step.

Open any call on Incoming calls or Outgoing calls (Every outgoing call). You’ll see:

The transcript, word for word.
Next: the one thing to do next, written by your caller after the call.
What they wanted, how warm the lead is (hot, warm, cold or not a lead) and the mood of the call.
Key details: names, dates, amounts and objections worth keeping.
Anything it booked or saved during the call.

Leads and follow-ups

Calls turn into leads at the right stage, with a task when you owe someone a call back.

Go to Leads. Each lead has a stage: New, Contacted, Interested, Booked, Won or Lost. Calls only move a lead forward (or to Lost), never back. When someone asks for a call back or says yes, you get a task such as “Call Mere back”, due the next business day. Move leads and tick off tasks as you go. A second call from the same number updates the same lead.

Send calls to your CRM

HubSpot and Pipedrive connect directly; anything else through Zapier or Make.

Go to Settings, Plan and connections, Connections.

HubSpot: create a private app (Settings, Integrations, Private apps) with the contacts read and write scopes, and paste its token.
Pipedrive: paste your personal API token (Personal preferences, API).
Zapier, Make, Salesforce, a Google Sheet or JENA: use the webhook. Every call, lead and task is sent as it happens.

After each call with a lead, the person is found in your CRM by phone or email (or added) and a note goes on their record with the summary and the next step.

Plans and minutes

Monthly plans in NZ dollars, plus GST. Practice is free; minutes count real phone calls.

Starter: NZ$149 a month, 100 call minutes.
Growth: NZ$349 a month, 400 call minutes.
Team: NZ$790 a month, 1,000 call minutes shared by up to 3 businesses.

Minutes are the talk time on real phone calls, incoming and outgoing. Practice calls in the browser never count. You’re emailed at 80% and at 100%. At 100%, sales calls pause until your next period; incoming calls are still answered for a while so you don’t miss customers. Twilio bills you separately for your phone line. Change your plan, card or cancel under Plan and billing.

If something isn't working

The usual reasons, and what to check.

Nobody answers my number. Check you have an active plan, a number chosen in Settings, and Answer incoming calls switched on in Incoming calls.
Sales calls won’t start. Check it’s inside your calling hours on an open day, someone is approved for today, and you haven’t reached your daily limit or your minutes.
“Twilio didn’t accept those details.” Copy the Account SID and Auth Token again from the same Twilio account (the token changes if it’s reset).
“That number isn’t in your Twilio account.” Buy or move the number into the account you connected, then press check again.
A call isn’t showing yet. Calls appear a minute or two after hanging up.
It said something wrong. Fix the fact in Settings, See and edit what it knows. Calls use the new facts as soon as you approve them.

Still stuck? Email admin@deskwithnova.com or ring Veronica on 09 873 4723.

The Ora guide