Skip to main content
See the latest Voice AI updates in the changelog.
The Voice AI Attendant runs in one of two modes — Minimal or Advanced — set under Customize Agent behavior in your Attendant settings. The mode decides how much the agent does before it hands a caller to a technician, and it’s the single most common source of “the agent isn’t doing anything” confusion. This page explains what each mode does so you can pick the right one.

Minimal AI mode

Minimal AI mode is a pass-through. The Attendant answers, plays your greeting, and transfers the caller straight to a technician. It does not:
  • Ask the caller what they need or collect any issue details.
  • Run AI caller identification (name and company matching).
Because Minimal Mode collects nothing, partners often report symptoms that look like a broken agent but are working as configured:
  • “It just plays hold music.” The greeting plays and the call transfers — there’s no AI conversation because none is configured.
  • “Tickets are created with no details provided.” Nothing was collected before the transfer, so the ticket body is empty.
  • A thin or inaccurate handoff. The technician receives little context, so any AI-generated handoff summary has almost nothing to work from.
Minimal Mode is appropriate only when you want the Attendant to be a simple, fast router to a live person and you don’t want the AI to gather anything.

Advanced AI mode

Advanced AI mode is the full experience, and it’s what most partners want:
  • The agent speaks your AI greeting.
  • It collects the issue details from the caller before transferring.
  • It can run AI caller identification — asking for the caller’s name and company to map the call to the right contact. See Voice AI contact mapping for how identification works.
The result is a richer ticket and a more useful handoff to your technicians.

Which mode to choose

If callers hear only your greeting and tickets arrive empty, check whether the Attendant is set to Minimal Mode before troubleshooting anything else.
Contact mapping is configured independently for the Attendant and the Overflow agent — enabling AI caller identification on one does not enable it on the other. Advanced AI mode is required for the Attendant to run AI caller identification. See Voice AI contact mapping for the per-agent settings.

Next

Voice AI contact mapping

How Voice AI identifies callers and maps calls to the right contact and company.