In this article, you will learn how to set up Genius Answering to handle incoming calls and book jobs for your business. 

Genius Answering is an AI-powered answering service capable of picking up incoming calls, speaking with your customers about the services they need, and even adding jobs to your schedule. Genius Answering is a powerful AI tool built right into Workiz, eliminating the need for manual training. 

After activating Genius Answering, "Jessica" — your business's AI agent — will automatically know a lot about your business based on your Workiz account. You can further configure your AI agent to only offer certain services, ask specific questions, and even limit the sort of actions she can take during calls, including: 

• Creating a new job
• Taking a message
• Rescheduling an existing job (verified clients only)
• Adding a note to an existing job (verified clients only)

Activating Genius Answering

Customizing your Genius Answering settings

Once you’ve enabled Genius Answering, you’ll get access to a new settings page where you can tailor how your AI agent handles incoming calls for your business. From customizing the services you offer to managing client inquiries and enabling key actions like job creation and rescheduling, you’re in complete control.

With these tools, your AI Agent works as an extension of your team, ensuring a seamless and professional experience for your clients while streamlining your workflow.

1. From the sidebar menu, select Genius AI
2. Select the Genius Answering tab
3. Select Settings to customize your AI agent

Routing calls to Genius Answering before voicemail

First, decide whether you want to reduce missed calls by routing them to Genius Answering before voicemail. When enabled, Workiz will automatically insert a Genius Answering step before your voicemail step in your call flows.

How often your AI agent answers a call and prevents it from going to voicemail depends on your Genius Answering plan limits — both in terms of simultaneous calls and total monthly conversations. If those limits are exceeded, the call will skip Genius Answering and follow the next step in your call flow. In this case, the call will go to voicemail. 

Business & services

You will need to establish some basics for your AI agent to use, like your business name, industry, and the services you want your AI agent to offer when communicating with clients.

1. Select the Business & services tab
2. Business name: Enter the business name that you want your AI agent to use 
3. Business industry: Select the industry that your business falls under
4. Available services: Select the job types that you want your AI agent to make available to clients during calls
5. Service areas: Decide if you want to allow your AI agent to book jobs outside of your service area and check the box accordingly

Voice & tone

Next, customize how your AI agent communicates. From the languages it speaks and the greeting it uses, to its voice and personality — you can manage all of these settings here. 

1. Select the Voice & tone tab
2. Language options: Your AI agent is designed to communicate in English by default. You can also allow your AI agent to communicate in Spanish by checking the box for Spanish support

3. Greeting: Customize how your AI agent introduces itself when answering calls

   The first part of your greeting is automatically handled by your Genius Answering based on the caller and the time of the day. That cannot be edited.

4. Voice: The default voice for your AI agent is “Jessica,” but you can easily switch to a different voice to better match your brand or preference.

Messaging

Genius Answering is also capable of having a conversation with your clients over text and email. You can configure your AI agent to only reply to messages sent via text and/or email, from new and/or existing clients, and even set a specific amount of time for your team to respond before your AI agent steps in.

To learn more about setting up messaging for Genius Answering, please see this article.

Call handling & notifications

Here, you’ll define exactly how your AI agent handles incoming calls and communicates with your team.

1. Select the Call handling & notifications tab
2. Actions for all clients: Check the box for the actions you want your AI agent to be able to take for all incoming calls
   1. Create a new job
   2. Take a message
   3. Send SMS confirmation when an action is performed

3. Actions for verified clients: Check the box for the actions you want your AI agent to be able to take for calls from verified clients with existing jobs

   1. Reschedule an existing job
   2. Add a note to an existing job

   Your AI agent identifies verified clients by matching the caller’s phone number with the one associated with an existing job in your account.

4. Call summary email: Choose the users who should receive an automated email following an AI-handled call. Calls will include information such as the phone number, call duration, and AI-generated summary of the conversation. 
5. If a client wants to speak to a human: Decide what should happen when a client asks for a human representative
   1. Don't transfer: Follow up with a prewritten response explaining why your team is unavailable
   2. Transfer to a human: Send the call to one of your team members

Scheduling & appointments

Genius Answering also gives you control over how your AI agent handles scheduling. You can review appointment availability, choose how appointment times are confirmed with clients, and decide whether new appointments should be saved as jobs or leads.

1. Select the Scheduling & appointments tab
2. Appointment availability: Review the availability settings you have for Genius Answering. These are automatically pulled from your online booking settings. To modify, please update your online booking settings.

3. Appointment time preference: Choose how you want your AI agent to confirm the appointment time with your client (set time and date or arrival window).

   Arrival windows are determined by your booking slot duration. For example, if your booking slot duration is set to 3 hours, your arrival window will be set to 3 hours.

4. Appointment type preference: Choose whether new appointments should be saved as jobs or leads

Pricing

You can also manage how your AI agent talks about pricing. You can define how it responds to questions about on-site estimates and set clear pricing ranges for your most common services. This helps your AI agent provide accurate, upfront information to clients.

1. Select the Pricing tab
2. Basic fee configuration: Decide how your AI agent should respond when asked about on-site estimates (e.g., free or minimum fee)
3. Advanced pricing configuration: Give your AI agent specific pricing it can offer for your most common services. Choose between a set price, price range, or starting price. 

If advanced pricing is not set up for one of your available services, your AI agent will default to your basic fee configuration.

Customization

Last, you can control what your AI agent says and asks so it can handle more of the intake process for you. Whether it’s gathering job details or answering common questions, these settings help ensure your AI is collecting the right info and reducing the workload for your team.

1. Select the Customization tab

2. Custom questions: Add any additional questions you want your AI agent to ask when booking new jobs or leads. After entering your question, map the question to an existing custom field.

   By default, your AI agent will always ask for your client’s name, phone number, address, and service date. You can use this setting to ensure your AI agent gathers all the information your team needs to provide a service. Please ensure that your custom questions apply to all job types.

3. Custom answers: Set up pre-written replies to common customer questions

   Your questions should be complete, but don’t need to match how a customer might phrase them. Answers may be automatically reworded to sound more natural.

Manually inserting Genius Answering into your call flows

Workiz makes it easy to add Genius Answering before voicemail in all of your call flows with just one click. This option automatically inserts Genius Answering as the step before voicemail, helping ensure more calls are answered by your AI agent. If you prefer a more customized setup, you can manually add Genius Answering to specific spots in your call flows.

To learn more about manually inserting Genius Answering into your call flows, please see this article. 

Reviewing your Genius Answering reporting

With Genius Answering, you'll get access to a dedicated report where you can monitor its impact on your business. 

To learn more about reviewing this report, please see this article.