Call Intents — How Your Agent Handles Different Call Types

Every phone call has a purpose — the caller wants something. Intents are how you define those purposes and tell your agent what to do with each one.

What Intents Are

An intent is a named type of call your business receives, with natural language instructions for how to handle it. A dental office might define:

• Schedule Appointment — "When a caller wants to book, reschedule, or cancel an appointment. Ask for their preferred date and time. Check availability if we have a calendar connected."
• Insurance Question — "Caller asking about coverage or accepted providers. Check our accepted insurance list."
• Emergency — "Dental emergency that needs immediate attention. Transfer to clinical staff immediately."

Each intent has a name and a description. The description is where the real power is — it's the workflow instruction your agent follows.

How Intent Detection Works

Your agent classifies every call's primary intent automatically using the context of the conversation. It doesn't ask the caller to state their intent — it listens and figures it out naturally.

Intent confidence is tracked as a score. High-confidence detection means the agent is certain about what the caller needs. Lower confidence might mean the caller's request is ambiguous or spans multiple intents.

Why Intents Matter

• Agent behavior — the description tells the agent exactly how to handle each call type. "Ask for their preferred date" vs "transfer immediately" — these are instructions, not just labels.
• Escalation rules can trigger based on detected intent — "if intent is emergency, transfer immediately"
• Call analytics show intent distribution — how many calls are appointments vs billing vs general inquiry
• Call summaries show the detected intent for each call

Default Intents

When your agent is first configured, common intents are generated based on your business type. A restaurant gets reservation, takeout, hours, and catering intents. A medical practice gets appointment, insurance, new patient, and emergency. You can add, update, enable, disable, or delete intents at any time — through the dashboard or by asking Allison.

How Intents Work With Other Features

Intents don't need to duplicate what other features already handle:

• Policies define the rules (cancellation policy, refund policy). The intent description can reference them: "Check our cancellation policy before confirming."
• Knowledge documents provide detailed procedures. The intent points the agent in the right direction; search_knowledge fills in the details.
• Escalation rules define when and where to transfer. Intents classify what the caller wants; escalation rules decide when a human is needed.
• Calendar integrations handle the booking mechanics. The intent says "check availability before confirming"; the calendar tools do the actual checking.