Order Profiles — How Allison Takes Orders Over the Phone

What order-taking does

When a caller wants to place an order, Allison builds the cart conversationally. She asks what they'd like, captures customizations, confirms the order, and gives the caller a verbal order number. Your team gets an email with the full order breakdown the moment the call ends.

Common use cases:

• A pizza shop taking takeout orders
• A deli running phone orders for sandwiches
• A custom-build retailer collecting specifications
• A service business with intake questions per booking

The flow works for anything callers buy, customize, or schedule by phone.

Prerequisites

Order-taking turns on automatically when all three are configured:

1. At least one catalog item with a price (Catalog page or the Products / Services / Menu wizard step)
2. At least one order profile (configured in Settings or the wizard's Call Handling step)
3. The "Take phone orders" toggle enabled in Call Handling

Until all three are present, Allison won't offer to take orders or advertise the capability.

What an order profile is

An order profile is the configuration unit that tells Allison how to handle a particular kind of order. Each profile owns:

• A name (e.g., Pickup, Delivery, Catering)
• A fulfillment policy (how long it takes — "ready in 20 minutes," "ready in 2 hours," or "varies, agent to follow up")
• A cancellation policy (allowed or not, and within what window — "cancellations allowed within 5 minutes of placement")
• Per-order questions that Allison asks once per order (e.g., "Will this be pickup or delivery?")

Single-profile businesses are the simplest case. Allison just uses the one profile every time. Multi-profile businesses with different order types (Pickup vs Catering, Standard vs Custom Build) get a brief profile-selection step at the start of an order.

When a caller confirms an order, the profile's policy values are frozen onto that specific order. Editing the profile later does NOT change the terms of past orders.

Per-item questions

Each catalog item can have its own questions that Allison asks when the caller adds it to the cart. Questions support four types:

• Text — open-ended ("Any special instructions?")
• Yes/No — boolean ("Should we toast it?")
• Select — pick from a list ("Small, Medium, or Large?")
• Number — quantity or count ("How many slices?")

Add questions on each catalog item in the Catalog editor. Allison asks them naturally during the conversation, one at a time.

Per-order questions

Per-order questions are configured on the order profile. Allison asks them once per order, regardless of how many items are in the cart.

Examples:

• "Will this be pickup or delivery?"
• "What name should we put this under?"
• "Is this for now or a specific time?"

Same four question types as per-item.

What the caller experiences

Allison handles the entire order flow conversationally. A typical exchange:

Caller: "I'd like to order a large pepperoni pizza." Allison: "Got it. Should we toast the crust extra crispy?" Caller: "Yes please." Allison: "Anything else?" Caller: "And a Caesar salad." Allison: "Great. Will this be for pickup or delivery?" Caller: "Pickup." Allison: "Perfect. Reading back: large pepperoni pizza with extra crispy crust, and a Caesar salad. Pickup. Total comes to $24.50. Want me to place the order?" Caller: "Yes." Allison: "All set. Your call order number is two-four-seven. Your order will be ready in about twenty minutes. Cancellations are allowed within five minutes of placement."

The verbal call order number is the caller-facing identifier — easy to remember, no spelling needed. The team sees the same number on the order in the dashboard and the email.

What the team experiences

The moment the call ends, the team gets an email containing:

• The call order number
• Caller name and phone number
• Profile (e.g., Pickup)
• Itemized cart with modifiers, per-item answers, and prices
• Subtotal and total
• Per-order answers (e.g., pickup vs delivery)
• Fulfillment timing ("Ready in 20 minutes" or "Ready by 2:45pm")
• Cancellation policy
• A link to the order in the dashboard

The orders inbox at /dashboard/orders shows every order with status filters (new, in progress, fulfilled, canceled), search, and profile filter. Status mutations are simple buttons. Team notes can be added per order.

For automation, the call.ended webhook payload includes the full order block, and a separate call_order.status_changed event fires when status flips between new, in_progress, fulfilled, and canceled.

Cancellation flow

If a caller calls back to cancel, Allison verifies it's the same caller (matching the original order's phone number), checks whether the order is still within the cancellation window, and processes the cancellation if allowed.

If the cancellation window has passed, Allison explains the situation honestly and offers to take a message for the team. She won't pretend to cancel something the policy doesn't allow.

The team sees canceled orders in the orders inbox under the canceled tab, with the cancellation timestamp and reason captured.

What's not yet supported

A few capabilities are deliberately deferred. They're either on a future roadmap or genuinely out of scope for V1:

• Payments — Allison takes the order, but doesn't collect payment over the phone. Your team handles payment at pickup, delivery, or via your existing checkout flow.
• Native POS integrations — orders don't auto-flow into Square, Toast, Clover, or other POS systems out of the box. The webhook payload contains everything you need to write your own sync (Zapier or a custom integration).
• Mid-order modification — if a caller wants to change an order after confirming, the V1 flow is cancel-then-reorder. A dedicated modify-existing-order tool may come later.

Configuration

• Set up order profiles at Settings → Order profiles or via the gear icon on /dashboard/orders
• Add per-item questions when creating or editing each catalog item
• Toggle order-taking on in the wizard's Call handling step or in Settings
• View and manage incoming orders at /dashboard/orders

You can also ask Allison to add or update order profiles by chatting with her in the dashboard.