Voice calls

Sometimes your hands and eyes are busy: you’re driving, cooking, or halfway inside a machine. A voice call lets you talk to an agent out loud instead of typing, and hear its answers back. It’s the same agent and the same conversation as the chat, just by voice.

Starting a call

Open the conversation you want to talk about and tap the phone button in its header (“Start a voice call”). Your browser asks for the microphone the first time; allow it, and the call connects. It works from the web app on a computer (a headset helps) and on a phone.

A call belongs to the conversation you start it in. The agent already knows everything said and done there, so you can just ask “what did that test say?” or “is the PSU big enough?” without explaining from scratch.

What a call is like

You’re talking to the agent. It answers in the first person, with its own name, voice and manner. The voice is only how it speaks; the agent is still the one reading, deciding and doing the work.
You hear progress. When you ask for something that takes a while, the agent says it’s on it and keeps you posted as it works. Ask “what’s it doing?” at any point and you’ll get a real answer.
“Show me” works. Ask to see something and the agent opens it in the focus pane beside the chat, so the screen backs up what you heard.
Nothing is lost. What you and the agent say lands in the conversation as a transcript, and any work the agent did is there as normal turns. Hang up and carry on by typing; it’s all still in the thread.

The controls

While a call is open, its controls sit above the message box:

Mute turns off your microphone; the call keeps going. Tap again to unmute. A small meter shows your microphone level so you can tell it’s hearing you.
Hang up ends the call. If the connection drops, Reconnect picks it back up; after a normal hang-up, Call again starts a new one.
Show transcript opens the running transcript under the call.
Can’t hear? If the agent goes silent on a phone, tap Tap to hear or Restart sound. Phones sometimes pause web audio until you touch the page.

You can browse to other chats while you talk. The call stays with its own conversation, and the call bar links back to it. You can have one call open at a time; starting a call somewhere else offers to end the first one and pick up there.

Quiet calls hang up on their own

A call costs money for every minute it’s open, so a call that stays quiet hangs up by itself after a couple of minutes. Near the end you’ll see “Hangs up in … if it stays quiet”; talking or unmuting resets it. Your admin (or the Lowkey team) can change the timeout and the longest a call may last.

Showing your screen on a call

On a computer, you can share your screen while you talk, so the agent can look at the settings page or error you’re asking about instead of you reading it out. See Marking up and sharing your screen.

Choosing the agent’s voice

Each agent has its own call voice and a short call personality (how it sounds on the phone: brief, warm, chatty). Ask the agent to change them, or ask your admin to set them in Settings → Agents.

If there’s no phone button

Calls need a voice service key on your box. If the phone button is missing, your admin (or the Lowkey team) hasn’t added one yet; it lives in Settings → Voice.