Overview of Alivo's Phone System

Your phone system is how customers reach you, and how your team talks to them back. Alivo's Phone System puts your business number, call routing, team dialer, recordings, and AI answering in one place, so you are not juggling a separate phone vendor and a separate answering service. This guide walks through each piece, what it does, and how a roofing or home-services team would actually use it. It does not cover setup steps. Those live in the individual feature guides.

The Phone System at a Glance

Think of the Phone System as the hub for everything call-related inside Alivo. Your business phone numbers live here. Each number points to a call flow that decides what happens when someone dials in. Your team makes and takes calls through the browser dialer. Recordings and transcripts land on the contact's conversation history, tied to the lead source so you can see which marketing actually drives calls.

You might hear the term "VoIP," which just means phone calls run over the internet instead of old copper phone lines. In practice, that means your team can answer from a laptop in the office, a computer at home, or anywhere with a browser. No desk phones required.

Phone Numbers

Every inbound call starts with a phone number. In Alivo you can get new local numbers and assign each one to a specific call flow. You can also label numbers by lead source (for example, your Google listing number vs. your yard-sign number) so reporting shows you where calls really come from.

Each number needs a call flow attached. A number without one will not route calls correctly, so this is one of the first things to set up when you add a new line.

Call Flows

A call flow is the path an inbound call follows from the moment someone dials your number to the moment it ends. Alivo gives you a visual builder where you drag and connect steps, the same way you might sketch a flowchart on a whiteboard. You do not need an engineer to change it.

Most roofing companies build one flow for business hours and another feel for after hours, or use a single flow with a Business Hours step that branches automatically based on your company's schedule.

Steps You Can Add to a Call Flow

Greeting. Plays a short message when the call connects. Use it to welcome callers or set expectations before routing continues.
Business Hours. Sends callers down an "open" path or a "closed" path depending on your schedule. This is how you ring the team during the day and send calls to AI or voicemail at night without changing anything manually.
Phone Menu. The "press 1 for sales, press 2 for service" menu, also called IVR (interactive voice response). Callers press a number on their keypad and get routed to the right place.
Ring Group. Rings your team. You choose who is in the group and whether everyone rings at once or one person at a time.
AI Agent. Hands the live call to Lilly, Alivo's phone agent. She can qualify the lead, answer common questions, book an inspection, and warm-transfer to a human when the call needs one.
Voicemail. Plays a greeting and records a message when no one can pick up.
Forward Call. Sends the call to an outside number, like a rep's cell phone, with a fallback if nobody answers there either.
Smart Routing. Routes the call based on location or intent. It can match by the caller's area code, ask for a zip code, or ask a custom question and route based on the answer.

Rule of thumb: Start simple. A greeting, a business-hours branch, a ring group for open hours, and an AI agent or voicemail for closed hours covers most roofing companies. You can add phone menus and smart routing as you grow.

Ring Groups

A ring group is the list of people who should answer when a call comes in. You might have one group for sales, another for service, or a storm-response group that rings everyone at once during a busy stretch.

Ring all. Every member's phone rings at the same time. First person to pick up gets the call. Good for storm surges or small teams where anyone can help.
One at a time. Rings members in priority order. If the first person does not answer within the timeout, it moves to the next. Good when you have a clear escalation order.
Browser or cell. Members can be rung in the browser dialer, on an outside phone number, or both. You can also set a member to browser-only so calls do not forward to their cell when they are marked offline.

Ring groups respect each team member's availability status. If someone is set to Do Not Disturb or Offline, the system skips them instead of ringing a phone that nobody is watching.

The Dialer

The Dialer is Alivo's browser-based phone. Your team makes and takes calls from any computer with a microphone, no desk phone and no extra hardware. It shows up as a floating panel across the app and has its own page under Phone System settings.

Outbound calling. Dial any number from the keypad or click a phone number on a contact record to call them with one click.
Inbound calling. When a ring group includes you, incoming calls pop up in the browser. You can also get push notifications if the tab is in the background.
Caller ID. Choose which company number shows on outbound calls, so the customer sees your business line, not a personal cell.
Recents and team status. See your recent calls and check which teammates are Available, Busy, or Offline before you try to transfer or hand off a lead.
Extensions. Each user gets a short extension number for internal dialing between team members.

For a roofing crew, the dialer means your office manager, sales reps, and owners can all share the same business lines without passing around one cell phone. Every call is logged to the right contact automatically.

Call Recording and Transcription

Alivo can record inbound calls that go through your call flows and outbound calls placed from the dialer or the AI agent. Recordings attach to the contact's conversation timeline, so you can play them back, download them, or skim the transcript instead of relistening to a 15-minute call.

Disclosure. You can play a short message to callers before recording starts, so everyone knows the call is being recorded.
Full-call capture. Inbound recordings can capture the entire call journey, including transfers and AI handoffs, as one continuous recording.
Transcripts and summaries. AI-handled calls get a full transcript and a short summary. Voicemails can be transcribed too, so you can read a message instead of listening to it in the truck.
Call outcomes. After a call ends, Alivo classifies what happened (booked, transferred, voicemail, spam, and others) so you can spot trends without opening every recording.

Good to know: Recording is controlled at the company level and can be turned on or off per call flow. If you turn on recording, set up your disclosure message at the same time.

AI on Calls

Alivo's phone agent, Lilly, can answer calls around the clock. Drop an AI Agent step anywhere in a call flow, and Lilly picks up where your team leaves off: after hours, during lunch, when every rep is on a roof, or during a storm when call volume spikes past what your office can handle.

What Lilly Can Do on a Live Call

Qualify the lead. Ask the questions your team would ask (address, type of work, timeline) and capture the answers on the contact record.
Book an inspection. Check your calendar and schedule an appointment while the caller is still on the line.
Warm transfer. When a human needs to take over, Lilly briefs your rep on who is calling and what they need before connecting the call. Your rep picks up already knowing the situation instead of starting from scratch.
Take a message. If a transfer fails or no one is available, Lilly stays on the line and collects the details so the lead does not slip away.

Call forwarding rules let you set where Lilly sends transfers (sales vs. service vs. a specific rep) and whether transfers are always available or only during business hours.

Smart Routing

If you cover more than one territory, Smart Routing sends each caller to the right rep or ring group without making your customer repeat themselves three times.

Routing Mode	How It Works	When to Use It
Area code	Matches the caller's phone number prefix to a territory	Multi-city companies where area codes map cleanly to service areas
Zip code	Asks the caller for their zip code and routes based on the answer	When one area code covers multiple territories
Custom question	Asks a question you write (city name, neighborhood, job type) and routes on the answer	When you need flexibility beyond zip or area code

Each mode has a fallback path if the system cannot match the caller, so calls never just die in silence.

How It All Fits Your Business

Here is how these pieces typically work together for a roofing company at different stages.

Day-to-Day Operations

During business hours, a caller hits your main number, hears a short greeting, and lands in a sales ring group. Whoever is available in the browser dialer picks up. The call is recorded and logged to the contact. If nobody answers, the call falls through to voicemail or Lilly to capture the lead before they call the next roofer on Google.

After Hours and Weekends

The same number uses your Business Hours step to branch to Lilly at night. She qualifies the caller, books an inspection for the next available slot, or warm-transfers to the on-call rep if it is urgent. You wake up to booked appointments instead of a pile of voicemails.

Storm Surges

When call volume jumps, ring-all groups and AI answering let you handle far more simultaneous calls than a small office staff could alone. Lilly takes overflow while your team works the highest-priority warm transfers. Every call still gets logged and attributed to its source.

Multi-Territory Teams

Smart Routing sends Dallas callers to your Dallas ring group and Fort Worth callers to Fort Worth, whether they dialed a shared main line or a market-specific number. Each rep sees only the calls that belong to their area.

Common Questions

Do I need desk phones?

No. The Dialer runs in your browser. As long as your computer has a microphone and a decent internet connection, you can make and take business calls. Some team members also forward to their cell through ring groups or call-forwarding steps if they are often in the field.

Can I keep my existing phone number?

Alivo lets you get new local numbers inside the platform. If you need to bring an existing number over from another carrier, talk to the Alivo support team about your options.

Is the AI agent a separate product from the phone system?

No. Lilly is built into the same Phone System. You add her as a step in your call flow, the same way you would add a ring group or a voicemail step. One platform, one contact record, one conversation history.

Where do I go to set all of this up?

Everything lives under Settings, then Phone System. That is where you manage numbers, call flows, ring groups, recording, and the dialer. Each feature also has its own setup guide in this knowledge base when you are ready to configure it.

The Phone System is not just a phone line. It is how calls get answered, routed, recorded, and turned into booked jobs. Start with one number and a simple call flow, then layer in ring groups, smart routing, and AI answering as your team and territories grow.

Still have a question this didn't answer? Reach out to our support team support@alivo.ai and we'll be glad to help.