Your First Call

Your First Call

This guide walks you through setting up everything you need to make your first AI-powered voice call with Ariel. By the end, you’ll have a working campaign that can call contacts automatically.

Overview

The flow is simple:

Agent (voice + script + TTS settings)
  -> Campaign (schedule + config)
    -> Add Contacts
      -> Trigger Call (automatic or manual)
        -> Monitor in /app/calls

Let’s go step by step.

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Step 1: Create a Voice Agent

Go to: Agents > New Agent

A Voice Agent defines how the AI speaks and what it says. Think of it as your AI employee’s personality and script.

Basic Information

Field	Description	Example
Name	A descriptive name for this agent	“Ana - Sales ES”
Language	The language the agent will speak	Spanish, English
Industry	Business context for the conversation	Technology, Real Estate
Tone	How the agent should sound	Professional, Friendly
Goal	The purpose of the call	Sales, Survey, Follow-up

Voice Selection

Pick a voice from the available list. Voices are filtered by the language you selected. Click the play button to preview how each voice sounds before choosing.

Tip: Female voices tend to have higher engagement rates in sales calls.

TTS Settings (Text-to-Speech)

These sliders fine-tune the voice quality:

Setting	Range	Recommended	What it does
Stability	0.0 - 1.0	0.30 - 0.40	Lower = more expressive and natural. Higher = more consistent but robotic
Similarity Boost	0.0 - 1.0	0.75 - 0.85	How closely the output matches the original voice. Higher = more faithful
Speed	0.5 - 2.0	0.9 - 1.1	Speaking speed. 1.0 is normal

For natural-sounding calls, we recommend: stability ~0.35, similarity ~0.80, speed 1.0.

Script

Write the conversation script your agent will follow. You can use dynamic variables that get replaced with actual contact data during the call:

• {{contact_name}} - The contact’s name
• {{contact_email}} - The contact’s email address
• {{contact_company}} - The contact’s company name

Example script structure:

[Greeting]
"Hello {{contact_name}}, I'm Ana from Donostia AI. How are you?"

[Wait for response]

[Present reason for calling]
"I'm calling because we've developed something interesting..."

[Qualification question]
"Tell me, does your team currently make sales calls manually?"

[Value proposition]
"Our solution allows you to schedule hundreds of calls per day..."

[If interested]
"Great, would you like to schedule a quick 15-minute demo?"

[Closing]
"Thank you for your time, {{contact_name}}. Have a great day!"

Click Create Agent when everything looks good.

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Step 2: Create Your Contacts

Go to: Contacts > New Contact

Add the people you want to call. Each contact needs at minimum:

Field	Required	Format	Example
Name	Yes	Free text	“John Smith”
Phone	Yes	International format with country code	+34638758098
Email	No	Valid email	john@company.com
Company	No	Free text	“Acme Corp”

Bulk Import

For large contact lists, use Import CSV. Your CSV should have columns: name, phone, email, company.

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Step 3: Create a Campaign

Go to: Campaigns > New Campaign

A campaign ties together your agent and contacts with scheduling rules.

Campaign Settings

Field	Description	Example
Name	Campaign identifier	“Q1 Sales Outreach”
Agent	Select the voice agent you created in Step 1	“Ana - Sales ES”
Call Window Start	Earliest time to make calls	09:00
Call Window End	Latest time to make calls	21:00
Max Calls Per Day	Daily limit to avoid overwhelming your team	50
Status	Set to “Active” to enable automatic calling	Active

Click Create Campaign.

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Step 4: Add Contacts to the Campaign

Go to: the campaign detail page (click on your campaign in the list)

Use the Add Contact button to assign contacts to this campaign. Only contacts added to the campaign will receive calls.

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Step 5: Make the Call

There are two ways to trigger calls:

Automatic (Recommended for Production)

When a campaign is Active and the current time is within the call window, the scheduler automatically dispatches calls. This happens via a cron job that hits the dispatch endpoint periodically.

You don’t need to do anything - calls go out automatically based on your schedule.

Manual (For Testing)

To trigger a single call immediately, use the API:

curl -X POST https://your-domain.com/api/calls/trigger \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_CRON_SECRET" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "contact_id": "CONTACT_ID",
    "campaign_id": "CAMPAIGN_ID"
  }'

The system automatically resolves the agent and phone number from the campaign, and the contact’s phone number from the contact record.

You can find the IDs in the URL when viewing a contact or campaign detail page.

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Step 6: Monitor Your Calls

Go to: Calls

Here you’ll see all call activity with real-time status updates:

Status	Meaning
Initiated	Call request sent to the system
Ringing	Phone is ringing
In Progress	Conversation is happening
Completed	Call finished successfully
Failed	Something went wrong
No Answer	Contact didn’t pick up

Call Detail

Click on any call to see:

• Full Transcript - Everything that was said during the call
• Sentiment Analysis - How the contact felt during the conversation
• Lead Score - AI-assessed likelihood of conversion
• Duration - How long the call lasted
• Cost - Call cost in minutes used

This data is populated automatically after the call ends via the ElevenLabs webhook.

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Tips for Best Results

1. Test with your own number first - Always make a test call to yourself before launching a campaign
2. Keep scripts conversational - The AI sounds best with natural, flowing language rather than formal scripts
3. Use lower stability (0.30-0.40) - This makes the voice sound more human and expressive
4. Respect call windows - Set appropriate hours for your contacts’ timezone
5. Start small - Begin with a few contacts and scale up after validating results
6. Review transcripts - Check the first few call transcripts to fine-tune your script

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Next Steps

• Best Practices - General tips for success
• FAQ - Common questions and answers