Overview

Integrating Twilio with CommBox enables organizations to deliver omnichannel customer service through voice-bot communication. Customers speak to the bot, which transcribes the conversation into text for the agent. The agent's response is then converted back into speech and relayed to the customer by the bot. This guide describes the onboarding process and configuration of the voice bot.

Terminology

Speech To Text (STT) - Algorithm to translate voice into text
Text To Speech (TTS) - Algorithm to translate text into voice
TwilML - Twilio Markup Language
STT Error message - The text displayed to the agent when the system can’t accurately convert speech to text due to audio or processing issues.

Automation Requirements

In general, every flow can work with the voice bot. However, we advise the following considerations that may improve the customer’s experience:

• Voice-bot flows should use simple and straightforward text.
• The flow should avoid visual cues like emojis, charts, graphs, etc.
• Avoid calls to action such as 'click here' or 'press this button to continue’.
• For clarity, it is better to use a few short sentences instead of one long one.

Step I: Obtaining a Twilio Number

1. Navigate to the Twilio console and log in to your account or create a new one.

2. At the sidebar, navigate to Phone Numbers > Manage > Active numbers and click Buy a number at the top corner of the screen.
   

3. On the sidebar menu, select TwiML apps and click on Create new TwiML app.

4. At the new screen, enter the following:
   
   a. Enter a name for the App.
   b. For the Request URL, enter https://api.commbox.io/voice/twilio/newcall
   c. Click Create.

5. Navigate back to Phone Numbers > Manage > Active numbers and click on the number you just purchased.

6. Select the Configure tab.
   
   a. For Configure with, enter TwiML app
   b. For TwiML App, select the app’s name you just created. (BumpYard Dev Test in the example above)
   c. Click Save configuration.

Step II: Obtaining a Twilio Authentication Token

1. At the Twilio platform, from any screen, click the Admin tab at the top of the page and then select Account management.

2. On the sidebar menu, select Keys & Credentials > API keys & Tokens. The authentication token (Auth token) is in the Live credentials section.

3. Click on the view icon and copy the revealed Auth token.

Step III: CommBox Configuration

The Voice module operates with either Amazon Connect or Twilio, each with its own set of settings. The channel settings for Twilio are only found in the Twilio section. All other sections are only geared toward AWS Connect.

1. Open a new tab in your browser for the CommBox platform, navigate to Settings > Voice and click the +Voice Channel at the top.
   

2. At the new window, enter the following:
   
   a. Enter the name of the channel.
   b. Enter the phone number you purchased from Twilio.
   c. Add Subchannels (optional).
   d. Select Team ownership (optional).
   e. For the Provider, select Twilio.
   f. Once you select a provider, a new field will appear. At the Provider Token, paste the Auth token you got from Twilio.
   g. Click Create Channel.

3. Configure the new channel as needed. See the Twilio section below for details.
   

Channel Settings

The voice channel settings include settings for Amazon Connect and Twilio. All Twilio’s settings are in the Twilio section—ignore all others. Enter the settings listed below and click Save at the bottom of the page.

a) New conversation script - Select the desired flow (bot) that will run with Twilio. Clicking on the studio icon will open the actual flow.

b) TTS Model - Select the voice for the bot. The name reflects the Language (en), country (US), and model name.

c) Twilio Speech Model - Select the speech-to-text model for the bot.

d) STT Error Message - Enter the text that will indicate to the agent that the system did not understand the customer.

e) Caller wait timeout (seconds) - Enter the number of seconds of silence that will indicate to the bot that the customer finished talking.