A voice call is a live conversation inside WhatsApp with the assistant that answers your chat. It is not a voice message: a recorded note counts against your plan's voice messages per day, while a call uses your plan's call minutes per month.
What has to be true
- Your plan includes voice calls and has minutes left this month.
- Meta has verified your business.
- The WhatsApp number is one your business owns, connected with the new-number button for the assistant alone.
Calling is switched on by the platform for eligible numbers. There is no setting for you to change, here or in Meta's tools. If all three hold and calls are still not answered, contact support.
Connection settings in WhatsApp Manager
The platform writes the calling settings to Meta itself, so there is nothing for you to enter. You can see and check them in WhatsApp Manager: under Phone numbers, open the number and its call settings. In the Developer settings section, Use Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) shows these values for a number that takes AI calls:
- SIP server: sip.yims.ai
- SIP port: 5061
- App ID: 1759794692127521. Meta does not allow this field to be edited once it is saved.
- Request URI user parameters: one private parameter that the platform registers for each number. It is how a call is recognised as coming from WhatsApp. Its value is a secret: support never reads it out or asks for it.
Leave these values as they are, and do not add, change or remove a Request URI user parameter: a call that arrives without the right one is refused. If the SIP section is empty, switched off or shows different values on a number that meets the three conditions, do not re-enter them by hand. Contact support so the platform can write the settings again.
What a call is like
The assistant speaks first: it says which business the caller has reached and greets by name a caller it knows from chat. It opens in the language the caller used before, or in your business's default language for a new caller, then follows the language the caller actually speaks. Answers are a few short sentences.
A call is mainly for questions: the assistant answers from the same business information as chat.
Booking requests on a call
A caller on WhatsApp can also ask for a new table, room, appointment or listed tour, where your business offers those. Because speech can be misheard, the assistant says the details back and waits for a yes before recording the request. A room, table or time that is already full is refused, as in chat. A listed tour has no live departure availability: check the departure and its charging terms before you confirm, because the request holds nothing at a supplier.
A booking made on a call is always a request you confirm, even if your chat bookings are confirmed automatically. It appears in that caller's WhatsApp chat with you, and you get Confirm, Decline and Chat buttons, marked as coming from a phone call. Confirm or Decline sends your decision to that chat; Chat opens a conversation with the customer without deciding the booking. The caller is told the request is recorded and your team will confirm on WhatsApp, never that it is booked.
After recording a request the assistant asks whether there is anything else, and says goodbye if not. It does not wait on the line for your decision, and never transfers the call to your phone.
Trip enquiries on a call
A caller can ask a travel agency for a tailor-made trip. The assistant gathers only what the caller says, such as destination, dates or flexibility, party size, name, interests and budget, repeats it and waits for a yes before saving the enquiry in the caller's WhatsApp chat. Missing details can stay open, and a later call fills in the same open enquiry without losing what was said before. You receive the saved facts, marked as coming from a phone call.
An enquiry confirms no itinerary, price, booking or supplier hold, and does not pause the customer chat for a person. Accepting a proposal stays in chat.
Status and cancellations on a later call
On a later call the assistant reads the current status of the caller's bookings or open trip enquiry from their WhatsApp chat, not from what was said on an earlier call. The caller can also ask to cancel an existing table booking, appointment or stay: you review and confirm the cancellation in WhatsApp, and a confirmed booking is not cancelled just because it was asked.
Cancelling a tour, changing an existing booking and placing orders are not done on a call. Those are done in chat.
Long answers and reaching a person
When the full answer is long, the assistant offers to send the details to the caller's WhatsApp chat. WhatsApp allows that only if the caller wrote to you in the last 24 hours.
When a caller needs a person, the request goes to their WhatsApp chat with you: the chat is marked as needing a person, a note of the call is added, and you are alerted as for any handoff. The caller is told a team member will write to them. A live call is never transferred to a phone, and no call back is promised.
Calling your own number as the team
On Pro, owners and staff can call the business number too, and are answered as the team, not as a customer. You are recognised by the WhatsApp number you call from: it must be connected as an owner account of the business on WhatsApp, admin or staff, and still switched on. Owner access on another channel only, such as Telegram or LINE, is not recognised by a call.
You can ask by voice what you would ask in the owner chat, depending on what your business uses:
- Bookings, appointments, stays and facility reservations: who is coming today or on a date, pending requests, arrivals and departures.
- The catalog and its prices, including prices hidden from customers.
- Settings: booking mode and capacity, reminder timing, opening hours, currency, address.
- Plan and usage this period, customer reviews, your own notes, and uploaded manuals and procedures.
- Suppliers, orders, quotes and trips where you use them, and how the product works.
The call belongs to the same conversation as your owner chat on WhatsApp: what you said and the answers are kept there as a phone-call note, so a later message can refer to it. Team calls use the same monthly minutes as customer calls.
A call is for looking things up. Nothing is created, changed, confirmed or cancelled by voice: send the change as a message in the chat. Below Pro, or when the month's minutes are used up, a team member's call is declined before it connects and uses no minutes, and you may receive a WhatsApp message asking you to write in the chat instead.
Length, minutes and limits
A call ends when the caller hangs up or says goodbye, after about half a minute of silence, or at the maximum length, normally ten minutes. Each call is rounded up to whole minutes. A call in progress is not cut off when the minutes run out, but further calls are not answered until the next period or an upgrade.
Calls to an ordinary landline or mobile number are not available. If the assistant mispronounces your business name, support can record how it is said.
Calls from your own team are answered on Pro. Customer calls are included on every paid plan.