Help Center

Callbacks & voicemail

There's no voicemail box in Talkybara, and that's deliberate. What replaces it is a callback request — a structured record with a confirmed number on it, not an audio file to listen through.

Why there's no voicemail

Voicemail exists because nobody answered. Your agent answers every call, so the thing voicemail was for — capturing the caller when there's no human available — is already handled, and handled better: your agent actually talks to them, works out what they need, books them in if it can, and writes it all down.

What's left is the case where the caller genuinely needs a person to ring them back. That's a callback request.

Turning callbacks on

AI Agent → Call Handling → Caller Information Collection → Confirm a callback number.

That one toggle is what enables callback requests. With it off, your agent has no way to record one and won't offer it.

What the caller experiences

Your agent offers a callback when the caller:

doesn't want to book an appointment right now,
can't stay on the phone, or
asks outright to be called back.

Because the number is already known from caller ID, this is a confirmation, not an interrogation. The agent states it — "I have your number as (951) 713-8636, is that the best one to reach you?" — and the caller either confirms it or gives a different one. It won't ask "what's your number?" out of nowhere when it already has one to read back, and it won't repeat the digits again afterwards.

The only time it asks openly is when caller ID is genuinely unavailable — a withheld or blocked number — because then there's nothing to confirm against.

What you get

The call is logged with outcome Callback Requested, with the confirmed number on it, the full transcript, and a summary of what they wanted.

It shows in your call log and on your dashboard, and is one of the outcomes counted separately in analytics.
You get a transcript email by default — Callback Requested is one of the three outcomes that email on without you changing anything. See Email notifications overview.
On the Scale plan it can fire a webhook into whatever you use to manage follow-ups.

Nothing rings anyone automatically

A callback request is a record that somebody wants a call, not an outbound call your agent places. Ringing them back is your job — which is why it's worth having those transcript emails or a webhook pointed somewhere you'll actually see them.

Callbacks vs. transfers

A transfer connects the caller to a person now. A callback captures them for later. Your agent prefers a transfer when one of your scenarios clearly fits, and falls back to offering a callback when the caller needs a person but nothing matches — or when you have no transfer destinations set up at all.

Having both configured is the useful combination: urgent and well-defined things reach someone immediately, everything else lands in your call log with a confirmed number attached.

If your agent can't be reached at all

In the rare case the service answering your calls is unreachable, callers hear a short spoken fallback rather than dead air, and we're alerted. No call record, transcript or outcome is created for those — which is why you'll never see a "voicemail" entry in your call log. If you suspect calls went missing, contact support with a rough time and we can look.