A customer rings your support number. “Where is my order?” Your agent is polite, speaks their language and knows your returns policy. It cannot see your order system, so it takes a message, and someone rings back three hours later to read out a tracking status.
A tool lets an agent look something up or change something while the caller waits. It might be an order in your system, a payment due date, a booking, or a contact. Here is what the call sounds like once it is connected.
On the call
The customer gives their order number. The agent says it will check, and your system is asked. A moment later, the agent speaks from the answer: dispatched yesterday, expected on Thursday. The customer asks to change the address. The agent checks that the caller wants this, repeats the new address back, and only then uses the tool that updates it.
If your system is down, the call goes on. The tool times out inside the limit you set, and the agent carries on without that answer, which is why you should write what it says in that case.
Setting one up
- Describe it: the address to call, what it needs, and what the agent should know from the reply.
- Press Test. It sends a real request with the values you type, with the same time limit and retry as a call, and shows what the AI would be told.
- Attach it to the agents and teammates that need it. Status shows who has it and how it has run.
- Make a test call and listen to how the wait sounds.
You need an address your own system answers on, so someone who knows that system should set this up. For a developer it is a plain way to connect things. For everybody else, the Test button shows whether it works.
The description is an instruction
The description is what the AI reads to decide when to use the tool. Vague wording produces a tool that fires at the wrong time, or never. Say when, and say when not.
Weak: “Gets order information.”
Better: “Use when the caller asks about the status of an order and has given an order number. Do not use if they have not given one. Ask for it first.”
For anything that creates or changes a record, write “only after the caller confirms”. Without that, it may be called on a guess. An address changed because the agent assumed is a lot harder to undo than one question.
Things a caller can hear
A live call cannot wait long. Set a time limit between 2 and 15 seconds. A slow system is audible, and a tool that passes Test but answers slowly can still time out on a busy day, so ask whoever runs that system how it behaves at your peak.
A retry runs only when the tool cannot do a thing twice, so an update will not be sent a second time by mistake. Pick the fields from the reply that the agent should see. Fewer fields make for a cleaner answer, and secrets are removed.
What tools are not for
- Sending a WhatsApp message. An agent sends a caller things only through a workflow with the trigger Agent sends during a call. The agent offers it, the caller agrees, and the workflow sends it.
- Built-in actions. Saving a lead, booking and handing over are not tools you create. Add a tool links to where each is switched on.
- Facts that are the same for every caller. Those belong in a knowledge base.
- Taking secrets. Agents are told never to ask for an OTP, PIN, CVV, full card number or bank password, and never to pass one to a tool. If a step needs one, the agent tells the customer to do it themselves through a secure link or the official app. That rule lowers a risk, and it is no guarantee, so design your flow so that it never comes up.
Before you switch it on
A saved key is stored encrypted and is replaced with a mask wherever a request is shown. What your system does with the request, and who may reach it, stays with you. Give the tool only what it needs on your side too. An order lookup has no reason to be able to delete orders.
Status matters more than people expect. “Not attached” and “Test calls only” mean no real caller ever reaches it, and a Draft or paused agent uses it in test calls only. So a tool that worked perfectly in your test may do nothing on Monday if the agent was never set live. Removing a tool takes it off every agent and teammate that has it, from their next call, and deletes its saved key.
What it costs, and when to skip it
Tools have no price of their own, and they come with every plan. The call's minutes are billed as usual, including while the caller waits, which is another reason to keep the limit tight. If you are only reading a list of amounts and dates, the agent can have those from your contact fields, with no tool at all. If you want your systems to start calls or hear about results instead, look at the API and webhooks.