What it does
NETICS speaks for your business in two places.
On your website. The same widget that chats also talks. A visitor presses the microphone and asks out loud, and NETICS answers in the voice you chose, from the same published knowledge it uses in chat. Realtime voice calls are logged in Live Calls as "Website visitor". Where realtime voice is not available, the widget falls back to the browser's own speech in Chrome or Edge.
On a phone number. From Growth, NETICS can answer a dedicated business number. Callers ask about prices, opening hours or an order, and NETICS answers, takes the order, or passes them to your team.
Both follow one rule: say what your approved knowledge supports, and offer a person when it does not.
Who it is for
Businesses whose customers would rather call than type: a clinic answering questions about hours and appointments, a restaurant taking phone orders during the dinner rush, a solar installer fielding enquiries from across the country, a real estate agency answering about listings after hours.
How it works in NETICS
- Set up your website agent in AI Studio and install the widget. Voice comes in the same two-line snippet; see AI customer agents.
- Open AI > Voice Settings. Pick a Speaking voice: the platform default is Onyinye, and voices are tagged by accent, including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, the UK and the US. Or use Record your own voice: read five short lines for at least 30 seconds and save it as your workspace's own voice.
- Adjust Speech speed, Tone expressiveness, Emotion level and Response delay, then press Test voice and save.
- Choose the agent's reply language in AI Studio > Persona: English, Nigerian Pidgin, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, or Match the customer.
- For a phone line, go to Platform > Integrations, open NETICS Phone and press Request a number. Add a note if you like, for example "Lagos number preferred". The NETICS team sets up the number and the card turns Live when it works.
- Watch calls in Conversations > Live Calls. Active calls show the caller, the intent, the language and a running timer.
Key capabilities
- Grounded spoken answers. Every spoken answer goes through the same answer path as chat: published knowledge, profile and catalogue, and no guessing.
- Orders by phone. NETICS answers menu, price and availability questions from your catalogue, takes an order and reads back the total. The payment link follows by email, or your team sends it on WhatsApp. Links are never read aloud.
- Speech that sounds local. Money is spoken as naira and kobo, dates as "the 14th of August", and answers stay short. Your product names and everyday Nigerian words such as naira and abeg are passed to the transcriber as hints.
- Handover by voice. If a caller asks for a person or NETICS is struggling, it says someone will call them back on that number and alerts your team.
- Live Calls controls. Mute AI stops NETICS answering. Transfer assigns the call to a teammate and tells them. Take over lets you speak to a website voice caller from your own browser.
- Call analysis. Every few minutes NETICS reads finished calls and fills in the intent, the sentiment (positive, neutral, negative or frustrated), a summary, the language and any revenue from paid orders in that conversation.
- Outcomes and transcripts. Set an outcome (Sale, No sale, Follow-up needed, Complaint, Wrong number), link the caller to a customer, add a note, download the transcript, or export calls to CSV. Results feed the Analytics page.
- Minutes that ask before charging. When the month's minutes run out, new calls wait until the owner allows them to continue from usage credits on the Billing page. A call already in progress is never cut off.
Plan availability
Website voice is on every plan and draws on the plan's voice minutes: 100 minutes for the whole 3-day free trial (no card needed), 1,500 a month on Starter (NGN 50,000 a month), 8,000 on Growth (NGN 200,000 a month) and 20,000 on Enterprise as standard. Minutes are shared across a client account's workspaces. Beyond the allowance, voice costs NGN 200 a minute inbound and NGN 300 a minute outbound from usage credits, and only after the owner allows it. On Pay as you go (no monthly fee, pay from credits) there is no minute allowance: every minute is 30 credits (NGN 450). One credit is NGN 15, and top-ups start at NGN 1,500. Prices exclude VAT.
A managed phone number with inbound answering is included from Growth. Pay as you go, Starter and the trial have no phone line. A number you already have keeps working if your plan changes. See pricing.
What it does not do yet
- Outbound AI calls and callbacks are not available yet. The Outbound calling settings in Voice Settings place no calls until NETICS turns outbound on for your line, so for now callbacks are made by your team.
- An existing number cannot be ported into NETICS; numbers are requested and set up by the NETICS team.
- Calls are transcribed, not recorded as audio.
- A browser cannot join a phone call, and NETICS cannot hang up a phone line for you.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a phone line to use voice?
No. Website voice works on every plan through the widget on your site, and it uses your plan's voice minutes. A dedicated phone number answered by NETICS is a Growth plan feature.
Can NETICS talk in Pidgin?
Choose Nigerian Pidgin in Persona and NETICS replies in Pidgin. It also recognises a caller asking for a person in Pidgin, for example "abeg call me", and hands them to your team. Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa apply to written replies.
What happens when the voice minutes run out?
New voice calls wait. A phone caller hears a short message asking them to send a message instead, and the website widget offers text chat, which keeps working. On the Billing page the owner can press Allow calls from credits to continue for the rest of the period, or wait for the next month's minutes. Nothing is charged unless the owner allows it.
Can I listen to call recordings?
No. Each call keeps a written transcript, an AI summary, the intent and the sentiment, but there is no audio recording to play back.
How do I get a phone number?
On Growth or Enterprise, open Integrations, choose NETICS Phone and press Request a number. The NETICS team sets up a number dedicated to your workspace and tells you when it is ready. There is no self-serve number purchase.