Creating Your RingHound AI Agent

Go to app.ringhound.com/register and create an account with your email address and a password. No credit card is required at this stage.

Once logged in you'll land on the Try-Out Wizard (Step 1). Your account, session, and all tryout data persist across browser sessions — you can close the tab and return at any time without losing progress.

Enter your company website URL. RingHound will crawl the visible text on your pages to pre-populate your agent's knowledge base. This is optional but highly recommended — it saves significant manual typing in Step 3.

What happens during the crawl:

• A progress stream appears on screen, showing each page being scanned in real time.
• Text is extracted from headings, paragraphs, lists, and visible content across all linked pages it can reach.
• For pages that require JavaScript to render (single-page apps, interactive menus), a richer browser-based crawl can be authorized — a prompt will appear if this is available for your site.
• The raw extracted text is stored and pre-fills the Company Summary textarea in Step 3.

Controls available during crawl:

• Stop crawling — halts the crawl early and uses whatever text has been gathered so far.
• Skip — I'll enter manually — bypasses the crawl entirely. You'll type your company summary by hand in Step 3.

This screen collects your business identity and contact details. This information is used by the AI agent when speaking with callers and is the record of contact for your RingHound account.

Required fields:

• Company name — the name your AI agent will introduce itself as (e.g., "Thanks for calling Denver Home Services…"). Pre-filled from the crawl if detected.
• Street address — your physical or mailing address.
• City, State, ZIP — used for service-area matching and caller-facing address disclosure.
• Business phone — your main office or published number, in E.164 format (e.g., +13035550100). This is the number callers call you on normally.
• Contact / mobile phone — your personal mobile. This is where urgent SMS alerts are sent. Must be a number you control and can receive texts on.

SMS consent checkboxes (both required to proceed):

• I consent to receive real-time SMS notifications forwarding urgent leads — enables the agent to text you when a caller signals urgency.
• I consent to receive important account communications — enables billing receipts, service notices, and security alerts via SMS.

Caller-visibility toggles (set in Step 3, configurable later):

• Show address to callers — on by default. Turn off if you prefer callers not see your physical address.
• Show business phone to callers — on by default.
• Show mobile to callers — off by default. Enable only if you want the AI agent to share your mobile number on request.

This is the most important step. The four text areas below determine what your AI agent knows, how it behaves, and when it escalates to you. All fields autosave every two seconds — you won't lose work if you close the tab.

Company information panel (top of page):

A summary card shows your company name, address, and phone numbers from Step 2. Checkboxes let you toggle caller visibility for each field. Click the Edit link to return to Step 2 if anything needs correcting.

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Text area 1 — Company Summary

The most critical field. Write everything a knowledgeable employee would tell a caller about your business: services offered, pricing (ranges or "call for a quote"), service area (zip codes, cities, radius), hours of operation, licenses or certifications, what you do and don't do, and any special policies (emergency fees, weekend rates, deposit requirements).

If you ran the crawl in Step 1, the extracted text is pre-loaded here. You should edit it down to accurate, current information — remove stale copy, add anything the site missed.

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Text area 2 — Open Questions

After analyzing your crawled text (or your summary), RingHound's AI identifies gaps in your agent's knowledge — things callers are likely to ask that your content didn't answer. These appear as a list of questions.

Answer each question in plain English. You don't need to preserve the question format — just write the answer as a sentence or short paragraph. Examples: "We accept cash, check, Visa, and Mastercard. No Amex." or "Yes, we offer a 1-year labor warranty on all installations."

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Text area 3 — AI Behavior & Tone

Instructions for how your agent should present itself. A default is pre-filled — you can leave it as-is or customize it. Examples of things to specify:

• Personality — "Be warm and professional, not overly formal."
• Name — "Introduce yourself as 'Alex from ABC Plumbing.'"
• Topics to avoid — "Never discuss competitor pricing."
• Escalation preference — "If a caller is upset, always offer to have the owner call them back directly."
• Language — "Respond in Spanish if the caller writes in Spanish."

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Text area 4 — Urgent SMS Criteria

Defines when the agent sends you an immediate text alert. A default is pre-filled. Customize it to match your threshold for urgency. Examples:

• "Caller reports active water leak, flooding, or sewage backup."
• "Caller says they have no heat or hot water."
• "Caller is a property manager with multiple units affected."
• "Caller explicitly asks to speak to a person."

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Building your agent:

Once you've filled in the summary (at minimum 20 characters), click Build my agent!. RingHound's AI will:

• Parse your text into a structured knowledge base (services, service area, policies, etc.).
• Identify your industry automatically.
• Generate a voice opening message — the greeting callers hear when they call.
• Mark the agent as built and unlock Step 4.

After the initial build, the button changes to Update my Agent. This button only activates when you've changed something — it re-runs the full build with your updated content.

Step 4 is a full sandbox where you can interact with your agent exactly as a real caller would — both by text (SMS simulation) and by voice. Nothing here is billed or live. The same AI pipeline used in production handles your test messages.

Voice preview section:

• Opening message — the greeting your caller hears when they call (auto-generated from your summary in Step 3). Edit this textarea directly. Keep it natural and conversational — it's the first thing callers hear.
• Voice selection — choose from 7 preset voices. Click Play to synthesize and hear the opening message in the selected voice.
• Voice conversation — type a message and hear the agent reply as audio, simulating a caller speaking on the phone. Click the mic icon to speak directly if your browser supports it.

Available voices:

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Text / SMS preview section:

Simulates the SMS conversation a caller receives after leaving a voicemail. Type a message as if you were the customer and the agent will reply. Use this to test:

• Whether the agent knows your service area — "Do you service Boulder?"
• Whether pricing is communicated correctly — "How much for a water heater?"
• How it handles urgency — "My pipe is actively leaking right now."
• Tone and personality — does it sound like you?
• Edge cases — "Do you work on weekends?", "Can you come today?"

Use the Reset button to clear the conversation and start a fresh thread. Each browser session maintains its own separate chat log.

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Refining your agent:

If the agent gives a wrong or incomplete answer, click Refine my agent to return to Step 3. Update the relevant text area (usually the Company Summary or Open Questions) and click Update my Agent. Return to Step 4 and test again. Repeat until you're satisfied.

When you're happy with how your agent performs in the tryout, click Go to Dashboard and see your leads on Step 4. This button does two things at once:

• Promotes your tryout configuration to your live agent (your draft becomes the active policy).
• Redirects you to the subscription checkout flow if you don't already have an active plan.

Pricing:

RingHound offers flat monthly plans from free (15 min) to 1,000 min. Unused minutes roll over (capped at 2× your plan). The one-time setup fee is currently waived. See plans & pricing for full details — your rate is always shown before you confirm checkout.

This screen only appears if some required details are missing or unverified. Fields that you already filled in during the tryout wizard will be pre-populated.

Fields you may be asked to confirm or add:

• Company name, address, business phone — same fields as Step 2 of the wizard, shown here for final confirmation.
• Contact / mobile phone — if not yet verified, you'll enter it here and receive a verification code via SMS.
• SMS consent checkboxes — if not captured in the wizard, you'll accept them here before the number is provisioned.
• Preferred area code — a 3-digit area code (e.g., 303 for Denver). RingHound will provision a local inbound number in that area code for callers to reach. This is the number you'll forward missed calls to.
• Open question answers — if the AI detected knowledge gaps after reviewing your summary, a brief text area appears here for you to add those details before the number goes live.

Click Finish setup & create my number to finalize. A Twilio phone number is provisioned in the background — this takes a few seconds.

If you'd rather skip the knowledge-gap answers for now and get your number immediately, click Skip & create number. You can always refine the agent later from your dashboard.

This screen shows your newly provisioned RingHound inbound number (e.g., +1 (303) 555-0186). This is the number your callers will reach your AI agent on.

How to connect it — conditional call forwarding:

You don't ask callers to dial a new number. Instead, configure your existing business phone to forward calls to your RingHound number only when you don't pick up (after X rings, or when your line is busy). The page includes step-by-step carrier instructions with expandable sections for:

• AT&T — dial code provided
• Verizon — dial code provided
• T-Mobile — dial code provided

If you use a VoIP system (RingCentral, Google Voice, 8x8, etc.) the forwarding setup is done in your provider's admin dashboard — forward on "no answer" or "busy" to your RingHound number.

Click Go to dashboard when ready. Your agent is live.

Your dashboard shows every inbound lead captured by your agent, organized by recency and urgency. Here's what happens from this point on:

• Missed call → voicemail — when a caller hits your voicemail, your forwarding rule sends them to your RingHound number instead (or alongside).
• Agent reaches out by SMS — the agent texts the caller within seconds, introduces itself, and starts a natural conversation to capture their need, location, and availability.
• Lead saved to dashboard — every conversation thread appears in your leads list with name, phone, job description, and urgency flag.
• Urgent SMS alert — if the caller's message matches your urgent criteria, you receive an immediate text on your mobile with a summary and a link to the full thread.
• Optional: appointment scheduling — if you've connected a scheduling integration (Nylas or Square), the agent can check your availability and offer booking slots directly in the conversation.

Refining the live agent:

From your dashboard, navigate to Agent Settings. You can update any of the configuration fields from the wizard at any time. Clicking Update my Agent after edits rebuilds the live policy immediately — no downtime.

Field	What it controls
Company name	How the agent introduces your business in every caller interaction.
Business address	Shared with callers when they ask your location (if visibility is on).
Business phone	Your main published number — given to callers who ask for a callback.
Contact / mobile phone	Where urgent SMS alerts are delivered. Must be verified.
Caller visibility toggles	Per-field on/off for whether the agent discloses your address, business phone, and mobile to callers.

Field	What it controls
Voice selection	The ElevenLabs voice used for all synthesized audio (opening message + voice conversation). 7 presets available.
Voice opening message	The first thing callers hear when they reach the agent by phone. Auto-generated; fully editable. Max 2,000 characters.

Field	What it controls
Company summary	The core knowledge base — services, pricing, service area, hours, policies. Max 50,000 characters.
Open questions / answers	Fills gaps the AI identified in your summary. Answers are merged into the knowledge base on build. Max 50,000 characters.
AI behavior & tone	Custom instructions appended to every prompt — personality, name, topics to avoid, escalation style. Max 20,000 characters.
Urgent SMS criteria	Plain-English rules the AI evaluates to decide whether to send you an immediate alert. Max 20,000 characters.

Field	What it controls
Service area ZIP codes	Extracted from your summary automatically; used by the agent to confirm whether a caller is in range.
Service radius (miles)	Alternate to ZIP codes — the agent can use a radius from your address instead.
House calls enabled	Toggle on/off for businesses that do in-person visits vs. phone/remote-only.
Business hours	Optional structured hours schedule. When set, the agent can tell callers whether you're currently open.
Time zone	IANA time zone (e.g., America/Denver). Used for scheduling and hours interpretation.

Option	Description
None (default)	Agent captures the lead but does not offer booking. You follow up manually.
Nylas	Connects to your calendar (Google, Outlook, Exchange). Agent checks availability and books appointments in the SMS conversation.
Square	Connects to your Square calendar. Agent reads open slots and creates bookings via the Square API.

Field	What it controls
Monthly spending cap	A ceiling on your monthly bill in dollars. When reached, the agent pauses until the next billing cycle.
Cap alert threshold	An optional SMS/email alert when you reach a specified percentage of your cap (e.g., 80%).
Inbound phone number	Your provisioned Twilio number. Cannot be changed after provisioning — contact support if you need a different area code.

Write the summary as if training a new employee

Your agent knows only what you tell it. Imagine a smart new employee who has never met you — write the summary to answer every question they'd need to do the job.

Be specific about your service area

Listing exact ZIP codes or city names prevents the agent from guessing. "We serve ZIP codes 80202, 80203, 80204, and 80205" is far better than "Denver area."

Test aggressive callers, not just polite ones

In the SMS preview, send messages like "I want to speak to a real person NOW" or "Your prices are way too high." Make sure the agent stays professional and routes to you correctly.

Iterate after real calls

Check your leads dashboard after the first week. Look for threads where the agent said something wrong or unhelpful. Update the summary or behavior instructions and rebuild. Your agent improves with every revision.

Keep the opening message short and natural

A good opener is 1–2 sentences. "Hi, this is Alex at Denver Home Services — I'm the AI assistant here to help while the team is away. What can I help you with today?" is better than a 200-word paragraph.

Use the spending cap from day one

If you're just starting out, set a modest cap (e.g., $30/month) to avoid surprises. You can raise it at any time from account settings.

Never put sensitive info in the summary

Don't include bank account numbers, SSNs, passwords, or private customer data in any of the text areas. Everything you write in the summary becomes part of the agent's knowledge and is used in conversation.