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Calling

Raquel Updated by Raquel

Turn.io's Calling feature helps you deliver a support experience that’s personal, timely, and seamlessly integrated with chat.

Before you start, an important call out to how Meta prices calls:

  • if your users call you, it's free
  • if you call your users, you're charged (rates depend on country)
Requirements

To qualify for Calling, Meta requires your business to:

  • have a messaging limit of at least 2000 business-initiated conversations in a rolling 24-hour period
  • for user-initiated calls, not being in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, or these three sanctioned regions in Ukraine (Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk)
  • for business-initiated calling (based on business number country code): not being in the U.S., Nigeria, Canada, Egypt, Vietnam and Turke

How to Enable Calling

Only users with Admin role can enable Calling:

Getting started is quick and simple:

  1. Go to Settings > Calls
  2. Toggle "Enable Calls"
  3. ✅ Done! All team members now have access to calling features.

For an operator to receive calls, they need to mark themselves as Available on the inbox:

On your first call, you'll get asked to allow Turn.io to access your microphone. This is required for calling to work:

Inbound Calling (Users Call You)

Users can now call your organization directly. Choose one of two methods:

Show Call buttons on WhatsApp

To always show a button that enables your users to call you:

  • Go to Settings > Calls
  • Enable "Show Call Buttons"
  • A permanent call button appears in your WhatsApp Business profile
Prompt users to call you

You can also send users a message that enables them to call you. This is great when you only want users to call you in specific instances:

  • Navigate to Content > Templates
  • Create a template and select "Voice call" in the button options

Outbound Calling (You Call Users)

To call users, WhatsApp requires you to request permission from the customer first (except when the call you, after which you can call them in the next 7 days).

To request their permission, you need to send them a special kind of message, that gives users these 3 options:

You can create this message by creating a new Template (Content > Templates > Add template) with this setting on:

Then, just send this template either manually on the Inbox or automatically via a Journey.

Template Examples
  1. Outbound Calling Permission Request
    Template Name: request_callback_permission
    Message Copy:Hi {{1}}, we’d love to call you to resolve your issue more quickly. Can we call you back?
  2. Outbound Call Follow-Up
    Template Name: follow_up_voice_call
    Message Copy: We tried calling you earlier to help with {{1}}. Would you like us to try again?
  3. Inbound Call Template
    Template Name: get_in_touch
    Message Copy: Need help? You can call us directly by tapping below.

Specifying who can take calls

If you have specific members of your team to take calls, you can specify who incoming calls ring for. If you don't specify anyone, the call will ring for everyone.

Also, you can specify how calls should ring:

Ring everyone: the call rings to everyone at the same time.

Round robin: the call rings for a few seconds one person at a time; if that person doesn't pick up, it moves onto the next available person.

Business Hours Scheduling

Control when your team can take or make calls:

  • Navigate to Settings > Business Hours

Set standard availability times

Call transcriptions

Turn.io can automatically transcribe calls for you. Simply head over to Settings > AI > Transcriptions and enable them:

Always get consent when transcribing others. We suggest you do so in a Journey before the call, so that users are informed, and there's an audit trail.

AI Answering

One of Turn.io's most exciting features, AI Answering enables you to use AI to answer calls for you. This enables you to deal with high volume, where AI handles routine conversations, and only routes conversations it can't handle to a human operator. Read more about how to set it up here: AI Answering.

Calling Rates

Detailed WhatsApp pricing for your region is available here, and rates are subject to change by Meta.

Please note that before making calls, you must pre-load credits into your account, as the service operates on a prepaid model where each call is immediately charged and deducted from your available balance. To do that, go to Settings > Message Billing.

Need Help?

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