The receptionist answers with a name and a voice that sounds like a person. You can pick another voice, change its name, and say how it should talk.
You need to be an admin of your team to change these.
Pick its voice
Click Receptionist in the sidebar, then the Settings tab.
Click Name and voice.
Under Voice, click the play button on a voice to hear it. Click Show all … voices under them to see every voice.
Click the voice you want.
Click Save.
Picking a voice gives the receptionist that voice's name, so a man's voice is never called Sophie. The page shows how it answers, like "Hi, Smith Builders, Katie speaking…".
Change its name
Click Use a different name.
Type Its name.
Click Save.
If the name doesn't suit the voice, like a woman's name with a man's voice, it says so. Click Call it with the voice's own name to switch back.
To change the business name it says when it picks up, see How to choose what your receptionist knows.
Say how it talks
Type a few words under Personality (optional), like "Warm and unhurried, never pushy", and click Save. This changes how it talks, not what it says: your call flow and what it knows decide that.
Fine-tune how it sounds
Under How it speaks, Advanced voice settings has:
Pace: slower or faster.
Steadiness: lower is livelier, higher is even but flatter.
Likeness: how closely it keeps to the voice's recording.
Style: plays up the voice's manner, but makes it a little slower to answer.
Speech model: Natural is the default and sounds most natural. Turbo and Flash answer quicker but sound flatter.
Questions fall at the end, Carry the tune on between sentences and Speaker boost.
To try them:
Open Advanced voice settings.
Change a setting.
Under Try a line, click Hear it.
These save as you change them. You can also change them during a test call by voice, and hear the difference from its next sentence. See How to make a test call.
When do callers hear the change?
Once you publish. Saving keeps your change, but calls carry on with the last version you published until you do. See How to put your receptionist live, pause it and publish changes.