Step-by-Step Guide to Creating an AI Voice Assistant With Telnyx

Have you ever wanted to build an AI voice assistant to solve a problem in your business, but thought it was too technical or out of reach? With Telnyx Voice AI Agents, that’s no longer the case. Our no-code platform makes it simple to design, test, and launch a lifelike assistant that can handle phone calls just like a real person, no coding required.

The possibilities are almost endless. Businesses are already using Voice AI Agents to schedule appointments, qualify leads, confirm travel plans, track orders, handle billing questions, and more. Whether you’re in healthcare, retail, finance, hospitality, or utilities, if your team spends time on the phone, there’s a way to make that work faster, easier, and more cost-effective with AI.

And across all these use cases, the benefits are the same: quicker responses, lower costs, and round-the-clock availability. Because Telnyx owns the full communications stack including the network, phone numbers, and AI compute, you also get crystal-clear quality, ultra-low latency, and global scalability.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through seven simple steps to set up your own Voice AI Agent from scratch.

1. Create Your Telnyx account

Start by creating a Telnyx account. You can sign up with your company email by entering your first and last name and a password, or you can use your Google or Microsoft account for a quicker setup. Before finishing, you’ll need to agree to Telnyx’s Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy. You can also choose to receive marketing emails if you’d like to stay updated on the latest Voice AI features.

2. Create a new assistant

In the Mission Control Portal, open the AI, Storage and Compute drop-down menu and select AI Assistants. From there, select Create New Assistant. A pop-up will appear where you can either start with a blank template or choose from ready-made options like a Customer Support Specialist, Lead Qualification Specialist, or Appointment Scheduler. Each template can be customized later to fit your needs.

3. Configure your AI assistant’s agent

If you selected a blank template, configure the Agent section as follows:

• Name – Give your assistant a clear, descriptive name. A naming convention can be helpful if you plan to connect multiple assistants using Telnyx’s multi-agent handoff feature.

• Model – Telnyx offers models from providers like Deepseek, Fixie.ai, Google, Mistral, Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI. A good starting point is Qwen / Qwen3-235B-A22B, which works well for real-time voice and doesn’t require an API key. You can also set a fallback model so your assistant keeps running if the primary model goes down. If you choose a token-based model (such as from OpenAI), you’ll need to provide your API key.

• Instructions – Write out what you want the assistant to do. This can include its purpose, persona, tone of voice, and the steps it should follow in a conversation. You can draft these yourself or use a tool like ChatGPT to help create them. To make instructions more dynamic, you can also include variables such as telnyxcurrenttime, telnyxconversationchannel, telnyxagenttarget, telnyxendusertarget, or callcontrol_id, or even create your own custom variables.

• Greeting – Decide how the assistant will greet customers. A best practice is to state its purpose right away, so the customer knows who they’re speaking with and why

• Advanced Options – You can also explore advanced settings. These include adding a webhook URL for dynamic variables, and using tools like Webhook, Handoff, Transfer, SIP Refer, Send DTMF, and Model Context Protocol Server. These are optional and can be configured later as you get more comfortable.

4. Configure your AI assistant’s voice

Next, set up how your assistant will sound:

• Language – Choose the language your assistant will use from the dropdown. Telnyx NaturalHD supports English plus a wide range of languages including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, and many more. If you select a voice from another provider, review that provider’s catalog in the platform to confirm language availability.

• Gender – Select the preferred gender for your assistant’s voice. Options include male, female, neutral, and non-binary.

• Provider, Model, and Voice – We recommend starting with Telnyx as your provider to keep everything on a single platform. This reduces the number of vendors you manage, simplifies operations, and ensures your assistant runs on one network for higher call quality, better control, and low latency. From there, choose the NaturalHD model and play short voice samples to pick the voice that best fits your use case.

• Voice Playground – Test your assistant’s sound by pasting in sample text. This helps you hear how it will handle longer passages, similar to how real users will experience it.

• Transcription Model – If you expect some users to respond in languages other than English, choose one of the multilingual transcription models.

• Background Audio (optional) – You can add continuous background sound if your use case calls for it. From the predefined options, you might choose Office to make it sound like the assistant is calling from a workplace environment. You can also provide a custom media URL pointing to a .mp3 or .wav file to create specific effects, such as adding subtle branded audio to reinforce your company’s identity during calls.

5. Configure your AI assistant’s calling and messaging

After you set up your assistant’s voice, you’ll be asked if you want to enable inbound and outbound calls. Select Yes. You’ll also be prompted to enable messaging. Choose Not Now. Messaging can be added later to unlock powerful use cases, such as sending appointment confirmations via SMS after a call.

6. Buy and assign a phone number

In the Mission Control Portal, open the Real-Time Communications drop-down menu and select Numbers, then Buy Numbers. You can search by area code, city or region, or state or province to find the number you want. You can also filter results by features such as SMS, MMS, HD Voice, or by number type like local or toll-free.

When the list appears, choose your preferred number or multiple numbers and select Add to Cart. In the upper-right corner of the Portal, select the cart icon and select Place Order.

Go back to AI Assistants, open the Calling tab, and select Assign Numbers. From there, click Assign beside the number you’d like to connect to your assistant.

7. Test your AI assistant

You’re now at the exciting part: experiencing your AI assistant the way a customer would. Select ‘Test your assistant’, then select ‘Call assistant’. Your assistant will answer with the greeting you set. Have a conversation to see how it performs and note anything that needs adjustment.

When you hang up, you can make changes by going to your list of AI Assistants, selecting the pencil icon next to the one you want to edit, and updating the relevant fields.

Scale smarter with voice AI

With Telnyx Voice AI Agents, you can get started quickly and easily. Your agent can go live in minutes and handle real calls without any coding.

As your needs grow, you can scale by adding SMS confirmations, background audio for branding, or advanced features like webhooks and handoffs to create complex workflows. And if you want more control, you can build programmable agents into your own system using Telnyx’s APIs. This mix of no code simplicity and developer flexibility means your voice AI can grow and adapt alongside your business.