Call Studio has always let you test your receptionist before pointing your phone line at it. Until today you did that by typing, which skips the part of a real call most likely to go wrong: whether it actually hears you. You can now press a button, speak, and have it answer — using the same speech recognition that runs on your live phone line.
It shows you what it heard. A misheard word is the commonest fault on any phone call and the caller never finds out; here it is written on screen next to your own turn, so if your service names or your business name are being misheard you can see it and fix it before a customer rings.
The panel now behaves like a call rather than a chat box. It tells you whether it is connecting, speaking, listening or thinking, counts the call length, and lets you replay any answer. You can still type instead — the receptionist answers the same way either way.
What it does is written in plain English now too. When a call logs a booking it says so; when it still needs a detail before it can, it says that. It used to show an internal status label and repeat the sentence the receptionist had just said, which looked like a fault.
One honest note: the spoken replies in this browser test are currently played back with your own browser’s voice rather than the SIMCOAI voice, while we sort out capacity with our speech supplier. Your real callers are unaffected — phone calls use a separate route and still use the SIMCOAI voice throughout. The panel says which one you are hearing rather than leaving you to guess.
What changed
The original dashboard conversation feature made it possible to speak an enquiry while reviewing your setup. It used live-line speech recognition and showed the words it heard, making recognition mistakes easier to spot than a typed test.
A useful trial uses a real business question with a known answer: opening hours, a service enquiry or the details needed for a booking. At the original launch, replies used browser playback, so their sound was not a demonstration of the live-call voice.
Before and after
Before this update: The dashboard test accepted typed questions, which did not check how the receptionist heard your spoken enquiry.
With this update: Customers gained a way to exercise the receptionist from the dashboard and adjust their setup after hearing the result.
What it means for you
The feature has changed since this launch. Call Studio now offers a real two-way browser call, as described in the later announcement, rather than the original record-and-play interaction.
The current test is a genuine call and uses call minutes and voice allowance. Review the current Call Studio guidance before testing; the original launch should not be read as a promise of a free or unchanged test experience.