Voice Calls

Lightpost allows your congregation to make classic voice calls. The voice call tool, utilizing a dedicated number, is meant for one-way communication to phone numbers stored in a users' profiles.

What is a voice call?

• A voice call is an actual phone call made to a user in a group to communicate a message to.

• Voice calls are sent by one of two options:

  • Text-to-Speech

    • You type out a message (see the "how to" section) to send to a group.

    • Lightpost then uses a text-to-speech mechanism to make the phone calls and read the message to the user.

  • Voice Recording

    • Lightpost will call you to record a message to be sent to the group.

    • After recording, the calls are made to the group and the recording is played.

• Voice calls do have an extra cost associated with them due to the requirement of using a third party service to make the phone calls.

How are voice calls counted?

• Lightpost counts voice calls per minute spent calling and reading a message to a users' unique phone number.

• Lightpost automatically filters out duplicate numbers and duplicate recipients.

  • If multiple people have the same phone number, only one call will be made.

  • If a user has multiple phone numbers, a call will only be sent to their primary number.

How to send a voice call

1. In the Admin, find the group you wish to message, and click on the group.

2. Ensure that the "Enable messaging by Voice" option is selected in the "Messaging" tab and save changes.

   1. Optionally enable the "Advanced Answering Machine Detection"

3. Ensure that you are an "Authorized Sender" in the Authorized Sender tab.

4. Go to the "Send Voice" section available for the group.

5. Either click to be called and record a message or type the message you wish to be read, and click "Send".

Advanced Answering Machine Detection

Lightpost also has an option when enabling voice calls to do advanced answering machine detection. This does extra work to detect if the voice call has not been answered, and instead been directed to a person's answering machine.

This can help with voice calls being properly played after the beep of an answering machine, as opposed to not.

With our service provider, this has a purported 94% accuracy rate.

It does introduce an additional 1-2 second pause or delay when a human answers the phone, while the service determines if a person or an answering machine picked up.