Pick the right call flow for your business line
Answer four quick questions and we'll recommend how to connect the MerchPilot AI Receptionist to your phones, whether you keep your existing number or spin up a new one. No more missed calls, no more Follow-Up Gap.
Reference · The four ways a call reaches the AI
Every routing choice comes down to one rule: the AI can only answer a call that lands on a number living inside MerchPilot. There are four ways to make that happen. The first three are native (the number lives in the platform, so there is no carrier hop). The last is a bridge that leans on your old carrier's forwarding.
| Strategy | How it works | Best for | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Port your main line in native |
Move your existing business number into MerchPilot. It becomes a platform number, so the AI answers it directly. Callers still dial the number they always have. | Committed teams who want everything (calls, texts, recordings, analytics) running through MerchPilot on the number everyone knows. | Port takes roughly 1 to 3 weeks and needs a signed LOA plus a recent bill. Keep old service live until it completes. |
| New native number native |
Provision a fresh MerchPilot number. The AI answers it from day one. You publish it on your site, Google profile, signatures and ads. | New lines, new locations, or a dedicated "front door" and marketing/tracking number. | It is a new number, so adoption takes a little promotion to get it in front of callers. |
| Connect your Twilio native |
Link an existing Twilio account so its numbers route into MerchPilot. The AI answers natively, same as a platform number. | Teams already on Twilio who want to keep their numbers and infrastructure. | Billing is split across Twilio and MerchPilot, and A2P 10DLC registration must be handled on the Twilio side. |
| Forward from your carrier bridge |
Leave the number where it is and set call forwarding to a MerchPilot number where the AI waits. Can be all calls, or only busy/no-answer/after-hours. | A fast pilot, or an overflow-only safety net while humans stay primary. | Depends on your carrier's forwarding, which is where the headaches live (see below). Treat it as a bridge, not the backbone. |
Reference · Forwarding gotchas to avoid
- Caller ID can get stripped. Some carriers replace the caller's number with your business number when they forward, so the AI and CRM see "you" calling yourself. Contact matching and callbacks break. Confirm your carrier passes the original caller ID before relying on forwarding.
- Voicemail races the forward. If the carrier voicemail picks up before the forward completes, the AI never gets the call. Set the forward-on-no-answer timer shorter than the voicemail pickup, or disable carrier voicemail.
- Overflow-only means overflow only. Forward-on-busy/no-answer sends the AI just the calls your team misses. Great as a safety net, but the AI cannot screen, qualify, or brand the greeting on calls it never hears.
- Forwarding loops. If the MerchPilot side is ever set to send a call back toward the original line, you create a loop. Keep the fallback pointed at cells or voicemail-plus, never back at the forwarded number.
- Simultaneous-call limits. A single forwarded landline may only pass one call at a time, so a second caller gets a busy signal instead of the AI. Native numbers handle concurrent calls without this cap.
- Extra hop, extra latency. Every forward adds a small delay and one more point of failure. One hop is fine; chaining forwards is asking for dropped or one-way-audio calls.
The bottom line
Most flexible, fewest headaches: make the AI's number native.
The cleanest setup, and the one we recommend by default, is for the number the AI answers to live inside MerchPilot: port your main line in, stand up a new native number, or connect your Twilio. Native numbers give you full caller ID, call recording, two-way texting on the same number, concurrent calls, and every routing rule in one place, with no dependency on your old carrier's forwarding.
For the most common case, an existing main business line, the highest-flexibility path is to port it in. Callers keep dialing the number they know, and you drop all the forwarding gotchas. If you are not ready to port, use conditional forwarding as a temporary bridge or a deliberate overflow safety net, then port once you have seen the AI in action.
Whatever the front door, keep the human handoff as a warm transfer to a cell, not a second carrier forward. That keeps the whole chain inside MerchPilot and off the parts of the phone network you cannot control.