Phone
A real local number included with every agent, the advertised number diverted or ported to it, transfers to a person on the business's rules, and hours on the number's own clock.
The platform
Answers your clients' phones and does the work on the call.
A voice agent that picks up on the first ring at any hour, holds a normal conversation, books into the diary, lodges the job, puts the right calls through to a person, and sends a summary within seconds. Sold through partners, who set the price; Talkgate runs the platform.
Channels
One agent, every channel
A client's customers ring, text, type and email. The same agent, with the same knowledge, answers on each, so what it says about hours, prices and services is the same whichever way the question arrives. The phone is the main channel; the rest hang off it. See all channels.
Text
The same agent texts back, one question at a time, reads a photo and hands over to a person when asked. The texting agent is early access; text campaigns and the texting API are available now.
Microsoft Teams
Call notifications posted into a Teams channel with plain-English routing, available now. A meeting agent that joins from the Microsoft 365 calendar and takes the notes is in early access.
Website chat
One line of code puts the agent on the business's website in its own colours, typing or talking, with the conversation remembered from page to page.
Forward the enquiries inbox and every email is answered, booked, handed to a person or set aside with the reason on screen. Early access.
Telephony
How it connects to a phone system
Every agent comes with a real number, and there are four ways to put the client's calls in front of it. Underneath, the platform holds a direct commercial relationship with the carrier its numbers ride on, so routing is its own to change.
New local numbers in NZ and AU
Every incoming agent is given its own real local number in the region the client asks for: Auckland 09, Christchurch 03, Wellington 04, or an Australian local number for an Australian business. The allocator only ever buys a number the carrier has never sold, or re-uses one the platform parked earlier in the same dialling region after a cooling-off period, so a client never inherits a stranger's old number.
Diverting an existing number
The usual setup. The client keeps its advertised number and diverts it to the agent's number on its own carrier. Four divert types are documented: forward all, when unanswered, when busy, and when off or out of signal; most clients set the last three together. Dial codes are written up for the main NZ mobile and home-line carriers and for the iPhone and Android menus. The platform cannot set the divert for them, and a divert not set up is the single most common support problem, so it is worth checking first.
Porting numbers in and out
A client's number can be ported in from another provider and ported back out if they leave. A porting form collects the numbers, current provider, account details, a copy of the bill, a move date and a signature; it can be sent from the pipeline, included in a proposal, or started by the client from their own account. A ported number is placed in a carrier account of the client's own, so if they leave, their number leaves with them. Porting is charged once per number, with the amount stated on the form. A ported number answers calls to the agent; outgoing calling from it is part of the phone-line conversation in the briefing.
Already on a PBX or a trunk?
The platform speaks SIP end to end, so an existing SIP trunk, PBX or DDI range is connected with you during onboarding rather than through a self-serve form. Route the DDIs or a trunk to the agent and keep the rest of the PBX as it is, or divert selected extensions. How bring your own trunk works.
Outbound numbers and caller ID
Campaign and automation calls go out showing the client's own agent number, with the agent's knowledge behind them, so a customer who rings back gets the same agent. The dialler shows the agent's number or a team member's own direct line held on the platform. Showing a number that is not held on the platform, such as the owner's personal mobile, is not something to promise; raise it in the briefing if a client needs it.
Transfers to staff mobiles and on-call rosters
The client writes a per-number rule: one general rule, then a number and a condition per line, and the same number may carry several conditions. The onward leg is tracked back to the call, so the record shows who was put through and whether they picked up. After an urgent call outside hours the agent works down an on-call ladder, app alert, then text, then call, until a person accepts. Voicemail never counts as an answer. The roster comes from a simple list with an app toggle, a weekly pattern, a linked calendar, or on-call entries on the platform diary, and leave takes a person off the ladder. "Run a test" simulates a job at any hour.
Business hours and time zones
The clock lives on the number: New Zealand, the Chathams, or an Australian state, falling back to the Australian area code and then to NZ, so an 07 Brisbane number answers on Brisbane time. Trading hours, "tomorrow" and bookings all read that clock. After-hours, weekend and public-holiday behaviour are set separately, and an After hours card can skip the agent entirely and ring the on-call person's own phone for named hours.
Outbound calling windows
Outgoing calls are never placed before 8am or after 10pm on the clock of the person being rung, and campaigns stop at 8pm. A client can only narrow that window, never widen it. An Australian mobile is held to hours that are civil in every Australian zone. The only exemptions are on-call staff alerts and a fresh, verified demo call-back.
For partners with their own voice estate
Bring your own trunk
The platform speaks SIP end to end. Agent numbers are carried as SIP trunk numbers at the voice layer, transfers go back to the carrier as SIP REFER, and team seats register as SIP softphones. Nothing about it is plug and play; it is configured with you during onboarding.
An existing SIP trunk, PBX or DDI range is connected with you during onboarding rather than self-serve. There are three shapes: route the DDIs, or a whole trunk, to the agent and keep the rest of the PBX exactly as it is; divert selected extensions to the agent's number and leave the others ringing on desks; or give the agent its own number alongside the PBX and let the PBX decide when to send calls to it. A client can bring their own number, and the platform already answers for a client on a number held with another carrier.
Outbound calls and transfers go back over SIP. When the agent puts a caller through to an extension or a mobile, the transfer is a SIP REFER to the carrier, and the onward leg is tracked back to the call so the record shows who was put through and whether they picked up.
For distributors and SIP providers, there is a tier that runs on your own carrier account, with your own carrier credentials, so the numbers and the minutes stay with the carrier relationship you already hold. That tier is scoped with you in the briefing, not switched on from a settings page.
Bring the trunk details to the briefing: the carrier, the DDI range, how the PBX routes today and which extensions should reach the agent. We will talk through your trunk and agree the route before anything is changed.
Knowledge
Knowledge base and website crawl
The agent answers from what the client gives it and nothing else. It never guesses, never pretends to be human, never takes card numbers and never gives medical, legal or financial advice. Those rules are locked and a client cannot edit them out. See the knowledge base.
The website, read whole
The client's site is crawled at deploy and re-read on a schedule afterwards. A price or an opening-hours change on the site changes what the agent says without anyone editing the agent.
Documents and notes
PDF, Word and plain text uploads, plus free-form notes, indexed in a minute or two. Scanned PDFs with no text layer cannot be read, which is worth telling clients up front.
Local names and the client's own words
A Local names card carries the whole New Zealand gazetteer, over four thousand place names, plus the client's own words, so the agent says them properly.
After the call
Every call recorded, transcribed, summarised and sent
Within seconds of hanging up the client has a text and an email saying who rang, what they wanted and what the agent did. Every call is logged in the dashboard against the client's own definition of a good call. See call records.
Notifications where the team already looks
Text and email summaries within seconds. Browser push per person per device, app notifications, and call notifications into Slack, Microsoft Teams or any webhook, with plain-English routing per destination. Posts only; nothing is read back from those tools.
Recordings and transcripts, on the client's say-so
Recordings and full transcripts are off by default. The client switches them on per account or per agent, can switch them off again, and can delete older calls from the dashboard. A "How it works" map shows where every piece of information goes.
Call quality, reviewed weekly
Once a week the platform listens back, proposes one change, tests it against the calls that went badly, and then either emails an Approve button or applies a safe wording change itself, depending on the setting. It never quotes a caller's details. See call quality.
Sold through partners
You sell it, Talkgate runs it
Talkgate is sold through partners: managed service providers, IT companies, telcos and agencies who already look after a client's systems. You set the price and own the relationship. Talkgate runs the platform, the numbers and the hosting.
Your client comes to Talkgate through you, sees the Talkgate name on the dashboard and in the summaries, and comes to you first when they need help, with Talkgate behind you for anything deeper. This site carries no prices, so each partner prices it as part of their own service. Partner terms are agreed in the briefing.
What the agent is for is under agents, where it talks under channels, and what comes with it under features.
Next step
See it answer a call before you decide
A partner briefing is a working session: your clients' phone setups, the dashboard they will use, and the questions your engineers will ask.