Your AI line has an email address. Here's what to do with it

Why a phone line needs an inbox

Give it out. That's the short answer to what the address is for, and the rest of this piece is the detail.

Phone calls rarely end on the phone. The roofer says he'll send the quote in writing. The restaurant wants to email a confirmation. The hotel has a form. So at some point in a lot of calls comes the question: what's a good email address?

If an assistant is making the call for you, it needs something to say. It could give out your personal address, and then your inbox fills with mail from every business it ever rang. Or it gives its own. That's why every CosVoice line comes with an email address as well as a phone number, and why the line gives that address on calls unless you've told it otherwise.

There's nothing to set up. The address exists from the moment the line does.

What the address looks like

It's a real address in the form yourname@bot.cosvoice.com, where the first part is your line's handle. Anyone can write to it from any mail program, the same way they'd write to a person.

One line is one phone number and one email address, attached to one assistant. If you have a second line, for the business say, it has an address of its own. Mail never crosses between lines.

What tends to land there

Whatever the calls set in motion. On a typical line that's a fairly dull list, and dull is the point, because it's the mail you'd otherwise be fishing out of your own inbox.

• Quotes. The contractor who said "I'll put that in writing" on Tuesday's call.
• Confirmations. A table, an appointment, a delivery window.
• Follow-up questions. "Can you confirm the address?" "Is the gate code still the same?"
• Links. The place that takes the request by phone and finishes it on a web page.

Getting that mail in front of you

Mail that reaches the line is stored on the line. It shows up in your history next to the calls and the texts, so the quote sits near the call that asked for it. You can add notes, and export the lot as a spreadsheet file if you keep records that way.

One thing doesn't come through, and that's attachments. The line keeps the text of an email and any links in it. Files such as photos and PDFs aren't kept or passed on. If a contractor plans to send the quote as a PDF, ask for the figures in the body of the email, or have the file sent to your own address.

You can also have it forwarded. In Settings you choose the inbox the line's mail goes on to, and it can be any inbox you like. The obvious choice is the address you already read all day.

Which should you do? Both, we think. Forwarding means you see the quote when it arrives. The history means you can find it in March, when you've forgotten who sent it.

When the assistant writes back

The address works in both directions. An assistant connected to your line can reply from it, and the reply stays in the same thread, so the roofer sees an answer under his own quote and not a new message from an address he doesn't know.

There are limits, and we put them there on purpose. The line can only email people who have written to it first, plus you, plus your assistant's own inbox if it has one. It can't write to a stranger out of the blue. There's also a cap of 40 emails a day. A line that answers its post is useful. A line that sends mail to people who never asked for it is a nuisance, and we didn't want to build the second thing.

Let new mail start your assistant

If you've connected an assistant such as a Grok Bot, ChatGPT or Claude, there's one more step worth taking. Normally the assistant finds new mail when it next looks at the line. With Bot push switched on, the line starts the assistant when the email lands.

Say a quote arrives at 3pm while Graham is on a job. His assistant wakes, reads it, and either replies from the line's address or leaves him a note about what it says. Graham finds out at five that the quote came in under what he expected, and that it's waiting on a yes from him.

Setting that up uses a webhook, which is a private address one program posts to when it wants to start another. The steps are in wake your assistant the moment a call ends. The same switch covers calls, texts and mail.

Email is how things arrive, for now

One honest reason the address matters more than you'd guess. Texts to your line always arrive. Texts from the line to other people are limited at the moment, so a texted confirmation might not land. Until that changes, anything that has to arrive goes as a call or an email.

So when a business asks "shall I text you the details?", the better answer is the email address. The line gives it without being told. There's more on choosing between the three in call, text or email.

Four habits that make it useful

None of these is a setting. They're just sensible ways to use the address.

• Give out the line's address, not yours, for anything that started as a phone call. Your own inbox stays for people.
• Put it on the quote request. When you're collecting prices from three trades, have them all send to the line, with the figures in the body of the email. They end up in one place, next to the calls.
• Forward, don't move. Let the line keep its copy and send you yours. Then nothing depends on you filing anything.
• Use email freely. Texts and email don't use your plan's minutes. Only time on a call does.

What it isn't

It isn't a replacement for your own email, and it isn't a marketing tool. The how it works page shows where the address fits with the number, and the docs list what a connected assistant can do with mail.

Think of it as the assistant's desk: a place where the paperwork from phone calls can land, be read, and be answered. And it's one less reason to hand a personal address to a business you'll deal with once.

Common questions

More on setup guides

• Conditional call forwarding, explained without the jargon
• Set up an AI phone agent in ten minutes
• Connect Claude to a phone line
• Get ChatGPT to make a phone call