What is the difference between Terri self-serve and a designed call-center agent?

A self-serve agent is one you sign up and customize: Starter at $49/month or Pro at $199/month. A designed call-center agent is written from your scripts. You send a brief at /call-center, subscribe to Scale, and the agent goes live on a dedicated number, with dedicated onboarding. The voice engine is the same; the first month of instructions is not.

When should a business choose a self-serve AI receptionist?

When you can write the call rules yourself, will read the first week's transcripts, and your volume fits a monthly subscription. Most small businesses should start here, usually after hours only.

When should we ask Terri to design the agent?

When a call center or high-volume desk already has scripts, recording rules, and escalation trees that have to be encoded correctly on day one. Start at /call-center: send the brief, subscribe to Scale, and the designed agent goes live on a dedicated number.

Can we move from self-serve to a designed agent later?

Yes. The engine, number, handoff, and billing meters are the same. Businesses sometimes start self-serve and later want a designed pass; centers sometimes hand a simple queue back to the customer to maintain.

Self-Serve vs Designed AI Receptionist: Which Terri to Buy

Terri is sold two ways: sign up and customize, or we design the agent for a call center. Same voice engine. Different first month. How to choose.

Published 2026-09-12

Terri is sold two ways: a self-serve agent a business signs up and customizes, and a call-center agent we design and sell. They are the same voice product. The difference is who writes the first working instructions and who owns the first week of calls.

Neither path is a fallback. A dentist who can describe how the phone should work should not wait for a sales engineer. A center with forty agents, a recording policy, and three escalation trees should not be handed a blank prompt and a checkout link.

The two paths

	Self-serve agent	Designed call-center agent
Who writes the instructions	You, in plain English	We do, from your scripts and QA rules
How you start	Sign up, verify a phone, check out	Send a designed-agent brief at /call-center, then subscribe to Scale
Plans	Starter $49/month, Pro $199/month	Scale, custom terms and volume pricing
Included usage credit	$25 on Starter, $100 on Pro	$300 listed; actual terms are negotiated
First week	You read the transcripts and fix the prompt	We stay through the first clean transcripts
Best when	Volume is modest and the rules fit in a page	Volume is high or getting the rules wrong is expensive

The voice engine, the dedicated number, the handoff controls, and the usage meters are the same. You are not buying a different model. You are buying a different first month.

Choose self-serve when these are true

You can write how calls should be handled in a page or two.
Someone on your side will listen to the first week's transcripts.
Most calls are routine — hours, booking, a message, a transfer.
You are starting with after-hours or overflow, not the entire main line on day one.
$49 or $199 a month with itemized usage after the credit matches the volume.

Self-serve fails when nobody owns the prompt. The product is the instructions. If they stay at the vendor default, the agent will sound fine and be wrong in the ways your business is specific.

Choose a designed agent when these are true

A call center or high-volume desk already has scripts, queues, and compliance language.
Recording, retention, and who may hear a call are already written down, and the agent has to match them.
Several lines or queues need different identities — sales versus support, daytime versus after hours.
Outbound calling is part of the job, and destinations must be allowlisted by a compliance lead.
The cost of a bad first week is a real customer, a regulator, or a supervisor who will never trust the tool again.

That is the Scale path. Dedicated onboarding is included. Start at /call-center: send the brief, subscribe to Scale, and the designed agent goes live on a dedicated inbound number. Do not start on the Starter or Pro pricing checkout — that writes your own prompt.

What does not change between the two

Handoff. A call that needs a person conferences a verified number into the live call, or blind-transfers if that is what you asked for.
Fail-closed outbound. If a prefix, a billing check, or a policy cannot be evaluated, the call does not go out.
The record. Transcripts, and audio only if you turn recording on, retained for the window you set.
The bill. Subscription plus itemized provider usage. No per-call bundle that hides a nine-minute hold.

If a vendor tells you the "enterprise" voice is a different model, ask what actually changes on the call. Often it is onboarding and contract terms. That is legitimate. It should be priced and described that way, not as a smarter mouth.

A practical way to decide

Call your own line — or the line you are about to point at software — and write down the last ten real calls. If nine of them have answers you can type in twenty minutes, start self-serve, after hours only. If three of them require a supervisor, a license, or a page from a runbook you have not shown anyone, talk to us and have the agent designed.

You can move from one path to the other. Businesses outgrow a prompt they wrote themselves and want help tightening it. Centers sometimes discover one queue is simple enough to hand back to the customer to maintain. The engine does not care. The instructions do.

Common questions

What is the difference between Terri self-serve and a designed call-center agent?: A self-serve agent is one you sign up and customize: Starter at $49/month or Pro at $199/month. A designed call-center agent is written from your scripts. You send a brief at /call-center, subscribe to Scale, and the agent goes live on a dedicated number, with dedicated onboarding. The voice engine is the same; the first month of instructions is not.
When should a business choose a self-serve AI receptionist?: When you can write the call rules yourself, will read the first week's transcripts, and your volume fits a monthly subscription. Most small businesses should start here, usually after hours only.
When should we ask Terri to design the agent?: When a call center or high-volume desk already has scripts, recording rules, and escalation trees that have to be encoded correctly on day one. Start at /call-center: send the brief, subscribe to Scale, and the designed agent goes live on a dedicated number.
Can we move from self-serve to a designed agent later?: Yes. The engine, number, handoff, and billing meters are the same. Businesses sometimes start self-serve and later want a designed pass; centers sometimes hand a simple queue back to the customer to maintain.

Two ways to get Terri

Set the agent up yourself, or have us design the inbound agent a call center will run. Same voice engine. Different first month.

Set up your Terri · Request a designed agent