verify-by-phone

Verify By Phone

Use this skill when an agent must establish whether stored information about an organization is still true, and a phone call to the organization's published line is the way to find out.

verify-by-phone is a verification workflow skill. It places exactly one disclosed outbound CALL-E call per record, extracts the answer from the transcript with a verbatim supporting span, reconciles it against the stored record with transparent match-weight arithmetic, and returns either a calibrated confidence or an explicit abstention. The design goal is an agent that never converts an uncertain phone answer into a confident database write.

When To Use

Use this skill for:

• verifying a provider directory listing: is this practice real, reachable, accepting new patients, taking a given insurance plan
• checking whether a stored business record (hours, services, availability) still matches reality
• refreshing any dataset where the phone is the source of truth and the record is suspected stale
• workflows where an "unknown" outcome must be recorded honestly instead of guessed
• one record at a time, with a human-authorized recipient list

When Not To Use

Do not use this skill to:

• place undisclosed or pretext calls; every call announces that it is an automated assistant and why it is calling, in the same breath
• call wireless or personal numbers; verification targets published organizational lines
• run marketing, sales, lead generation, or any promotional outreach
• batch-dial a list without per-record human authorization
• overwrite a stored record directly from a call result; the output is a verdict with evidence, and the write decision stays with the operator
• guess an answer the respondent did not give; if the call yields no usable answer, the result is an abstention, and that is the correct output

Consent And Disclosure Rules

These are load-bearing, not boilerplate:

1. The call opens by stating the AI identity and the purpose together, before anything else, and announces that the call may be recorded.
2. If the respondent objects to speaking with an automated caller, the call thanks them and ends immediately. The result records the refusal as an unverifiable outcome.
3. Hold time is capped. If the respondent asks the caller to wait, it waits briefly, then reports back rather than waiting indefinitely.
4. The agent never invents information it was not given, on the call or in the result. Concretely: a clinic will often ask the caller for a name, a date of birth, an insurance member or card number, or a reason for the visit. The agent says plainly that it does not have that information, because this is a directory verification call and not an appointment request, and then repeats the question it called to ask. A placeholder is an invention.
5. Voicemail is not an answer. On reaching voicemail or an answering machine the call ends immediately without leaving a message: a directory fact cannot be established from a recording, and nobody should find a robot message on their line.
6. Calls are informational verification, never promotional. Treat every call as recorded with all-party consent requirements in mind.