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Someone rings and gives their name, their number and what they want. The agent writes each answer into a row of your spreadsheet as it arrives, so a call that ends after two questions still leaves those two answers behind. It can also look somebody up — an order, a booking, a customer record — and answer from what you already hold. It works on every channel: website chat, WhatsApp, Telegram and phone calls. We use Grist, a spreadsheet you can sign up for free at getgrist.com. You connect your own account; we never put your data in ours.
This is not the same as Lead capture, which stores names and numbers in your inbox here. This puts them in your spreadsheet, in columns you chose, where your team already works. You can have both on, and when you do the agent records the details in both places rather than choosing between them.

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Connecting your spreadsheet

Go to Actions, find Spreadsheet, and click Grist.
1

Get an API key from Grist

In Grist, click your profile picture → Account settings → Developer, and create a key in the API keys section.It does not expire until you remove it, so unlike a calendar key there is nothing here that quietly stops working next year.
2

Paste it in

We call Grist once to check the key really belongs to someone. If it does not work you are told immediately.
3

Give us the document

Open the document in Grist, go to Settings and find the API section. Copy the Document ID from there.
The id in your browser’s address bar is a shorter one, and the API cannot use it. If you paste that, we tell you so rather than letting you discover it as “document not found”.
4

Pick the table

We show you every table in the document with how many fields each has. Pick one. We then read that table’s real column names and remember them.That is what the agent fills in. It cannot invent a column, and it cannot reach any other table or any other document.

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What the agent may do

Two switches, both off until you turn them on. Connecting your spreadsheet on its own gives the agent nothing.
These share a budget with your calendar switches: eight tools on at once across everything an agent connects. Past that it gets worse at picking the right one, so we stop you rather than let it quietly degrade.

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Save in the background

A switch on the same card. With it on, the agent stops waiting for Grist. The answer is kept here the moment the customer gives it, and reaches your spreadsheet within a minute. Nothing is lost if Grist is slow, and nothing is lost if you have used up a free plan’s calls for the month — the work waits and goes through when it can. Turn it on if your agent answers the phone. A caller hears every second the agent spends waiting, and this removes all of them. Leave it off if you watch the sheet live — during a campaign, say — and want the row to appear as the words are spoken. Either way the agent never claims something is saved when it is not.

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What your customer experiences

Them: Hi, I’d like a quote for a kitchen. Agent: Of course. Can I take your name? Them: Priya Nair. Agent: Thanks Priya. And the best number to reach you on?
By the end of that call there is one row in your spreadsheet with both answers in it, plus anything else you have columns for.

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Things worth knowing

One row per conversation. Every answer goes into the same row, so you get one line per customer rather than one line per thing they said. The agent fills in only what it was told. A field it never heard is left empty. It will not guess. Formula columns are read, not written. Grist computes those itself. If every column in the table is a formula we say so when you pick it — the agent can read that table but cannot save anything into it. Looking something up is exact and case-sensitive. PRIYA does not match Priya. Use it for order numbers, phone numbers and reference codes, which is what customers give verbatim anyway. It will not search for nothing. If the agent has no value to match on it asks the customer for one, rather than returning whatever happens to be at the top of your table. At most five rows come back from a lookup. More than that read aloud is a paragraph nobody can follow on a phone.
If you rename or delete a column in Grist, tell us. We remember your columns from when you picked the table. Rename one and saves start failing. Fixing it takes ten seconds: open the card and choose the table again.
Free Grist has limits, and they are Grist’s rather than ours. A free site allows 3,000 API calls a month and 5,000 rows per document. A busy phone line can use those, and when they are gone Grist refuses — your card says so. Save in the background handles the smaller bumps for you. Disconnecting keeps your data. Rows already written stay in your spreadsheet; they are your records, not ours to remove. Anything still queued and not yet written is discarded, and we tell you how many that is before you are left wondering.

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If it stops working

The card says Needs attention and shows what Grist said. Usually it is one of three things: the key was removed in Grist, the document is full or out of monthly calls, or a column was renamed. Create a new key and use Replace key if it is the first — your switches and your chosen table are remembered.

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Deliberately not included

The agent cannot reach any other document or table, even though your API key could. It cannot create or delete columns, tables or documents, and it cannot delete rows. It fills the one table you pointed it at, and reads from it. Nobody phoning your business has a good reason to reshape your spreadsheet, and the safest way to guarantee that is not to give the agent the ability at all.