Managed Agents at ~~Previously $0.06~~ $0.03/minManaged Agents are ~~Previously $0.06~~ $0.03/min.See pricing

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Bilingual virtual receptionist for English and Spanish callers.

This receptionist answers your office line in English or Spanish. It handles the routine questions, books callers with your staff and puts urgent calls through to a person. Call the sample insurance agency to hear the Spanish side.

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One front desk for callers in English and Spanish

The agent answers office questions from your facts, books calls with your licensed staff and takes messages, in whichever language the caller uses.

Hours, the address and how to pay come from the facts you write into the instructions. The agent doesn't guess at anything you left out.

English and Spanish at a California agency

Two California laws bear on this setup. One covers who may talk about coverage, the other who must agree before a call is recorded.

Insurance licensing

California Insurance Code section 1631 bars a person from soliciting, negotiating or effecting insurance contracts without a license from the commissioner. The agent on this page doesn't quote prices or discuss coverage. It books those callers with a licensed agent.

California Insurance Code 1631

Recording in California

Penal Code 632.7 makes it a crime to record a call involving a cell or cordless phone without the consent of all parties. Agencies that record usually say so in the greeting, in both languages. If you don't want recordings kept, an agent-wide setting stops storing recordings, transcripts and caller numbers.

California Penal Code 632.7

Voices

The sample agency uses a Mexican Spanish voice. Before you choose yours, play your greeting, policy numbers and local street names through it and have a Spanish-speaking member of staff listen.

Spanish voices and recordings

Spanish text to speech

English text to speech

This is not legal advice. Licensing and recording rules vary by state and by line of insurance. Have counsel review your greeting and scripts.

Built on best-in-class speech models

Cartesia handles listening, turn-taking and interruptions. You bring the instructions, the LLM and the tools.

$0.03per minute
#1on Speech Agent Arena and EVA-Bench
24/7answers every call, at any hour

Natural turn-taking

The agent lets callers finish, handles interruptions and pauses, and never talks over anyone.

Your choice of LLM and tools

Pick the LLM that is best suited for your agent's job, and give it tools to take action.

A voice that fits your brand

Pick from a library of natural, expressive voices so every call sounds like your company.

Check that the agent never quotes a price

This metric runs on every call and asks whether the agent kept clear of prices and coverage. A no is a call for your licensed staff to replay.

Launch a bilingual receptionist in three steps

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Clone the template
Copy this use case into your Cartesia account and edit the instructions to match your policies.
Get a Cartesia Number
We'll provision a free US phone number for you.
Limitations
US phone numbers only
Outbound calls to US numbers only
Name
e.g. My Agent Number
Inbound Agent (optional)
02
Connect your systems
Connect the agent to the systems it needs, then give it a Cartesia phone number or bring your own.
Test the agent, then go live
Place test calls from the browser, read the transcripts, and score calls with your own metrics.

Enterprise-grade security

HIPAA compliant
SOC 2 Type 2
GDPR

Bilingual virtual receptionist FAQs

What does a bilingual virtual receptionist do?

It answers your office line in English and Spanish. The one on this page answers questions about hours, the address and payments from facts you give it, books calls with your staff, takes messages that note the caller's language, and transfers urgent calls.

How much does a bilingual AI receptionist cost?

Agent time costs $0.03/min, plus telephony and LLM usage. See pricing for the details.

How does it know whether to answer in English or Spanish?

Turn on language detection, a Beta option in the agent's speech settings. The agent then replies in the language it hears and follows the caller if they change. It works for ten languages, English and Spanish among them, and it moves the agent's speech recognition from Ink-2 to Deepgram Flux. The sample line above stays in Spanish for the whole call, so try switching on your own agent.

Can I keep my office phone number?

Yes. Forward calls from your existing number to the agent's number. How you set up forwarding depends on your phone carrier. Transfers to your staff work on Twilio and SIP trunk numbers.

Who sets it up?

Someone in the office writes the greeting, the office facts and the rules for transfers. Bookings and messages reach your calendar, agency management system or inbox through webhooks, and someone who can code wires those once. Cartesia has no built-in connector to agency systems.

Will it tell callers what their policy covers?

Not with the instructions on this page. They bar price and coverage answers, and those callers get a call with a licensed agent instead.

What happens when the agent can't help?

It takes a message with the caller's name, number and language, or books a call with your staff. An accident today or a policy that cancels within two days goes to the phone number you set for the account manager.

Will the Spanish sound right to my callers?

The agent speaks with the accent of the voice you pick. The sample uses a Mexican Spanish voice and addresses callers as usted. Cartesia also has Spanish voices from Spain and Colombia, so pick the one closest to the people who call you.

Does it record calls?

You choose. An agent-wide setting stops Cartesia from storing transcripts, recordings and caller numbers for every call to that agent. There is no switch for a single call.

Is there a version for after-hours calls or a dental office?

Yes. The bilingual answering service takes after-hours service requests for a plumbing company, and the Spanish AI receptionist books dental visits in Spanish.

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Bilingual virtual receptionist for English and Spanish callers.

One front desk for callers in English and Spanish