Short answer: yes, an AI can answer questions about your business when someone calls. In OsmO you add a knowledge source — your website, an uploaded document, or facts you type in — and the assistant uses it on every incoming call it answers. A caller asking "are you open Sunday?" gets an answer, not a promise that someone will ring them back.
The call you've answered fifty times
Most screening tools have one output: a message. Someone called, here's roughly what they wanted, call them back. That's genuinely useful for the calls you needed to know about — and completely wasted on the ones you didn't.
A large share of inbound calls to any small operation are the same handful of questions. What time do you close. Do you cover my postcode. How much is the basic service. Do you take card. Are you open on the bank holiday. None of those needed you. They needed an answer, and a message-taker converts each one into two calls instead of zero.
The knowledge base is the fix. Give the assistant the facts once and it handles that entire category without you seeing it.
Three ways to teach it
In the app, Knowledge sits as a tab inside Instructions. You can use any one of these, or combine them.
- Point it at your website. Add the URL and OsmO reads the site. This is the fastest route if your details already live somewhere public.
- Upload a document or image — a PDF price list, a menu, a service sheet, or a photo of one. Up to 10 MB. Useful when the real information is in a file rather than on a page.
- Just type it. No website, no document, or the facts that never got written down anywhere. Often the fastest option for a one-person operation.
Whatever you add is used on every incoming call the assistant answers.
The summary step — the part that matters
After OsmO reads a source, it produces a plain-text summary of what it took away, and you can read and edit that summary directly.
Don't skip this. A website is mostly marketing copy wrapped around a few facts, and what a reader infers from your homepage isn't always what you'd actually say on the phone. The summary is where you see what the assistant believes about you, and fix it before a caller hears it. It's a two-minute read that prevents the specific failure people worry about with AI — confidently telling a customer something that isn't true.
It's also where you can add the things your website carefully avoids saying. Real minimum charge. Which jobs you don't take. The fact that you're booked out until October.
What stays up to date, and what doesn't
This distinction is worth being precise about, because it's where an out-of-date answer would come from.
- A website source is re-checked weekly. OsmO reads it when you add it, then again on a weekly cycle. So when you change your hours on your own site, the assistant stops quoting the old ones without you doing anything. You can also trigger a refresh by hand if you've just changed something and don't want to wait.
- Uploaded documents and typed notes don't change on their own. They're a snapshot of what you gave it. If your prices move, you replace the document or edit the text — nothing re-reads a PDF sitting on your phone.
The practical implication: if a fact changes often, keep it on the website source. If it's stable, a document or typed note is fine.
Knowledge vs instructions
These are two different things that people reasonably confuse, and OsmO keeps them as separate tabs for a reason.
| Instructions | Knowledge | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Rules about behaviour | Facts about you |
| Answers | How should it act? | What does it know? |
| Examples | Greet regulars by name; treat anything about a leak as urgent; be short with cold callers | Open 8–6 weekdays; minimum charge is $95; we cover the north side only |
| Can target one caller | Yes | No — knowledge applies to all calls |
Most people end up using both. Instructions stop the assistant sounding generic; knowledge stops it being useless.
Limits and honest caveats
Worth knowing before you rely on it:
- Uploads are capped at 10 MB and take a PDF or an image. A very large catalogue won't fit; the useful move is to upload the page that actually answers customer questions, not the whole brochure.
- It answers from what you gave it. Knowledge isn't a live connection to a booking system or stock database — it's material you supplied. If something genuinely needs a real-time lookup, that's still a call for you.
- Garbage in, confidently out. If the source is ambiguous, the summary will be too. This is exactly why the edit step exists, and why it's worth two minutes.
- Knowledge is used on incoming calls the assistant answers. It shapes what it can tell people who ring you.
Frequently asked questions
Can an AI answer questions about my business when someone calls?
Yes. OsmO's knowledge base lets you give the assistant facts about you or your business — from your website, an uploaded document, or text you type yourself. When a caller asks about your hours, prices, service area or what you do, the assistant answers from that material instead of only taking a message.
How does OsmO learn about my business?
Three ways, combinable: point it at your website, upload a document or image up to 10 MB, or type the facts in yourself. A website source is re-checked weekly, so when you change your hours or prices on your own site the assistant stops quoting the old ones.
Does the knowledge base update automatically when my website changes?
For website sources, yes — read when you add it, then re-checked weekly, plus a manual refresh whenever you want. Uploaded documents and typed notes don't change on their own; you replace those yourself.
What's the difference between instructions and knowledge in OsmO?
Instructions are rules about behaviour — tone, greetings, what counts as urgent, how to handle a specific caller. Knowledge is facts — hours, prices, services, policies. Instructions shape how it acts; knowledge determines what it knows. Two tabs, same place in the app, most people use both.
Can I see or edit what the AI learned from my website?
Yes. OsmO produces a plain-text summary of what it took from each source, and you can read and edit it. Since a website mixes marketing copy with facts, this is where you correct anything it picked up wrongly — before a caller hears it.
The bottom line
Screening decides which calls reach you. Knowledge decides how many needed to in the first place. For anyone whose phone rings with the same five questions all week, it's the difference between an assistant that takes messages and one that actually removes work.
It's included with OsmO Pro — US$4.99 a month with a 7-day free trial, on iPhone and Android.
Related reading: All OsmO features · Custom Voice · AI receptionist app · Pricing