How Tilly works
Tilly answers your clinic's calls and messages, books into your practice software, and passes everything else to your team. Here's how you set it up, what callers hear, and how you stay in charge.
Updated
From signup to live calls in about a week
A guided setup walks you through each step, and your named onboarding specialist checks your progress and helps if you get stuck. Your team spends about four hours on it in total, spread over the week. Tilly can't go live until every safety step is done. Setup, test calls and your first-week review are included, and there's no setup fee.
Create your account.
Choose your country, plan and billing interval. No card needed yet: you add a payment method just before you go live. Your clinic's data is hosted in the US.
(about 10 minutes)
Add your clinic.
Name, address, opening hours and the number we ring if anything goes wrong (your fallback number). We call that number once with a code to make sure it reaches a real line.
(about 10 minutes)
Connect your practice software.
Sign in or paste a key, depending on your PIMS. Tilly pulls in your clients, pets, vets, appointment types and the next 30 days of your schedule.
(about 15 minutes, plus any approval time your software vendor needs)
Teach Tilly your clinic.
Start from the vet template pack: a ready-made list of vet services (vaccines, wellness, dental, spay and neuter drop-off, rechecks, new puppy and kitten visits, exotics), starter answers, emergency presets, an after-hours emergency referral and refill and records flows. Euthanasia is set as "staff only" from the start. Then give us your website address. Tilly drafts answers from it (hours, parking, services, species you see, new clients, payments, cancellations, refills, results, after hours) and marks each one "draft — confirm". You approve or edit each one, and Tilly only uses answers you've approved.
(about 45 minutes)
Set your booking rules and transfers.
Pick which appointment types Tilly may book, lead times and limits. Choose who gets transferred calls during the day, who gets urgent calls, and which emergency clinic callers are sent to when you're closed.
(about an hour)
Sign off emergency handling.
A licensed vet at your clinic reviews the emergency rules, listens to sample urgent responses in your own Tilly voice, and signs them off.
(about 20 minutes)
Connect your phone line.
Forward your existing number, connect your phone system, or get a new local number. Step-by-step guides cover common carriers and phone systems.
(about 20 minutes, plus carrier activation)
Run 20 test calls, then go live.
Your team calls in and tries the real situations: booking, a refill, a question Tilly shouldn't answer, an emergency, a sensitive call, asking for a person, saying "don't record," a call in Spanish. Each test checks itself, and test calls are never billed. When all pass, you add a payment method, choose how Tilly answers and go live.
(about 50 minutes)
Then invite your team. Four short training videos (five minutes each) show staff what callers hear, how to take a transfer, how to work tasks and how to correct an answer.
Step times are estimates shown in the setup wizard. Setting up a second location reuses your first location's settings.
Keep your number
Forward your number.
Keep your carrier and your number. Set call forwarding with your carrier or phone system and Tilly detects it with a test call.
Connect your phone system.
If your phone system supports SIP, connect it directly. Calls Tilly transfers go back through your own system.
Get a new number or move yours.
Pick a local number in minutes, or move your existing number to Tilly. While a move is in progress, forwarding keeps everything working.
You choose which calls Tilly picks up
Recommended to start
Overflow
Your phones ring first. If no one picks up within the time you choose (20 seconds by default), Tilly answers. Your team takes the calls they can; Tilly catches the rest.
After hours
Your team answers while you're open. Tilly answers when you're closed, including evenings, weekends and holidays.
Schedule
Set it by the week. For example: Tilly answers everything during your lunch hour and Saturday afternoons, and overflow the rest of the time.
All calls
Tilly answers every call and transfers to your team whenever a person is needed.
Public holidays for your country load automatically, and you can add your own closures. Change the mode any time in your dashboard. The change takes effect straight away.
What your callers hear
Tilly answers and says it's an AI.
"Hi, I'm Tilly, the AI assistant at Maple Street Animal Hospital." If the call is recorded, the caller hears that too and can say no.
Emergency check on every sentence.
Before anything else, Tilly checks what the caller said for signs of a possible emergency.
Possible emergency → a person.
Tilly connects the caller to your team straight away. If you're closed, it gives and texts your emergency partner's details and alerts your on-call vet.
Everything else → Tilly helps.
It recognises returning clients, answers from your approved information, and books, moves or cancels appointments in your PIMS.
Things only your team can do → a task.
Refills, results, messages for a vet. Tilly collects the details and creates a task in your dashboard and a note in your PIMS.
Asks for a person → a person.
Tilly transfers the call. Your staff member hears who's calling and why before they accept. If no one can pick up, Tilly arranges a callback and texts the caller.
After the call.
A summary, transcript and outcome appear in your dashboard within a minute.
If anything fails during a call, it rings through to your clinic's fallback number within three seconds.
Your clinic, your rules
You approve every answer.
Tilly answers questions only from information you've approved. If it doesn't know, it says so and takes a message.
You set the booking rules.
Which appointments, which vets, how far ahead, how many new clients a day, which species on which days.
You choose where calls go.
Front desk, urgent line, on-call vet, emergency partner, each with its own hours.
You see every conversation.
Transcript, recording (if you record), summary and outcome for every call and message.
You can step in.
Take over any text conversation from the dashboard and hand it back when you're done.
You can correct it.
Fix an answer once and Tilly uses the corrected version from then on.
You can undo changes.
Every settings change is saved with who made it, and you can revert it.
You can test first.
Every time you publish a change, Tilly runs your test scenarios (booking, refill, hours, urgent, transfer, sensitive call) and shows you the results first. A failed safety check stops the change from going live. You can also place a test call from your browser to hear it before your callers do.
One tap sends every call to your clinic.
Flip the switch in your dashboard, on a computer or your phone, and every new call goes straight to your clinic's own line within 10 seconds. Everyone on your team sees that it's on, and you can set it to switch back to Tilly on its own after 30 minutes, a few hours, when you next open, or at a time you choose (up to 7 days). Texts and reminders carry on as normal.
Sensitive calls go to people.
Calls about euthanasia, the loss of a pet or a complaint are handled with care and passed to your team. Tilly never books a euthanasia.
We stay with you through your first month
Day 1:
Your onboarding specialist checks in after your first 24 hours.First 50 conversations:
Reviewed by the Tilly team.Days 7 and 14:
Check-ins to tune anything that needs it.Day 30:
A last check-in and a handover note, then our support team takes over.Days 1–30:
The same named specialist is your contact for anything you want to change, and replies within 2 business hours during their working hours.
Every morning, for good. A short recap by email, text or app notification, as you choose: overnight calls, bookings made, open tasks and urgent cases, for every location.
Help when you need it
A named person to start.
Your onboarding specialist is your contact from the day you sign up until 30 days after you go live.
Urgent help, day and night.
If your calls aren't being answered, call our 24/7 support line or choose "Calls are not being answered" in chat, and a person responds within 15 minutes, 24 hours a day, every day.
Help from your dashboard.
Chat with our support team from the help button in your dashboard, or email us. If something major isn't working, such as bookings or messages, we reply within 4 business hours; other questions within 1 business day.
We tell you first.
If a problem on our side affects your calls or messages, we tell your owners, admins and managers within 15 minutes in the dashboard and by email (and by text when calls are affected), send updates until it's fixed, and post them on our status page, status.tillyvet.com. After a major incident, you get a written report within 5 business days.
You're never stuck.
If anything fails during a call, it rings through to your clinic. And the one-tap switch sends every call straight to your clinic whenever you want.
No medical advice.
Tilly never diagnoses, names medicines or doses, or suggests home remedies.
Emergencies go to a person.
A possible emergency is passed to your team, or your emergency partner after hours, within seconds.
Always says it's an AI.
Every call and message starts with "I'm Tilly, the AI assistant at your clinic."
Questions
Do I need an IT person?
No. Setup is a guided checklist in your browser. Phone forwarding has step-by-step instructions for your carrier or phone system. The only exception is IDEXX Cornerstone and Covetrus AVImark, which need a small Windows program (Tilly Bridge) installed on a computer in your clinic.
Can we start with only some calls?
Yes. Most clinics start with overflow or after hours and widen it later. You can change the mode any time.
What if our practice software isn't supported?
Tilly still answers, recognises callers it knows, answers questions and takes booking requests as tasks your team confirms. You can connect your software later.
Who signs off the emergency rules?
A licensed vet at your clinic. The base rules are written and approved by Tilly's clinical advisors, who are licensed vets. Your vet can add red flags for your clinic but can't remove the base ones.
How many calls can Tilly take at once?
Ten at once per location by default, and more on request. If every line is busy, the next call rings through to your clinic.
What languages does Tilly speak?
English and Spanish. Tilly switches when the caller does.
What if we want Tilly off the phones right now?
Use the one-tap switch in your dashboard, on a computer or your phone. Every new call goes straight to your clinic's own line within 10 seconds, and stays that way until you switch it back or the time you set runs out. Owners, admins and managers can also turn it on by texting a keyword from their registered mobile, or by calling our control line from that phone and entering their PIN.