Solutions · Voice Agents
Voice agents that answer the phone
A voice agent is an AI that holds a real phone or in-app conversation: listens, understands, responds in natural speech, and takes actions like booking a meeting or escalating to a human. The technology has been production-ready for about two years. The bottleneck now is choosing the right workflow and designing the conversation properly.
We build voice agents that handle the routine inbound queue (booking, FAQs, basic triage), do outbound qualification, and free your team for the calls that genuinely need a human.
What it actually does
A voice agent picks up a call (or starts one), greets the caller, asks the right questions in the right order, and takes action based on the answers. For an inbound queue that's typically: identifying who's calling, what they need, answering the question if it's routine, escalating cleanly if it isn't.
Underneath the speech: real-time transcription (we use Deepgram for speed and NZ-accent accuracy), natural-language understanding via a frontier model (Claude or GPT), and voice synthesis through ElevenLabs. The conversation is structured around your actual call patterns, not a generic template.
Every conversation is transcribed, summarised, and routed into your CRM or operations system. Your team sees exactly what was said and what happened, with the action items already extracted.
70%+
of routine inbound enquiries can be handled autonomously by a well-designed voice agent
Gartner · Forrester contact-centre AI analyses
How it works
The shape of a typical build. Yours will vary on the specifics, but the pattern is consistent.
Step 1
Discovery and call analysis
We listen to a representative sample of your existing calls (with consent), classify the patterns, and identify which call types are good candidates for automation. Usually 60-80% of inbound volume is routine and patternable.
Step 2
Conversation design
We map the agent's behaviour for every call type: opening, branching questions, escalation triggers, edge cases. This is the part most vendors skip and most agents fail because of. We design it like an interface.
Step 3
Build and integration
Agent is wired to your phone system (Twilio, RingCentral, your existing PBX) or in-app voice. CRM, calendar, and booking integrations connect on the back end. We pick the model and TTS voice that matches your brand and accent expectations.
Step 4
Pilot in shadow mode
Agent runs alongside your human team for the first 1-2 weeks, taking calls but with a human reviewing each transcript. We tune from real conversations until accuracy on your specific call types clears the bar.
Step 5
Go live with monitoring
Agent goes live with confidence thresholds and graceful escalation paths. Every call is logged, transcribed, and accessible. We monitor performance weekly for the first month, then handed over for ongoing support.
This fits if you...
- Get a meaningful volume of inbound calls (50+/week) where 50%+ are routine in nature.
- Currently lose calls outside business hours, or send them to voicemail nobody reviews.
- Have a human team handling tier-1 enquiries that could be doing higher-value work.
- Need outbound call capacity (lead qualification, follow-ups, reactivation campaigns) at a scale your team can't realistically cover.
- Want the audit trail of every conversation transcribed and structured automatically.
This isn't a fit if...
- Your call volume is low (under ~30/week). The build cost won't pay back.
- Your callers expect highly personalised, relationship-driven conversations end-to-end. Voice agents do well on routine; they don't replace your top salesperson.
- Your conversations require fluent te reo Māori. Mainstream TTS doesn't pronounce it well yet; we'll be honest about that limitation when it matters.
- You haven't yet defined what 'success' looks like for a given call. Voice agents enforce structure; without it the agent has nothing to optimise toward.
Typical build shape
Scope
One call type fully automated end-to-end (e.g. booking, support triage, lead qualification). Phone integration, CRM/calendar wiring, transcription pipeline, dashboard.
Timeline
Several weeks from kick-off to live in production, including the shadow-mode pilot.
Indicative price
Fixed-price pilot, sized to scope. Subsequent call types built on the same architecture run substantially cheaper.
All ranges in NZD ex-GST. Precise numbers come out of the operations audit. See /engagement for the full pricing approach.