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AI Voice Agents - The Complete Guide to Voice Chat (2025)

Nov 23, 2025
7 mins

Learn everything about an AI voice agents, its benefits, implementation tips, and the AI voice chat applications for business success.

Longer wait times, high call volumes, and language barriers in call centers often frustrate customers. Complex interactive voice response (IVR) menus only add to the problem, leading to customer dissatisfaction. That’s why companies are adopting smarter self-service solutions like artificial intelligence (AI) voice agents. In fact, experts predict the voice bot market will reach $98.2 billion by 2027, showing a clear trend toward smarter solutions to improving customer experience.

AI voice agents technology combines Natural Language Processing (NLP), machine learning, and voice recognition to transform customer interactions. It provides quicker, more efficient service and improves the overall customer experience.

In this guide, we'll explore what AI voice agents are, their key features, practical use cases, and tips on how to implement a voice agent in your business.

What is an AI voice agent?

An AI voice agent is a two-way conversational tool that communicates with the customer. It automates inbound and outbound calls without human intervention and transfers calls to a human agent when needed.

The biggest advantage? Callers can navigate an IVR by speaking naturally, without listening to long, complex menus or pressing numbers on a keypad.

Popular AI voice agent examples include Apple's Siri, Google Assistant, and Amazon's Alexa. These tools simplify interactions, provide instant answers, and automate tasks. In contrast, advanced bots like IBM’s Watson Assistant and Microsoft’s Cortana handle customer support, sales inquiries, and internal communications.

Types of AI voice agents

Here’s a breakdown of the four main types of AI voice agents and how they can benefit your business:

Rule-based AI voice agent

Rule-based voice agent use predefined sets of questions and rules to offer answers or perform tasks. Such voice agents handle routine tasks and customer FAQs. They answer all queries that fall under the if-this-then-that logic.

For example, an e-commerce site using a bot to guide customers in checking their order status or a banking site handling routine inquiries like balance checks, bill payments, transaction histories, etc.

AI-assisted voice agent

AI-assisted voice agents use machine learning and natural language to interpret conversations so they can analyze the context and grasp what the speaker means. This makes them far more capable and user-friendly than the conventional, rule-based voice agents.

Let’s suppose a user asks Alexa, 'What's the weather tomorrow?' and then follows up with, 'How about next week?' it remembers the context. This adaptability means customers don’t have to repeat themselves, creating a more contextual customer experience.

Conversational AI voice agent

Conversational voice agents make conversations using natural language. They’re more nuanced than AI-assisted voice agents as they can handle complex conversations using everyday language to create more personalized interactions.

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Google Duplex, and IBM Watson Assistant, are examples of conversational voice agents. They can make phone calls, make reservations, and handle natural conversations with a human-like tone.

Voice-activated voice agent

These bots use voice commands to answer practical questions and perform routine tasks. They are more flexible than personal voice agents that adapt to speakers and perform customized tasks.

Such bots serve as digital assistants to AI-assisted bots like Siri.

How does an AI voice agent improve customer engagement?

A customer calling your sales team wants to feel valued and understood. An AI voice agent does that. It puts the customer at the center, creating a better experience and driving business benefits as a result. Let’s understand it with a few use cases. 

Use case: Get a quick update on order status, 24/7

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Assuming the AI voice agent is integrated into your CRM, it greets the customer by name. Instead of navigating through a branched IVR to get their order status, the customer can simply say ‘order status’ and the voice bot pulls out the order details from the CRM and gives the user a real-time update within seconds.

Sheraz Ali, the Founder of HARO Links Builder states that their voice agent managed over 30% of customer interactions in one of their company projects and drastically reduced wait times.

“It also improved our response efficiency and led to a 20% increase in customer satisfaction scores and a reduction in operational costs within three months.” 

Benefits:

  • Decreased waiting time.
  • Limited IVR menu navigation.
  • No human intervention is required.
  • Quick response times.
  • Reduced business costs.
  • Tangible increase in customer satisfaction.

Use case: Improve language learning for students 

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A language learning platform uses a voice agent to provide real-time translations and personalized tutoring. So the voice agent instantly supports students in any subject by translating and clarifying complex terms in their preferred language.

Benefits:

  • Reduced requirement for multilingual staff.
  • Increases inclusivity as the bot answers in the user’s preferred language.
  • Language barriers are removed.

Use case: Improve patient outcomes in healthcare

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It's easy to miss appointments or forget to deliver prescriptions to the patient’s home timely. A healthcare service can employ a voice agent to deliver personalized care and offer preliminary health assessments, medication reminders, and easy appointment scheduling, all according to the individual patient's needs.

Benefits

  • Saves time by streamlining appointment bookings.
  • Ensures medication adherence with timely reminders.
  • Reduces workload for healthcare providers with automated support.

Use case: Streamline routine financial services 

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Once integrated with the banking system, the voice agent automates routine financial tasks, provides instant account information, processes transactions, and delivers personalized financial advice around the clock.

Benefits:

  • 24/7 access to financial services without wait times.
  • Improves customer experience with quick, accurate responses.
  • Automates routine tasks, freeing up staff for complex queries.
  • Provides personalized advice to improve financial decision-making.

Use case: Get personal shopping assistance  

Source

An e-commerce platform can use a voice agent to assist customers with product selection, provide personalized recommendations, and automate the sales process from start to finish.

Benefits:

  • Delivers a personalized shopping experience 24/7.
  • Boosts sales with customized recommendations.
  • Reduces cart abandonment by guiding customers to checkout.
  • Improves customer satisfaction with fast, accurate service.

Features of an AI voice agent

To understand why voice agents are so effective, let’s look at the key features that improve the overall customer service experience while streamlining business operations.

The best voice agents for businesses come equipped with:

Natural language understanding (NLU)

An AI voice agent understands user queries by converting speech into text using AI and NLP. It then forms an appropriate response and converts it back into speech using text-to-speech (TTS) technology. This ability to understand and respond in natural, conversational language sets AI voice agents apart from traditional IVR systems, which rely on rigid, menu-based responses.

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Personalization capabilities

Customers want quick, personalized responses to their queries, unlike complex IVR systems that frustrate them with lengthy menus. An AI voice agent offers contextual conversations, adapting to the user’s intent. It detects speech cues, skips irrelevant interactions, and also transfers calls to the right agent.

Hence, when comparing voice agents to IVRs, the bot's ability to offer personalized interactions like a human outshines communication systems that follow even the best IVR practices.

Multi-language support

AI voice agents break down language barriers, supporting multiple languages to provide a more inclusive and accessible customer experience. Businesses can easily connect with diverse customer bases across the globe.

For instance, Plivo supports speech recognition in 27 languages and their regional variants. 

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Integration with other platforms and services

AI voice agents easily integrate with platforms like customer relationship management (CRM) systems, Enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools, and ticketing software. They access and update customer data in real time to ensure accuracy.

These bots also pull relevant details, automate follow-up actions, and sync with communication channels like email or chat. This creates a personalized and consistent customer experience across all touchpoints.

Benefits of voice agents

Let’s now look at the benefits of AI voice agents.  

Enhanced user experience

Many businesses have concerns over the quality of a voice agent for customer service. However, a voice agent answers queries quickly regardless of the time of the day. Speedy, reliable answers are important to providing excellent service, making voice agents an invaluable tool for businesses looking to improve customer satisfaction.

Additionally, businesses can:

  • Handle routine queries and common tasks faster than human agents.
  • Remove the need for users to navigate complex IVR menus.
  • Manage high-volume calls without errors.

Better cost efficiency

An AI voice agent doesn’t just save time, it also saves money. It boosts user satisfaction and reduces support times by automating repetitive queries. This frees up staff for higher-value tasks, and interacting with customers after hours has improved lead conversion.

The direct benefits to businesses are:

  • Reduces the need for a larger customer support team.
  • Allows human agents to focus on complex, high-value inquiries.
  • Engages users outside business hours to boost marketing return on investment (ROI).
  • Lowers training costs and minimizes the risk of providing incorrect information.

Accessibility for users with disabilities

With over one billion people living with disabilities worldwide, voice agents make services more inclusive. They enable hands-free, accessible interactions, allowing customers with visual, motor, or cognitive impairments to engage with the business easily. This not only improves customer satisfaction but also broadens the company’s reach to a more diverse audience.

Data collection and analysis for improved services

Voice agents don’t just serve customers — they also gather insights. Use this data to analyze data and improve services, personalize marketing efforts, and make more informed business decisions.

24/7 availability

Unlike human agents, voice agents are always accessible. They ensure customers get help whenever they need it, contributing to a more consistent and reliable customer experience.

Future of AI voice technology

As IBM's data engineer, Chris Hay puts it, "We're entering an era where every mom-and-pop shop can have the same level of customer service as an enterprise." This statement captures the transformative potential of voice recognition technology.

AI voice chat applications benefit businesses of all sizes by delivering top-tier customer experiences. Tech giants are already paving the way. Microsoft has updated its Copilot AI with advanced voice capabilities, allowing it to handle complex queries with natural language reasoning, while Meta has introduced voice AI to its messaging apps.

AI voice assistants will move beyond smartphones, integrating into wearable devices like the recently unveiled Meta Orion augmented reality glasses. For businesses handling sensitive client relationships, this could mean smarter, empathetic bots that mirror the tone and approach of a human assistant.

Key upcoming trends:

  • Hyper-personalization: Customized voices and targeted recommendations.
  • Advanced problem-solving: Managing complex queries using natural language.
  • Real-time analytics: Analyzing customer tone for deeper insights.

Yet, challenges remain. Arvind Rongala, the founder of a skill-management solution provider, shares, “There are still issues, especially with data privacy and ensuring interactions are human-like. In addition to resolving problems with bias in training data and regulatory compliance, businesses must strike a balance between automation and personalization. For example, adhering to GDPR regarding the storage of voice data can be challenging, but doing so is essential to fostering trust.”

Ultimately, businesses need to prioritize data security, explore multi-device integration options, and develop stronger contextual understanding for natural interactions.

Launch an AI voice agent with Plivo

Any scaling business needs a voice agent that's easy to integrate, globally accessible, and cost-effective without sacrificing quality.

Plivo checks all these boxes, offering seamless integration, seven global points of presence for low-latency interactions, and competitive rates starting at just $0.0040 per minute. It's ideal for businesses willing to scale while keeping operational costs in check.

In fact, Plivo can reduce operational costs by up to 40%.

Moreover, its commitment to reliability is backed by a 99.99% uptime guarantee, with failover capabilities that switch within two seconds if any disruptions occur.

You can launch voice agents with Plivo using just a few lines of code.

  • Log in to your OpenAI Account: Secure your API key and RealTime API access.
  • Log in to your Plivo Account: Sign up and get a voice-enabled number.

With integration options for leading speech-to-text (STT) and TTS providers like Deepgram and ElevenLabs, you can launch AI voice agents in multiple regions, including India, using local numbers.

Use Plivo-powered voice agents for: 

  • Personal shopping assistance: Offer personalized recommendations, go through product selections, and close sales. 
  • Healthcare automation: Improve patient outcomes with medication reminders, and appointment scheduling, and offer preliminary health assessments.
  • Inclusivity in education: Break language barriers in learning with real-time translations and personalized tutoring across multiple subjects.
  • Routine financial services automation: Provide instant account information, personalized financial advice, transaction processing status, etc. to customers.

With a 24/7 AI voice agent, your business can handle these tasks around the clock, ensuring that customers are never left waiting. Want to improve customer experience with Plivo? Contact us today.

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Feb 16, 2026
5 mins

8 Best AI Voice Automation Platforms in 2026

e Automation Software for Sales & Support (2026) Meta Description: Explore the 8 best AI voice automation platforms in 2026. Compare enterprise-ready tools for sales, support, scheduling, and intelligent call handling.

8 Best AI Voice Automation Platforms in 2026

The era of "Press 1 for Sales" is effectively over. In 2026, customers expect immediate, intelligent conversation, and businesses that stick to rigid keypad menus are actively losing revenue.

Modern voice automation has evolved far beyond simple call routing. Today's best platforms enable you to deploy infinite agents that sound, think, and react like your top employees, handling complex sales objections, scheduling appointments, and resolving support tickets without a human ever picking up the phone.

But with hundreds of new tools flooding the market, finding one that actually delivers low latency and stability is a challenge. We have analyzed the top contenders to bring you the 8 platforms that are truly enterprise-ready.

Here is the list.

How to select the best AI voice automation platforms

To ensure this list serves both technical engineering teams and non-technical business owners, we evaluated eight platforms based on four critical performance metrics:

  • Latency & Human-Likeness: We prioritized platforms that minimize the "awkward pause" (sub-1000ms response times) and offer voices that capture human nuance, including the ability to handle interruptions and "barge-ins" naturally.
  • Integration Capabilities: A voice agent is only as good as the data it can access. We selected tools that offer deep, native integrations with major CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce) or robust APIs that allow the agent to trigger complex backend actions.
  • Reliability at Scale: We looked for infrastructure capable of handling hundreds of concurrent calls without degrading audio quality or crashing, ensuring stability for high-volume campaigns.
  • Flexibility (Code vs. No-Code): We purposefully included a mix of "developer-first" APIs (for maximum control) and "no-code" visual builders (for rapid deployment) to cater to different organizational needs.

Also Read: AI Voice Agents-The Complete Guide to Voice Chat

A Quick Overview of the Best AI Voice Automation Platforms

Tool Best for What it does best Key strengths Pricing
Plivo Businesses needing reliable AI phone calls at any scale Automates real customer phone conversations across voice, SMS, and WhatsApp Owns its full telephony stack for ultra-low latency and 99.99% uptime Pay-as-you-go; Enterprise from ~$1,000/month
Bland AI Enterprises running very high call volumes Handles massive inbound and outbound call campaigns Scales concurrent calls with highly programmable logic Custom pricing (contact sales)
Vapi Developers building custom voice agents with BYOK Orchestrates STT, LLMs, and TTS with extremely low latency Model-agnostic, developer-first infrastructure Usage-based, $10 free credit
Retell AI Developers turning LLMs into voice agents fast Converts existing LLMs into real-time phone agents Industry-leading latency with minimal VoIP setup Pay-as-you-go; Enterprise available
Synthflow Agencies and non-technical teams Builds appointment booking and lead intake agents without code Visual builder with deep CRM integrations Pay-as-you-go; Enterprise tier
Poly AI Large consumer brands with complex calls Handles messy, interrupt-driven customer conversations Best-in-class speech understanding for accents and noise Custom enterprise pricing
Cognigy Enterprises with regulated contact centers Automates complex support flows with compliance controls Hybrid NLU + GenAI for safe automation Custom enterprise pricing
Talkie AI Healthcare clinics and medical offices

Top 8 AI Voice Automation Platforms

Plivo

Best for: Businesses that need to automate actual customer phone calls with high reliability and low latency, scaling from simple no-code workflows to complex, programmable enterprise solutions.

Plivo is a voice-first AI agent and cloud communications platform that distinguishes itself by owning and operating its entire telephony, messaging, and AI stack. Unlike many tools that rely on third-party carriers like Twilio, Plivo's single-stack approach significantly reduces latency and improves reliability, boasting 99.99% uptime and compliance with standards like HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI DSS. Small businesses can start quickly with its no-code builder, "Vibe," using plain English instructions, while enterprises can leverage powerful programmable APIs to build complex, multi-channel workflows that share context across voice, SMS, and WhatsApp without ever switching platforms.

Key features

  • Built-In Telephony: Native phone numbers, global connectivity, and SIP trunking without dependence on external carriers.
  • Real-Time Audio Streaming: Streams live call audio via WebSockets for low-latency speech recognition and natural turn-taking.
  • Multi-Channel AI Conversations: Extends agent logic and context across voice, SMS, and WhatsApp for consistent interactions.
  • No-Code AI Agent Builder (Vibe): Allows users to create and deploy voice agents by defining goals and workflows in plain English.
  • Programmable APIs & Integrations: Full control over workflows with well-documented APIs and webhooks to connect with CRMs and internal systems.

Pros

  • Reduced Latency: Owning the telephony infrastructure eliminates hops to third-party carriers, ensuring faster response times.
  • Production-Grade Reliability: Trusted by Fortune 500 companies with a 99.99% uptime guarantee.
  • Seamless Scalability: Start with a small no-code workflow and scale to a fully programmable production system without rebuilding.

Cons

  • Overkill for Basic Needs: Not ideal for businesses that only require a simple IVR or voicemail system with no AI logic.
  • Configuration Required: Not suited for users seeking a pre-scripted, vertical-specific agent with zero configuration.

Pricing

Plivo offers pay-as-you-go pricing on our Professional plan with no monthly commitment, while Enterprise plans start at $1,000 per month for teams that need higher scale and dedicated support.

Bland AI

Best for: Hyper-scalable, enterprise-grade automated phone calls and voice agent workflows where large call volumes and deep customization matter most.

Bland AI is a voice automation platform focused on handling both inbound and outbound phone interactions using realistic conversational AI. Built with enterprise needs in mind, it provides programmable call flows, voice synthesis, and integration hooks that let teams automate complex telephony use cases, such as sales outreach, customer support, appointment reminders, and high-volume engagement, without relying on large human call center teams.

Key features

  • Realistic, human-like voice agents capable of sustaining natural phone conversations.
  • Developer-first APIs and webhook access for custom call logic and integration with CRM/telephony systems.
  • Support for high concurrency and massive call volume automation.
  • Voice cloning and multilingual voice customization options.
  • Pathways or programmable conversation flows to define logic, routing, and call outcomes.

Pros

  • Handles large call volumes reliably without degradation
  • Strong customization through APIs and programmable logic
  • Voice quality is more natural than many competitors

Cons 

  • Steep learning curve for non-technical teams
  • Costs can escalate quickly with high usage

Pricing 

Bland AI does not publish pricing publicly, and you need to contact their sales team for current plans and quotes.

Vapi

Best for:  Developers who want a low-latency orchestration layer to mix and match the best AI models (BYOK) for their specific needs.

Vapi is a dedicated infrastructure that glues together various AI components rather than offering a single black-box solution. It handles the difficult mechanics of voice conversation, such as turn-taking, endpointing (knowing when someone has finished speaking), and latency optimization, while allowing you to plug in any provider you want. This means you aren't locked into a specific voice model; you can use Deepgram for transcription, OpenAI for intelligence, and ElevenLabs for speech, all orchestrated seamlessly by Vapi.

Key features

  • Developer APIs and SDKs for full workflow control
  • Real-time voice orchestration with low latency (sub-600 ms)
  • Plug-and-play with multiple STT, LLM, and TTS providers
  • Support for inbound and outbound voice agents via telephony or web embeds
  • Multilingual support and customizable conversation logic

Pros

  • Allows instant swapping of LLMs, voices, or transcribers as better models hit the market
  • "Bring Your Own Key" model avoids the usage markups typical of all-in-one platforms
  • Clean, modern API with excellent documentation tailored specifically for software engineers

Cons 

  • Not beginner-friendly or no-code
  • Costs increase as external services scale

Pricing

Usage-based, pay-as-you-go pricing with a free $10 credit, plus custom enterprise plans via annual contract.

Retell AI

Best for: Developers seeking the fastest route to convert an existing LLM into a low-latency voice agent.

Retell AI is an AI voice agent platform that lets businesses build, deploy, and manage conversational phone agents that sound human, handle inbound/outbound calls, and automate routine workflows with low latency and high reliability. It combines speech-to-text, LLM intelligence, and telephony integration into a unified system for customer service, lead qualification, scheduling, and more.

Key features

  • Connects to any custom LLM backend (OpenAI, Anthropic) via WebSocket
  • Visual dashboard for testing prompts and voices without code
  • Built-in noise cancellation for clear audio transcription
  • Supports both phone numbers and web-based audio streaming
  • Detailed post-call analytics including latency breakdowns

Pros

  • Visual playground enables testing ideas in minutes
  • Industry-leading latency (often <800ms) for natural pacing
  • Removes the need to build complex VoIP infrastructure

Cons 

  • Complex logic requires hosting and managing your own server
  • Creates a dependency on their proprietary gateway

Pricing

No platform fees with pay-as-you-go usage pricing, plus a custom enterprise plan for high-volume teams.

Synthflow

Best for: Agencies and non-technical teams who need a no-code visual builder to automate appointment setting and lead intake.

Synthflow AI is a voice automation platform designed to help businesses automate inbound and outbound phone interactions using intuitive visual builders and enterprise-grade telephony. It combines speech recognition, natural language understanding, and human-like voice synthesis to create AI agents capable of handling real customer conversations at scale.

Key features

  • Visual drag-and-drop flow builder for designing conversation paths
  • Native deep integrations with GoHighLevel, HubSpot, and Zapier
  • One-click appointment booking and real-time calendar syncing
  • White-labeling capabilities allowing agencies to resell the software
  • Pre-built templates for niche industries like real estate and dental

Pros

  • Enables rapid deployment of functional agents without any coding knowledge
  • Seamlessly automates post-call tasks like updating lead status in CRMs
  • Agency-focused features simplify client management and resale
  • Huge library of templates drastically reduces setup time

Cons 

  • Lacks the granular control and flexibility of code-based solutions
  • Customizing complex backend logic beyond standard integrations is difficult

Pricing

Synthflow's pricing consists of a usage-based "Pay as you go" model that is free to start and a custom "Enterprise" tier for teams handling more than 10,000 minutes per month.

Poly AI

Best for: Large consumer brands (restaurants, hospitality, banking) needing human-like voice assistants that handle messy, complex conversations.

PolyAI distinguishes itself by building voice assistants designed for "customer-led" conversations—meaning the caller can speak freely, interrupt, tell stories, or mumble, and the AI will still understand. Unlike developer-focused tools (like Vapi) or sales-focused tools (like Air.ai), PolyAI is a managed enterprise solution. They use proprietary speech recognition models trained specifically on billions of seconds of conversational data to handle heavy accents and background noise better than off-the-shelf models.

Key features

  • Proprietary speech recognition tuned for names, addresses, and noisy backgrounds
  • Enables free-flowing, customer-led conversations without rigid IVR menus
  • Detects frustration to trigger seamless handoffs with full context
  • Native support for 120+ languages and accents in a single assistant
  • Pre-built voice modules for hospitality, banking, and dining

Pros

  • Handles interruptions and messy speech significantly better than competitors
  • Resolves 80-90% of calls autonomously due to superior understanding
  • Managed service model eliminates hallucination risks for enterprise brands

Cons 

  • High cost makes it unsuitable for small businesses or startups
  • Closed "black box" system requiring their team for all changes

Pricing

Poly AI does not publish pricing publicly, and you need to contact their sales team for current plans and quotes.

Cognigy

Best for: Large enterprises automating complex contact centers with a mix of precise NLU and Generative AI.

Cognigy is an enterprise-grade platform designed to sit directly on top of existing contact center infrastructure (like Genesys or Avaya). It distinguishes itself with a "Hybrid AI" approach, allowing businesses to combine rigid NLU for compliance-heavy tasks (like payments) with Generative AI for natural conversation. This ensures high-stakes customer service interactions are both fluid and strictly controlled.

Key features

  • Visual low-code flow editor for designing complex conversational logic
  • Native integration with major CCaaS platforms (Genesys, Avaya, NICE)
  • Hybrid engine combining traditional NLU with Large Language Models
  • Seamless "Agent Handover" that transfers full call context to human reps
  • Enterprise-grade security and compliance certifications (GDPR, SOC2)

Pros

  • Safely automates highly regulated enterprise processes
  • Preserves context perfectly when transferring calls to humans
  • Deep integrations with backend systems like SAP and Salesforce
  • Scales effectively to handle massive enterprise call volumes

Cons 

  • Implementation is complex and often requires professional services
  • Pricing and architecture are overkill for SMEs or simple use cases

Pricing

Cognigy does not publish pricing publicly, and you need to contact their sales team for current plans and quotes.

Talkie AI

Best for: Medical clinics and healthcare providers automating patient scheduling and front-desk triage.

Talkie.ai specializes in voice assistants for the healthcare industry, serving as an intelligent virtual receptionist that handles high call volumes without human intervention. The platform focuses on simplifying patient access by autonomously managing appointment bookings, prescription refills, and routing urgent calls, while offering a user-friendly interface for non-technical staff to manage flows.

Key features

  • Specialized modules for appointment booking and patient triage
  • No-code visual builder for designing conversation scripts
  • Seamless handover to live agents for complex medical queries
  • Multi-language support to serve diverse patient populations
  • Integrations with medical scheduling systems and calendars

Pros

  • Drastically reduces front-desk workload and missed patient calls
  • Pre-trained on healthcare scenarios for better medical context understanding
  • Rapid deployment compared to general-purpose enterprise voice tools
  • Ensures 24/7 availability for patient inquiries

Cons 

  • Heavily optimized for healthcare, making it less ideal for general retail sales
  • Advanced custom integrations usually require enterprise-tier setups

Pricing

Talkie AI does not publish pricing publicly, and you need to contact their sales team for current plans and quotes.

How to choose an AI voice automation platform for your business

Choosing the right AI voice automation platform comes down to understanding how it will fit into your team, your workflows, and your growth plans. These questions will help you evaluate options in a practical, business-focused way.

1. Will your team need a no-code tool or a developer-first platform?

This matters because the people building and maintaining the system determine how quickly you can launch and improve it. If your team is non-technical, a no-code platform lets you move faster. If you have engineers and need deep customization, a developer-first tool gives you more flexibility long term.

2. How many calls do you need to support now and as you grow?

Call volume affects both cost and performance. A platform that works well at a small scale may become expensive or unreliable as usage increases, so it is important to choose something that can grow with your business without surprises.

3. How complex do your conversations and workflows need to be?

Some businesses only need straightforward call flows, while others require integrations, branching logic, or real-time actions. The more complex your workflows are, the more important it is to choose a platform that can handle real conversations rather than rigid scripts.

4. How important are voice quality and response speed for your use case?

Natural speech and quick responses make a big difference in how callers perceive the experience. If the AI sounds robotic or pauses too long, it can reduce trust and engagement, especially in customer-facing roles like sales or support.

5. Does the pricing model align with how you plan to use the platform?

Pricing structures vary widely between platforms. Understanding whether you are paying per minute, per call, or per feature helps you estimate costs accurately and avoid unexpected increases as your usage grows.

Try Plivo Free

Exploring AI voice automation should feel straightforward and low-risk. Plivo lets you start with a free trial and complimentary credits so you can test real voice automation use cases without any upfront commitment.

You can create and run AI-driven phone calls using Plivo’s visual tools or APIs, allowing you to see how automated voice interactions behave in real conditions. This includes testing inbound call handling, outbound call flows, and multi-channel automation across voice, SMS, and WhatsApp, all using your own workflows and data.

Starting with a free trial gives you the flexibility to validate performance, reliability, and fit before deciding how extensively you want to adopt AI voice automation across your business.

Start your free trial and build your first AI voice automation experience today.

Feb 16, 2026
5 mins

8 Best AI Voice Agents for Recruitment in 2026

Discover the 8 best AI voice agents for recruitment in 2026. Compare features, use cases, and pricing to automate candidate screening and hiring.

8 Best AI Voice Agents for Recruitment in 2026

Recruitment teams don’t struggle because they lack applicants. They struggle because every job post brings in hundreds of responses, many of them unqualified, and screening them all takes time recruiters don’t have.

AI voice agents help by handling the repetitive, early-stage conversations - screening candidates over the phone, asking the right questions, and routing qualified applicants forward - so recruiters can focus on real hiring decisions.

In this guide, we’ve curated the top AI voice agents for recruitment, based on what actually matters. Let’s begin.

A Quick Overview of the Top AI Voice Agents for Recruitment

Tool Best for What it does best Key strength Pricing
Plivo Recruitment teams that want to run real AI voice agents on actual phone calls End-to-end AI voice agents built on native telephony Owns telephony + AI stack, low latency, high reliability Pay-as-you-go (Professional); Enterprise starts at $1,000/month
Lindy Lean recruiting teams that want fast AI voice automation Voice agents for calls, follow-ups, and scheduling Quick setup, strong for coordination tasks Free tier available; paid plans from $49.99/month
Twilio Engineering-led teams building custom AI voice recruiters Programmable voice infrastructure Maximum flexibility and global scale Usage-based, approx. $0.008–$0.014/min
HeyMilo Staffing teams running large-scale AI interviews AI-led voice interviews with scoring Scalable, structured screening Custom pricing (sales-led)
Synthflow HR teams wanting no-code AI voice workflows Build custom voice agents visually No-code flexibility, modular flows Pay-as-you-go; Enterprise for high volume
CloudTalk Teams needing a calling platform with AI automation AI voice agents + call center tooling Strong dialing, analytics, global coverage From $25/user/month (annual billing)
Talvin Teams focused on screening and reference checks AI voice interviews + automated references Structured, qualification-first hiring $175–$750/month
Voiceflow Product-led teams that want to design and control AI voice logic Build AI agents using knowledge bases and workflows Strong conversation design and collaboration Free plan; paid from $60–$150/month

Top 8 AI Voice Agents for Recruitment

Plivo

Best for: Recruitment teams and hiring platforms that want to run real AI voice agents on actual phone calls, not demos or chat-only experiences.

Plivo is a voice-first AI agent and cloud communications platform built to automate real phone conversations at scale. Unlike many AI voice tools that depend on external telephony providers, Plivo owns and operates its telephony, messaging, and AI layers as a single stack. This gives teams more consistent call quality, lower latency, and better reliability as volume increases.

For recruitment use cases, this matters because screening calls, qualification conversations, and candidate follow-ups need to work predictably. Teams can start quickly using Plivo’s no-code AI agent builder, Vibe, and then add deeper programmable control through APIs as workflows grow more complex, without switching platforms.

Plivo is trusted by Fortune 500 companies worldwide, delivers 99.99% uptime, and complies with standards such as HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and STAR, making it suitable for high-volume and regulated hiring environments.

Key features

  • Build AI voice agents on real phone calls: Plivo lets teams build AI agents that answer, route, qualify, and complete conversations on inbound and outbound phone calls using its native voice infrastructure.
  • No-code AI agent builder (Vibe): Vibe allows teams to create and deploy AI voice agents using plain-English instructions. Recruiters can define goals, workflows, and actions without writing code, then iterate as hiring needs evolve.
  • Built-in telephony (not third-party): Phone numbers, global connectivity, call routing, recording, and SIP trunking are native to Plivo. This avoids reliance on external carriers and helps maintain low latency and high uptime.
  • Real-time audio streaming: Plivo streams live call audio over WebSockets to AI runtimes, enabling low-latency speech recognition and responses, natural turn-taking, and interruption handling during conversations.
  • Programmable voice and messaging APIs: Well-documented APIs and SDKs give teams full control over calls, messages, verification, number masking, and workflows, making it easy to integrate AI agents with ATSs, CRMs, and internal systems.
  • Multi-channel AI conversations: The same agent logic can run across voice, SMS, WhatsApp, and chat, with shared context across channels so candidates do not have to repeat themselves.

Pros 

  • Reliable performance at scale: Users consistently cite stability and uptime, even with high call volumes.
  • Strong telephony control: Teams value having direct ownership of routing, numbers, and call behavior.
  • Flexible for both no-code and API users: Works well for recruiters and engineering teams alike.

Cons

  • More capability than very simple use cases require: Smaller teams may not use the full platform depth.
  • Advanced workflows benefit from upfront planning: Complex agent logic requires thoughtful setup. 

Pricing

Plivo offers pay-as-you-go pricing on the Professional plan with no monthly commitment, while Enterprise plans start at $1,000 per month for teams that need higher scale and dedicated support.

Lindy 

Best for: Recruiting teams that want a flexible, AI voice agent to handle candidate calls, follow-ups, and interview scheduling without heavy engineering work.

Lindy is an AI agent platform that lets recruiters deploy voice-enabled AI assistants to manage candidate communication across phone calls, calendars, and workflows. Rather than being a pure telecom infrastructure provider, Lindy focuses on task-oriented AI agents that can talk to candidates, coordinate schedules, and take action across tools like email and calendars. This makes it especially useful for lean recruiting teams that want automation without building everything from scratch.

Key features

  • Place and receive natural-sounding phone calls with candidates for screening, follow-ups, and confirmations
  • Coordinates availability and books interviews directly on connected calendars
  • AI agents can call candidates, send emails, update records, and trigger next steps automatically
  • Connects with calendars, email, and internal tools to keep recruiting workflows in sync
  • Escalates conversations to a recruiter when the AI detects uncertainty or complex questions

Pros

  • Recruiters can launch AI voice workflows without deep technical setup
  • Especially effective for scheduling, rescheduling, and candidate follow-ups
  • Can reason across steps instead of just asking static screening questions

Cons

  • Lacks deep hiring metrics or ATS-native reporting
  • Less granular call routing and voice infrastructure control than CPaaS platforms 

Pricing

Lindy offers a free plan with 400 credits per month. Paid plans start at $49.99 per month.

Twilio 

Best for: Engineering-led recruiting teams that want to build highly customizable AI voice agents on top of enterprise-grade voice and messaging infrastructure.

Twilio is a cloud communications platform that provides programmable APIs for voice calls, SMS, and messaging. In recruitment, it’s often used as the underlying infrastructure for AI voice agents that handle candidate screening calls, interview scheduling, reminders, and follow-ups. Rather than offering ready-made recruiting agents, Twilio gives teams the building blocks to design custom voice workflows tailored to their hiring process.

Key features

  • Twilio lets you design exactly how calls are placed, routed, recorded, and escalated, giving full control over the candidate calling experience.
  • Built-in support for international phone numbers, SMS, and voice delivery makes it suitable for distributed or global hiring.
  • Twilio integrates cleanly with speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and large language models to power conversational AI agents.
  • Voice events can trigger downstream actions in ATSs, CRMs, calendars, or internal systems.

Pros

  • You’re not constrained by predefined workflows—every part of the voice experience can be tailored to your hiring process.
  • Designed to handle high call volumes with strong uptime and telecom stability.
  • Suitable for advanced or global recruiting operations where off-the-shelf tools fall short.

Cons

  • Building an AI voice recruiter with Twilio requires technical resources and ongoing development.
  • As call volume and automation increase, usage-based pricing can become expensive.

Pricing

Usage-based, pay-as-you-go pricing starting at roughly $0.008–$0.014 per minute for voice calls, with additional costs for phone numbers and advanced features.

HeyMilo

Best for: Recruiters and staffing teams that want AI-powered voice interviews and automated candidate screening at scale. 

HeyMilo is a recruitment platform built around conversational AI voice and multimedia interviewing, designed to automate candidate engagement, screening, evaluation, and structured interviews. Instead of just asking preset questions, HeyMilo’s AI adapts dynamically to candidate responses and delivers data-backed insights tailored to each role. 

Key features

  • Natural two-way spoken interviews that adapt to candidate responses and assess fit.
  • Contacts applicants via phone, web voice/video, SMS, email, and WhatsApp.
  • Provides structured interview reports and scoring to inform hiring decisions.
  • Works with existing applicant tracking and HR systems to sync data.
  • Enables interviews and outreach in multiple languages for global recruiting.

Pros

  • Can conduct hundreds of interviews simultaneously, easing burden on recruiters. 
  • Automated scoring and structured interviews help reduce manual variation. 

Cons

  • AI may struggle with very open-ended or highly contextual responses that a human interviewer would catch. 
  • Teams need to configure questions and scoring to fit specific roles and workflows. 

Pricing

HeyMilo does not publish pricing publicly, and you need to contact their sales team for current plans and quotes.

Synthflow

Best for: HR departments at mid-sized companies looking to automate interview scheduling and FAQ handling.

Synthflow is a no-code conversational AI platform that lets users design, launch, and manage AI voice agents to automate phone interactions. Rather than providing a ready-made recruiter bot, Synthflow gives teams a visual builder where they can create custom voice workflows. It emphasizes flexibility and usability, making it suitable for recruiting teams that want to own their own voice agent logic without writing code.

Key features

  • You can design modular voice flows with a no-code builder where specialized "subflows" act as independent agents to manage complex logic, such as a "Verification Agent" for candidate ID or an "Appointment Agent" for booking interviews.
  • Provides enterprise-grade telephony integrations to ensure reliable inbound and outbound calling.
  • A dedicated environment to test recruitment scripts and agent responses before they go live with real candidates.
  • Offers live insights into active calls, allowing recruitment managers to track performance and candidate engagement as it happens.
  • Allows for the refinement of the AI’s underlying data to ensure the recruiter's brand voice and industry-specific terminology are accurate.

Pros

  • Teams can build and iterate voice agents without engineering resources.
  • Works for screening, candidate engagement, follow-ups, and scheduling.
  • Built to manage higher call volumes as hiring needs grow.

Cons

  • Requires manual building of hiring-focused flows and templates.
  • Deep conversational logic and integration workflows benefit from thoughtful design and testing.

Pricing

Synthflow's pricing consists of a usage-based "Pay as you go" model that is free to start and a custom "Enterprise" tier for teams handling more than 10,000 minutes per month.

CloudTalk

Best for: Teams that need a cloud-based calling platform with AI voice agents and automation.

CloudTalk is a cloud call center platform that combines VoIP calling with AI-powered automation and voice agents. While it’s not built exclusively for recruitment, its AI voice agents, smart dialers, and call routing features make it well-suited for hiring teams that rely heavily on phone communication. Recruiters can use CloudTalk to automate outbound candidate calls, handle inbound inquiries, and track call performance through built-in analytics and conversation intelligence.

Key features

  • Virtual voice agents that can autonomously answer and place calls, handle routine interactions, and support self-serve caller experiences. 
  • Dialers, automated routing, IVR menus, and parallel dialing to manage large outbound and inbound call volumes. 
  • Local numbers in 160+ countries with VoIP calling, SMS, and messaging options. 
  • Connects with CRMs, helpdesks, and workflow systems for synced activity and inbox-to-call continuity.

Pros

  • Combines calling, campaign automation, and AI workflows in a single system. 
  • Support for international numbers and multi-region operations. 
  • Built-in conversation intelligence and analytics help teams understand patterns and coach more effectively. 

Cons

  • It’s primarily a call center and sales/support voice platform, so recruiters may need extra configuration for hiring use cases. 
  • Broad call center capabilities can overwhelm teams only seeking simple voice agent recruiting tools.

Pricing

CloudTalk offers user-based subscription plans for its core calling platform, starting at $25 per user/month when billed annually, with higher tiers adding advanced features like analytics and automation.

Talvin 

Best for: Hiring teams that want an AI voice recruiter focused on structured screening and automated reference checks, not just interview scheduling or call automation.

Talvin is an AI recruitment platform built around voice-based candidate screening and reference checks. Its AI conducts structured, conversational interviews over voice to assess communication, experience, and role fit, then follows up with automated reference calls to gather standardized feedback. Talvin is positioned less as a general-purpose voice agent and more as a screening and validation layer that helps recruiters qualify candidates before human interviews. 

Key features

  • Talvin conducts structured phone interviews to assess candidate fit early, so recruiters aren’t reviewing unqualified applicants.
  • Instead of manual follow-ups, Talvin collects reference feedback automatically and delivers it in a standardized format.
  • Interview questions and scoring are tailored to each role, keeping evaluations consistent across candidates.
  • Recruiters receive clear interview and reference reports rather than raw call recordings.

Pros

  • Designed specifically to screen and validate candidates, not just move them through a funnel.
  • Eliminates one of the most time-consuming and error-prone steps in hiring.
  • Standardized interviews and references make it easier to compare candidates objectively.

Cons

  • Not intended for outreach campaigns, scheduling-only workflows, or high-volume dialing.
  • Often paired with an ATS or sourcing platform rather than used end-to-end.

Pricing

Talvin’s plans start at $175/month and scale up to $750/month, based on interview volume and hiring needs.

VoiceFlow

Best for: Product-led recruiting teams that want to design and control the logic of AI voice conversations before deploying them on phone calls.

Voiceflow is a collaborative platform where teams design, develop, and launch AI agents using their preferred models and integrations. In practice, you build an agent by first creating a knowledge base, then adding workflows that define what the agent should do, integrating third-party tools through APIs, and finally launching the agent through Voiceflow’s web chat UI or the Dialog API.

For recruitment, this is useful when you want an agent that can answer candidate questions, guide screening conversations, and trigger workflow steps like collecting details, confirming availability, or handing off to a human, all while staying consistent with your hiring process.

Key features

  • Import documents and data so the agent answers using curated, controlled information rather than guessing.
  • Create multi-step tasks the agent can complete, so conversations can lead to actions, not just responses.
  • Connect the agent to third-party services using Voiceflow Functions and API blocks.
  • Deploy using Voiceflow’s web chat UI or build your own interface using the Dialog API.
  • Designed for teams to build and iterate together, rather than working in isolated scripts.

Pros 

  • Strong control over how screening and interview conversations are structured.
  • Teams can refine conversations without touching telephony systems.
  • Recruiters, designers, and product teams can work together on flows.

Cons 

  • Requires a telephony platform to place and receive calls.
  • Teams must design screening logic from scratch.

Pricing 

Voiceflow offers a free Starter plan, with paid plans starting at $60/month (Pro) and $150/month (Business), while Enterprise pricing is custom for high-volume teams.

Questions to ask before choosing an AI voice agent for recruitment

1. Who actually owns the calling infrastructure?

When evaluating an AI voice agent, one of the first things to understand is how calls are handled behind the scenes. Some platforms rely heavily on third-party telephony providers, while others manage their own calling infrastructure more directly.

This distinction matters because it affects call quality, routing control, and reliability as usage grows. Tools with tighter control over their telephony stack tend to behave more predictably, especially when call volume increases or issues need to be diagnosed quickly.

2. Does the agent respond quickly enough to feel natural?

Voice conversations depend on timing. Even small delays between a candidate’s response and the agent’s reply can make the interaction feel uncomfortable or disjointed.

A well-designed AI voice agent should respond promptly and consistently throughout the conversation. This usually reflects how well speech recognition, language processing, and voice generation work together in real time. If responses feel slow or uneven during a demo, that friction will likely show up even more in real recruiting scenarios.

3. Is the product actually designed for recruitment conversations?

Recruitment is not a generic use case. Screening candidates requires structured questions, follow-ups based on previous answers, and clear decision points about what happens next.

Some voice agents are flexible but require significant customization to support hiring workflows. Others are built with recruitment logic in mind from the start. The difference shows up in how easily the agent can handle screening, availability checks, and smooth handoffs to human recruiters.

4. How does it handle things going off script?

Real conversations are rarely perfect. Candidates interrupt, misunderstand questions, or give incomplete answers.

An effective AI voice agent should be able to handle these moments without breaking the experience. This includes asking for clarification, continuing the conversation naturally, or exiting gracefully when needed. Systems that cannot manage these situations tend to feel fragile in real-world use.

5. Will it still work when hiring volume increases?

Hiring needs fluctuate. A tool that performs well for a small number of calls may struggle when activity ramps up.

It is important to understand how the platform behaves under higher load, both technically and operationally. This includes call quality, reliability, and whether usage scales in a predictable way. A system that handles growth smoothly allows recruiting teams to expand outreach without introducing new problems.

Try Plivo free

Getting started with AI voice agents for recruitment doesn’t need to be complicated or risky. With Plivo, you can sign up for a free trial account and get free credits to test real AI-powered phone calls, without committing upfront or changing your existing hiring workflows.

You can experiment with live screening calls, candidate follow-ups, and interview coordination using Plivo’s no-code tools or APIs. This lets you simulate real recruiting scenarios with your own data and logic before deciding how deeply you want to scale automation across voice, SMS, and WhatsApp.

Get started with your free trial today and begin building your first AI voice agent for recruitment.

FAQs

What is an AI voice agent in recruitment?

An AI voice agent is a system that conducts phone conversations with candidates to handle tasks like screening, availability checks, and interview scheduling.

Can AI voice agents replace recruiters?

No. They are designed to support recruiters by automating repetitive early-stage tasks, not to replace human decision-making.

Are AI voice agents reliable for candidate screening?

They work well for structured, rule-based screening, but nuanced evaluation and final decisions should still be handled by humans.

What should companies look for when choosing an AI voice agent?

Key factors include call quality, response speed, recruitment-specific workflows, and the ability to scale reliably with hiring volume.

Feb 16, 2026
5 mins

Best AI Voice Agents for E-commerce (2026): Top Platforms Compared

Compare the best AI voice agents for e-commerce in 2026. See which platforms handle real calls, integrate with your stack and scale reliably.

Best AI Voice Agents for E-commerce (2026): 

Top Platforms Compared

E-commerce brands don’t lose customers because of poor products, they lose them because conversations aren’t fast enough. Buyers now expect real-time assistance for order status, delivery issues, returns and payments, often beyond business hours. 

That’s where AI voice agents help. Unlike IVRs or basic bots, modern voice agents can understand natural speech and intent, answer calls instantly, pull order data from your systems, resolve common issues and hand off to humans when needed. For e-commerce teams, this means fewer missed calls, lower support costs, and faster resolution.

This list has analysed the best AI voice agents for e-commerce in 2026, focusing on how they actually perform in production, what role they play in your stack and which types of teams they truly fit.

Platform Comparison

Top 10 AI voice agents for E-commerce (2026)

Platform Voice Handling Telephony Ownership E-commerce Integrations Multi-Channel Continuity Production Readiness
Plivo Real-time inbound & outbound Native Native + API-driven Voice, SMS, WhatsApp, chat High (built for scale)
Aircall Inbound & outbound calls Native (cloud phone system) Strong CRM/helpdesk Voice + limited messaging High
Dialpad AI Human calls with AI assist Native CRM-focused Voice-centric High
Voiceflow Voice via integrations Integrated (Twilio/Vonage) API-based Voice + chat Medium
Cognigy Enterprise contact-center voice Integrated (CCaaS partners) Enterprise systems Voice + digital channels High
Talkdesk Contact-center voice automation Native (CCaaS) Retail CX tools Voice + digital channels High
Five9 IVA IVA layered on CCaaS Native (CCaaS) Enterprise CRM Voice-first High
Kore.ai Conversational AI platform Integrated Broad enterprise Voice + chat Medium
Replicant Autonomous inbound voice Integrated Limited e-commerce depth Voice-only Medium
Ada Chat-first, voice expanding Integrated E-commerce helpdesk Chat + emerging voice Medium

Plivo

Primary Role in Your E-commerce Stack

  • Acts as a backbone for customer-facing automation across order status, delivery issues, returns, COD confirmations and payment follow-ups.
  • Replaces basic IVRs and overflow call handling with actual AI-driven conversations that feel natural and can resolve issues or escalate intelligently.
  • Serves as an AI voice agent platform and a communications layer, not just a pre-programmed bot or a basic call tool. 

How It Works in Practice

  • Runs on native, carrier-grade telephony not dependent on third-party calling plugins, thus reducing latency and call failures.
  • Supports real-time inbound and outbound voice, including barge-in, transfers, call recording and queueing.
  • Lets you build custom voice agents using no-code instructions (Vibe) or programmatically via Voice, SMS and WhatsApp APIs.
  • Handles multi-channel engagement from one platform, making it easier to maintain customer context.
  • Integrates into backend systems via webhooks and APIs, so agents can fetch order data, update CRMs, trigger refunds or log tickets.
  • Scales globally with direct carrier connectivity and 99.99% uptime, which matters during sales spikes and seasonal traffic.
  • Offers easy integrations with CRMs and data tools and e-com apps like Shopify and WooCommerce.

Smart choice if you

  • Need reliable, real-time voice automation for customer support or sales in e-commerce.
  • Need HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS, SOC 2 compliance.
  • Want to avoid handling different telephony, AI and messaging vendors.
  • Expect call volume spikes during promotions, launches or holidays.
  • Plan to expand beyond voice into SMS or WhatsApp without changing platforms.

Not a fit if you

  • Only want a simple chatbot or basic call routing with no backend logic.
  • Need a fully packaged, zero-configuration voice bot with no customization.
  • Don’t plan to use voice as a serious support or revenue channel.
  • Want built-in analytics dashboards without integrating your own reporting tools.

Aircall

Primary Role in Your E-commerce Stack

  • Aircall is a cloud-based business phone and customer communications platform that encapsulates voice calls, messaging, contact-center workflows and AI-powered tools to help sales and support teams manage inbound and outbound customer conversations from a single hub.
  • Designed to replace traditional desk phones and stand-alone VoIP systems with a modern unified system that supports direct calling, routing, conferencing and analytics without infrastructure.
  • Aircall’s AI Voice Agent sits within the platform to automate basic call handling, answer inbound calls using natural language, capture caller details and hand off to humans with customer context.

How It Works in Practice

  • Its AI Voice Agent can handle inbound calls 24/7, respond using natural language, capture caller details or FAQs, and escalate with context. 
  • Aircall’s broader AI tooling (often sold as an add-on) includes call summarization, transcription, sentiment analysis, action items, key topic recognition and real-time coaching insights to boost team performance and intelligence.
  • Aircall integrates deeply with CRMs and helpdesk tools such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, Shopify, Gorgias, Intercom, Zoho, Slack and more.
  • Supports smart call routing, IVR menus, queueing, power dialers and contextual pop-ups that help agents see caller history and reduce manual steps.
  • In addition to voice calls, Aircall can connect WhatsApp messaging with your phone numbers, allowing teams to manage calls, texts, voicemails and WhatsApp messages from one unified workspace.

Smart choice if you

  • Want a cloud phone system that replaces traditional telephones and integrates voice + messaging + CRM in one place.
  • Are an SMB or mid-market team looking for easy setup and deep CRM/helpdesk integration with real-time call logging and analytics.
  • Want AI insights such as call summaries, sentiment analysis and action items tagging to support coaching and quality.

Not a fit if you

  • Are looking for standalone, autonomous voice agents that can handle complex transactional workflows (like order lookup, 2-way payment flows, or deep e-commerce logic) without human reliance. A lot of features in Aircall are paid add ons.
  • Want carrier-grade telephony control with full low-level API access. 
  • Require multi-channel unified conversational state that seamlessly moves between voice, SMS, WhatsApp, and web chat without separate configurations. Aircall integrates channels but isn’t designed as an omnichannel conversational AI platform at the same depth as standalone bot stacks.

Dialpad AI

Primary Role in Your E-commerce Stack

  • Dialpad is an AI-enhanced unified communications and contact-center platform built on VoIP telephony that combines voice calls, messaging, meeting tools and AI insights into one app.
  • Its AI layer focuses on increasing support and sales team productivity by transcribing calls, summarizing conversations, analyzing sentiment and providing live assistance to human agents rather than purely replacing them.
  • For e-commerce teams, Dialpad helps streamline customer support calls, sales conversations and agent workflows.

How It Works in Practice

  • Dialpad’s AI layer is built into its communications platform so transcription, summaries, sentiment tagging and insights happen automatically during calls and meetings. 
  • Live coaching and assist cards support tailored guidance during conversations, helping teams improve performance and consistency.
  • Its AI Agent and Generative AI features can provide answers from integrated knowledge bases and assist with repetitive tasks like scheduling or information lookups. Although this operates within a supervised environment rather than as a fully autonomous consumer voice bot.
  • Dialpad integrates with CRMs and support systems such as Salesforce, Zendesk, and others allowing call data and AI insights to sync into broader e-commerce workflows but developers/administrators need to configure these links during setup.

Smart choice if you

  • Want a combined AI-assisted communications and contact-center platform that brings voice, meetings and messaging into a single system with powerful transcription and insights.
  • Run a support or sales team that benefits from live coaching, post-call summaries, sentiment analysis, and automated QA workflows.
  • Are okay with a human-centric workflow where AI helps agents rather than fully automates customer calls end-to-end.

Not a fit if you

  • Want a standalone autonomous voice agent that handles inbound and outbound calls entirely without human support.
  • Need native telephony automation APIs for deep programmatic control or highly customized voice bots.
  • Require multi-channel conversational continuity across voice, SMS, WhatsApp and other messaging in a single automated AI experience.

Voiceflow

Primary Role in Your E-commerce Stack

  • Voiceflow is a collaborative low-code/visual AI agent platform that helps teams build and deploy custom voice and chat agents without heavy engineering. Designed to automate customer conversations from support to transactional workflows using drag-and-drop flows and business data logic.
  • Voiceflow puts the workbench in your hands, giving you control over conversational design, logic, and integrations across channels.
  • In e-commerce, Voiceflow is often used for support hotlines, FAQ automation, lead qualification, virtual assistants and prototype voice interactions especially where you want custom behavior tied to backend systems.

How It Works in Practice

  • You design conversations using a visual workflow canvas that supports branching logic, variables and external API calls making it easier to map complex dialogues.
  • Agents can be trained on your business data like product info, order records, policies via a scalable vector database.
  • Voiceflow doesn’t host telephony itself; instead it connects through providers like Twilio or Vonage so your voice agent can receive inbound calls and make outbound calls.
  • Voiceflow supports team collaboration, shared templates and component reuse so designers and developers can iterate rapidly. 

Smart choice if you

  • Want a no-code/low-code platform to design voice and chat workflows without deep engineering.
  • Need highly customized conversational logic tied to your backend systems or data.
  • Run cross-functional teams that must collaborate on agent design and iteration quickly.
  • Plan to automate support workflows, order inquiries, FAQs or lead capture across voice and chat.

Not a fit if you

  • Need out-of-the-box telephony automation with native phone infrastructure. Voiceflow relies on third-party telephony providers.
  • Want a fully autonomous voice agent that runs on phone lines without manual integration setup.
  • Require production-ready voice performance metrics or carrier-grade latency guarantees.
  • Are focused on voice only without chat or UI context.

Cognigy

Primary Role in Your E-commerce Stack

  • Enterprise grade conversational AI platform designed to automate complex customer interactions across voice, chat and messaging by building intelligent AI agents that understand, decide and resolve user intent.
  • It’s commonly used in contact centers, service automation and omnichannel workflows where customers use multiple channels (voice, text, social) and expect consistent responses.
  • For e-commerce, Cognigy helps automate service touchpoints like support conversations, order inquiries, returns handling and FAQs with AI agents that can grasp intent and navigate conversations dynamically.

How It Works in Practice

  • Cognigy uses Generative AI, NLP and machine learning to build agents that do more than keyword matching. They can reason through dialogue, recall context and pursue goals within interactions.
  • Agents can be deployed across voice calls, chat widgets, messaging and social platforms with shared logic, enabling seamless context.
  • Cognigy supports multilingual interactions supporting 100+ languages and large concurrent loads of 25K+ interactions, making it suitable for global e-commerce brands managing peak traffic.
  • Built-in dashboards and data feeds (OData) let teams monitor performance metrics, conversation flows and optimize based on real usage.

Smart choice if you

  • Need robust omnichannel AI automation across voice, chat and messaging with shared logic.
  • Operate a large, international e-commerce operation with high volume and multilingual support requirements.
  • Want enterprise-grade integration with existing contact center systems, CRM, ticketing tools and backend APIs.
  • Have a technical team or partner to configure, train and maintain sophisticated AI workflows.

Not a fit if you

  • Need a standalone plug-and-play voice bot.
  • Your priority is simple, requiring phone-only automation.
  • You want the fastest path to production with zero customization, setup and customization of NLU, dialogs and backend connections take planning and expertise.

Talkdesk

Primary Role in Your E-commerce Stack

  • Talkdesk is a cloud contact center and customer experience automation platform that helps businesses manage and optimize customer interactions across voice, chat, SMS and digital channels from one unified system. It’s a full CX automation ecosystem with AI agents layered in for intelligent self-service and agent support.
  • The platform’s core mission is to automate customer experience workflows end to end, reducing manual work and improving resolution times while keeping context and empathy in place.
  • For e-commerce teams, Talkdesk is often used to handle support hotlines, returns calls, order inquiries, live agent augmentation and self-service using both human and AI capabilities.

How It Works in Practice

  • Talkdesk’s Autopilot and AI Agents use generative AI and conversational intelligence to automate self-service across voice and other channels 24/7. They can interpret customer intent, respond naturally and escalate when needed.
  • Built-in tools like Talkdesk Navigator help with real-time routing and prioritizing inquiries based on context and integrations with CRMs and backend systems let agents retrieve and update order or customer data during automation.
  • The platform includes call monitoring, analytics, sentiment scoring and performance insights to help teams improve support quality and train agents more effectively. 

Smart choice if you

  • Need an enterprise-grade contact center platform that blends automation with human support across channels.
  • Want AI-assisted self-service and agent augmentation rather than just basic scripted bots.
  • Run support or service teams with high call volumes where routing, analytics and quality management are key.

Not a fit if you

  • Are looking for a standalone e-commerce voice bot system. Talkdesk is primarily a contact center platform with AI layers.
  • Want simple phone automation without broader CX complexity.
  • Need lightweight plug-and-play voice bots with minimal integration work.

Five9

Primary Role in Your E-commerce Stack

  • Five9 is a cloud-based contact center platform aimed at automating and optimizing customer service interactions across voice, chat, SMS and other channels. At its core, it helps brands deliver connected, personalized experiences at scale using AI and unified CX tools.
  • Its Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA) and AI Agents are conversational automation layers that can handle self-service interactions like routine inquiries.
  • For e-commerce, Five9 is typically used to automate order status, FAQs, returns and basic support calls, functioning as shared infrastructure for AI support rather than a standalone voice-only bot.

How It Works in Practice

  • Five9’s AI Agents and Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA) use conversational AI and natural language understanding to automate routine interactions across voice and digital channels. 
  • AI Agents combine generative AI, NLP and conversational logic to detect intent, extract key details, tap knowledge integration and deliver customized responses reducing the need for human intervention on routine issues. 
  • Five9’s IVA builder offers no-code visual workflows and templates so non-technical teams can configure self-service paths for common scenarios like order lookup, appointment scheduling and password resets.
  • Voice quality and presentation are improved with tools like Virtual Voiceover, which can generate high-fidelity, human-sounding speech prompts on the fly, including custom branded voices. 

Smart choice if you

  • Need a cloud contact center platform that can centralize voice and digital support and automate repetitive inquiries across channels.
  • Want conversational AI that blends generative responses with scripted logic and can escalate smoothly to human agents.
  • Care about multi-modal customer journeys that span across voice, chat, SMS and rich media in a unified experience.

Not a fit if you

  • Are looking for a standalone, lightweight voice‐only AI bot that you can launch with minimal integration.
  • Want to own telephony infrastructure or programmable telephony APIs. Five9 is a packaged cloud service, not a telephony-centric CPaaS.
  • Need simple DIY voice automation for a small e-commerce team without contact center context.

Kore.ai

Primary Role in Your E-commerce Stack

  • Enterprise grade conversational AI platform designed to build, deploy and manage intelligent AI agents across voice, chat and digital channels with focus on service automation, workflow orchestration and customer support experiences.
  • It supports brand-aligned, natural voice interactions capable of understanding context, interruptions and topic changes for realistic conversations.
  • For e-commerce, Kore.ai offers Retail-focused AI solutions that help deliver 24/7 self-service, answer product and order queries and assist with purchase decisions without human agents.

How It Works in Practice

  • Agents can operate on voice calls, chat, messaging apps and contact center systems while preserving conversation context across channels.
  • The platform includes a visual AI agent builder and orchestration tools, letting both business users and developers design and manage intelligent workflows.
  • Kore.ai provides a marketplace with 200+ pre-built enterprise templates to speed up deployment and reduce development time.
  • Supports deep integrations with data sources, CRM and backend systems so agents can retrieve, update and act on real business data.

Smart choice if you

  • Want a powerful, enterprise-grade conversational platform that lets you build custom, complex voice and chat automations across channels.
  • Need deep integrations with backend systems, CRM or order management data so AI can handle conditional logic in real customer workflows.
  • Have technical resources to configure, extend and govern AI agents for complex business logic.

Not a fit if you

  • Want a prebuilt, lightweight plug-and-play AI voice bot for simple e-commerce queries with minimal integration.
  • Need standalone telephony infrastructure or a voice bot you can launch in minutes without orchestration tooling.
  • Are looking for pure voice automation without multichannel context or engineered workflows.

Replicant

Primary Role in Your E-commerce Stack

  • Replicant is an enterprise-grade conversational AI platform designed to automate routine customer interactions across voice, chat and SMS. Supports worflow in high-volume support environments where call center load is heavy and manual handling slows response times.
  • Its AI agents aim to resolve inbound customer interactions autonomously using natural language understanding and context-aware dialogue to mimic human responders.
  • For e-commerce, this means it can handle order inquiries, returns, delivery status, account questions and FAQs without human agents for the bulk of interactions, freeing up seniors for complex cases. 

How It Works in Practice

  • The platform’s “Thinking Machine” uses speech recognition (ASR), natural language understanding (NLU) and agentic reasoning to interpret and act on customer speech in real time.
  • Replicant can automatically handle inbound voice calls by listening, replying, asking for follow-ups and escalating when needed, aiming to resolve up to 80% of interactions without human intervention.
  • The platform encapsulates conversation intelligence, automated Q&A along with insights into performance, turning every conversation into actionable data to offer better service quality and AI behavior over time. 
  • Replicant projects often go from pilot to production in weeks with pre-built conversational components.

Smart choice if you

  • Need 24/7 automation of high volumes of inbound customer calls and messages with a single conversational engine.
  • Have complex support workflows including returns, order changes, delivery status, account questions and need reliable voice automation without building from scratch.
  • Operate at mid-to-enterprise scale where automation can dramatically cut handling times and want to reduce load on human agents.

Not a fit if you

  • Only need lightweight or simple automation. Businesses that want a basic interactive voice bot with minimal backend integration may find Replicant overbuilt.
  • Don’t plan to integrate with existing CRM/order systems.
  • Want an extremely cheap, no-setup-required solution.

Ada

Primary Role in Your E-commerce Stack

  • Ada is an AI customer experience platform built to automate service interactions using AI customer service agents that resolve inquiries across channels such as chat, voice, email and messaging. It’s designed as an omnichannel self-service automation platform rather than a simple scripted bot. 
  • The core platform lets brands deploy AI agents that autonomously resolve questions, reducing reliance on human agents for repetitive support and freeing up teams to focus on complex e-commerce tasks.
  • Unlike narrow chatbots, Ada’s agents are built to interpret context, manage multi-step processes and handle inquiries across multiple languages and channels.  

How It Works in Practice

  • Users can build Playbooks (guided SOPs) that instruct AI how to handle specific multi-step processes at scale and refine these based on testing and feedback.
  • Supports 50+ languages and is designed so that agents learn and improve through simulations, real-world performance analysis and optimization tools. 
  • You can simulate conversations, test variations, analyze outcomes and optimize agent behavior before and after launch, giving more control over performance outcomes.
  • Though it doesn’t have telephony-native to its own, Ada provides open APIs and backend connectors for integrating CRM, order systems and e-commerce platforms to fetch and act on real customer data during interactions.

Smart choice if you

  • Want AI customer service automation across channels with the same logic and context continuity.
  • Need to reduce support costs and handle volume spikes without scaling human teams.
  • Value multilingual support and contextual reasoning above rigid script-based replies.
  • Prefer tools with visual Playbooks and optimization workflows that don’t require deep coding.

Not a fit if you

  • Want true telephony-native voice automation. Ada typically integrates with voice channels rather than running native telephony infrastructure.
  • Are looking for a simple, lightweight voice bot with minimal configuration.
  • Need ultra-low-latency, call-centric performance guarantees.

FAQs

  1. What can an AI voice agent realistically handle today?

AI voice agents can handle order status checks, delivery updates, return/refund questions, COD confirmations, appointment scheduling, basic FAQs and call routing. Complex disputes, escalations or edge cases are recommended to move to a human agent.

  1. Do I need to replace my entire support team to use AI voice agents?

No. most teams use AI voice agents as a first line of response to handle volume and after-hours calls. Human agents step in only when needed with full context delivered from the AI conversation.

  1. How hard is it to set this up for an e-commerce business?

It depends on the platform. Some tools require stitching together telephony, bots and integrations. Others provide native voice, APIs and messaging in one system. Expect anything from a few days for basic flows to a few weeks to make deep integrations.

  1. Can AI voice agents connect to my order system or CRM?

Yes, if the platform supports APIs or native integrations. This is critical for real use cases like fetching order status, logging calls or updating tickets. Without backend access, voice agents are limited to surface-level conversations.

  1. Is voice really better than chat for e-commerce support?

Voice may not be better for everything but it’s prompt and efficient for urgent issues. Customers call when orders are delayed, payments fail or something goes wrong. AI voice agents help you answer instantly instead of losing the customer to hold music. 

The Most Practical Path to Voice Automation at Scale

Most AI voice tools look impressive in demos but struggle when real customers call at high volumes. The difference comes down to infrastructure. Platforms that rely on stitched-together telephony, bots and messaging often break under load or add operational complexity.

Plivo works because it starts at the network layer. With native telephony, global carrier connectivity across 190+ countries and AI agents that run across voice, SMS, WhatsApp and chat, it’s built for real customer conversations. You can launch fast with no-code tools, integrate deeply via APIs when needed and scale on usage-based pricing without any long-term lock-ins.

If your e-commerce team wants reliable voice automation that actually works in production, not just another tool to manage, this is the most balanced and future-proof choice going into 2026.

Try Plivo Free

Getting started with Plivo is simple, quick and comes with no strings attached. You can sign up for a free trial account and get free credits to explore the platform’s voice, SMS, chat and WhatsApp capabilities before buying credits or subscribing to the platform. 

You can experiment with API calls, add phone numbers and build or test workflows using Plivo’s no-code tools helping you simulate real-life use cases like AI voice agents, automated messaging or multi-channel engagement with your own data and logic. 

Get started with your free trial now and begin building your first insurance agent today.

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Aug 22, 2022
5 mins

Simple Ways to Improve the Ecommerce Customer Experience

Having a reliable customer support system for an ecommerce business is crucial and can have a high impact on the bottom line. This blog covers simple ways to improve your ecommerce customer service.

Customer Experience

Improving the ecommerce customer experience

Why customer service is especially crucial in ecommerce

Customer service is important in almost every industry for improving the customer experience. In fact, data from Microsoft shows that 95% of consumers think customer service is important for brand loyalty.

However, customer service is especially important for ecommerce businesses. In ecommerce, the customer service agents are often the first and only people at the company with whom customers interact.

It’s not like real estate or SaaS where a buyer develops a strong relationship with a salesperson before making a purchase. Ecommerce customers often buy a product without ever talking to a representative of the brand. Only when they have a question or problem do they reach out.

And when that happens, it’s a member of the customer service team who answers. So this department holds a lot of power to hurt or improve customer relationships.

Beyond this, customers in the ecommerce space have extremely high standards. They expect fast, hassle-free resolutions to their issues, along with personalized treatment. If you don’t offer this, customers can easily find a similar product at another brand.  

For these reasons, ecommerce companies need to prioritize initiatives to bolster their customer service more so than most other business types.

Six simple ways to improve the ecommerce customer experience

There are two chief indicators of ongoing success as an ecommerce company: top-notch products and exceptional customer service. Below are six effective ways to work toward the latter.

Use data and agent context to understand customer preferences

Customers have distinct and constantly evolving preferences. Some prefer phone calls, while others want to reach out over live chat. One might desire an email to resolve a billing issue but social media to ask for a refund.

It’s important to constantly monitor your customers’ preferences and adjust your communications strategy accordingly. You can figure out these changes by sending recurring surveys, tracking channel data in your customer service software, and reading industry reports.

To ensure they satisfy all customers, many companies also use contact center as a service (CCaaS) software, which allows users to communicate with customers across multiple channels, including self-service methods like chatbots or IVR.

CCaaS companies are always monitoring customer preferences and adding new channels to their platforms as customer demand for them increases. That way their users are always on the cutting-edge of customer service.

360° coverage across support channels

Seventy-one percent of consumers experience frustration when their shopping experience is impersonal. Customers dislike it when they can’t use their favorite communication channel or when they have to repeat information to a customer service agent that they’ve already shared with another agent.

The first issue can be handled with a multichannel approach, but that doesn’t resolve the second issue given that each channel’s data is siloed. A rep on a phone call with a customer can’t easily find what that customer said previously on live chat or email.

To service customers on their favorite channels and provide a seamless experience, you need an omnichannel approach where all channels are integrated and their collected customer data is accessible to agents from one dashboard regardless of which channel the customer is currently using.

Empower your customers with self-service tools

Sometimes customers don’t want to speak with a live agent. Perhaps they feel their issue is simple to resolve — 74% of internet users prefer using chatbots when looking for answers to simple questions.

Or maybe they’re just feeling especially introverted that day. Regardless of their reasons, those customers will appreciate the self-service options your team provides.

Here are some customer self-service types to offer:

  • Chatbots: These are computer programs that simulate conversations with your website visitors.
  • Interactive Voice Response: IVR enables users to interact with an automated phone system through voice or dial tones.
  • Knowledge Center: This is a part of your website that hosts tutorials, guides, and videos that answer commonly asked questions.

When you empower your customers to handle their own issues, you improve their experience and also reduce the pressure on your agents, which leads to shorter wait times for customers who really do need an agent’s help.  

Follow the sun—24/5 customer support

If you have trouble with a customer service tool, it indirectly impacts your customers in a negative way. For example, if your live chat system crashes, customers in the middle of a conversation will have to start all over.

That’s why it’s so critical to use high-quality customer service tools that come with support 24 hours a day, 5 days a week, so that you can get answers and assistance quickly and get back to focusing on your customers instead of technical difficulties.  

Modernized support for the mobile-first era

Statista predicts that 187.5 million people will make a purchase via their smartphone in 2024, an increase of 20 million from 2020. The trend toward mobile shopping is obvious.

Therefore, it’s critical that you give your customers the ability to easily access your ecommerce store and customer service team via their mobile devices. Consider designing your website for mobile users and offering an ecommerce mobile app for your business.

Support that evolves with your customers

Improving customer experience is an iterative process. You have to try new techniques, measure your customers’ reaction to them, and then, based on the results, take another step in the right direction.

To do this, you need to collect customer data and feedback. Many companies use surveys with specific questions to measure their customer satisfaction.

They also use some sort of customer service software to track key customer service metrics like busiest hours, communication volume by channel, and average resolution time.

Collecting and analyzing this information enables customer service teams to make data-driven decisions about their strategy.    

Picking the right ecommerce customer service software

An ecommerce customer service team looking to improve their overall customer experience should look for customer service software that allows them to enact the strategies we’ve listed above.

The right platform will have 24/5 support and empower you to use an omnichannel approach, offer self-service options, go mobile-first, and track customer service data.

Conclusion

Customer experience is essential to an ecommerce business’s success, and the customer service team has a tremendous effect on this experience.

It’s crucial that you arm your agents with the tools they need to best serve your customers. Check out how PlivoCX, a cloud-based contact center software, can help.

Aug 16, 2022
5 mins

What is Call Routing? Types, Benefits & How it Works

Call routing automatically directs incoming calls to the right department based on an established set of rules. Find how phone routing works, its types & benefits in this blog.

Customer Service

What is Call Routing? Types, Benefits & How it Works

From a consumer perspective, B2C companies are measured by two things:the quality of their products, and quality of customer service.

While most businesses understand the importance of providing quick support to their paying customers, modern businesses utilizing new-era omnichannel cloud contact centers like PlivoCX service have a secret weapon available to them—call routing.

What is call routing?

Call routing describes the process by which support requests are assigned to a specified customer service queue based upon the needs of the consumer.

While call routing traditionally applies to voice calls, the emergence of modern support channels like SMS messaging, chat, social media, etc. have caused the term to take on a broader meaning for the process of pairing a customer with the right agent.

Types of call routing and how does call routing work?

So, how exactly does call routing work, and how are modern contact centers pairing customer support requests with the right agent?

To answer this question, we must first understand the different types of call routing, and how you might want to employ each within your customer service operation.

Source: GetVoIP.com

A next-generation contact center like PlivoCX Service will come equipped with a robust drag-and-drop workflow builder, allowing B2C teams to establish rules that assign support requests to agents with respect to the type of call routing at play.

You can see how this works in practice with our quick 1-minute video on drag & drop queue configuration:

With a custom workflow in place, customer support voice calls will be automatically routed to an agent based on criteria provided by the customer at the time the call is placed.

What is the difference between call routing and call forwarding?

If you’ve asked yourself “what is call routing”, you may also be curious about call forwarding. While virtual call routing is a dedicated procedure by which customer support calls are directed to the best agent for the job, call forwarding is a process which forwards voice calls to multiple phone numbers for a single agent, enhancing that agent’s coverage across devices.

In practice, this means that if an agent is unable to answer their desk phone for a customer call when it rings, that call will be passed on to their mobile or home phone number automatically without any difficulty for the customer.

Call forwarding serves as a useful, complementary tool for call routing that can enhance an agent’s ability to best serve their assigned customer.

Common use cases of call routing & business impact

So now that we’ve covered the questions of “what is call routing” and “how does call routing work”, let’s talk about how a contact center with a robust call routing system can empower your customer service agents, reduce customer friction, and promote growth in your business.

Top 5 use cases of call routing

There are innumerable benefits to incorporating a virtual call routing system into your business, but here are five popular use cases to get your started, and how each can help you grow your business.

Always-on customer service operation

Customer’s feeling like nobody is listening to them is a $75 billion dollar problem. Establishing workflows designed to route voice calls to different support operations depending on agent hours ensures that your customers never feel unheard, as somebody will always be available to solve their problems.

Premium service for premium customers

Whether they earn their premium status through purchase or over a period of time, it’s important to reward customer loyalty. B2C teams can configure call routing workflows to ensure that their best customers always have a direct line to an agent.

Skills to pay the bills

Let’s say a longtime customer has a billing issue that threatens their retention—skills-based call routing can guarantee that your customer is assigned an agent equipped with the proper skill set and tools necessary for a prompt resolution.

Building a relationship

There’s nothing worse than having to explain your customer support needs five different times to five different agents—14% of customers take their business elsewhere because their complaints aren’t handled properly. Relationship-based call routing allows teams to automatically assign support requests to agents who have previously helped a given customer.

Support at light speed

Sometimes, the best thing you can do for your customers is to give them somebody to talk to as quickly as possible. With round robin call routing, you can set a workflow that immediately pairs a customer with the next available agent, cutting down on wait times and reducing abandonment rates.

How PlivoCX pairs the right agents with the right customers

PlivoCX is cloud contact center software for B2C teams built with customer and agent satisfaction in mind. With Contacto, agent teams are supported by helpful automations, a unified desktop, and an omnichannel experience to exceed consumer needs and create happy customers and agents alike.

If you’re looking to keep up with the demands of the new era of support operations, we’re here to help.

Book a demo with our sales team, and we’ll help you find the right solution for your team’s needs.

Jul 26, 2022
5 mins

Top 6 Customer Service Channels (Hint:Voice is still king, for now)

Handling customer inquiries is the most important role in providing great CX. Find out why voice is still the king for now among the best customer service channels.

Customer Service
Industry Insights

Chat

In terms of customer satisfaction, live chat is the most meaningful and effective digital channel. With nearly 1 in 3 customers attempting to self-service by visiting a company website before placing a voice call, a robust live chat capability is a low-effort high-ROI solution to reduce customer friction, expedite issue resolution, and increase revenue - in some cases at a rate of 2.4x for cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

Social

The most compelling statistic came from Facebook with a reported 100% increase in customer messages to businesses from 2019 to 2020.

Spotify begins training their agents on the email customer support channel before clearing them for the social support channel. Throughout the training agent emails are evaluated for specific quality and service metrics to ensure agent confidence before graduating them to the generally more public social channels. Word of caution: most users who reach out via social media for support expect a response within 60 minutes.

Voice

Even with post-COVID forced digital acceleration, one study reports a preference for voice as high as 71% compared to other channels. Perhaps this is a result of older customers’ preference for in-person or assisted service (whereas younger generations prefer self-service). In any case, this should be no surprise as 56% of customers surveyed reported frustration with IVRs prior to speaking with a live agent. Stay alert contact centers! The experience on your IVR/IVA is more important than you think and could make or break your voyage to a better customer experience.

Artificial Intelligence

“Roughly one third” of American companies surveyed in a study May 2021 are using some degree of AI for consumer experience initiatives. The possibilities and promises of increased self-service and customer satisfaction, reduced inquiry handle-times, trend forecasting, agent assist, next best action and many opportunities are examples of the hopes and dreams for overall customer loyalty and revenue potential. As you consider how to implement or scale an AI solution, be mindful of the differences between static analytical models, natural language understanding, robotic process automation, and true artificial intelligence.

Email

For most businesses email was a low friction, self-service channel easy to add to the multi-channel support model, but as organizations pivoted to omnichannel support models with better-integrated and more real-time digital solutions, email declined in satisfaction and popularity - and is predicted to continue to decline as mobile-first messaging adoption increases. In a survey conducted in October 2021, as few as 15% of American respondents indicated email was the preferred channel for customer support.

Messaging

With a particularly sharp uptake during the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns businesses adapted by implementing direct messaging for support and marketing motions to stay in closer contact with their customers. One study reports an increase of 62% in companies using WhatsApp for customer service inquiries from the previous year.

Selecting The Right Customer Service Channels

Regardless of the overall channel adoption statistics above, selecting the proper customer service channel mix for your specific business to deliver the best customer experience should be the primary driver. Look for friction points, add new channels, eliminate extra steps, add touch points along the customer journey to share transparently and engage with your customers in a friendly way.

Below are just a few examples and the steps you can take to see immediate improvements in your customer experience feedback:

  • How would you feel? Consider how the customer feels when attempting to reach you for various reasons. Next, go and listen to every branch of your own IVR and consider whether your automation matches the customer’s need. Should you route priority customers differently than those calling for hours and location? Can you easily automate order status inquiries in your IVR to free up staff to handle higher cognitive inquiries?
  • Proper channels in place? If you are only communicating by phone and email, consider adding live chat. This channel can have a direct impact on your top-line revenue as many customers - in an e-commerce setting - use chat when they are further down the sales funnel and may have a clarifying question or two prior to checkout.
  • Monitor and adjust! You can’t improve what you don’t measure. What is the traffic volume on each of your support channels? Can customers (or your agents) easily pivot from chat to voice if the interaction escalates in customer frustration? Are you receiving an overwhelming number of emails because it is too difficult to reach you on the phone, or your phone system is poorly configured to handle the volume of calls?

Conclusion

Customer service trends indicate that the leading differentiator is less about unit price or product quality and more about service level experience. From a customer loyalty or NPS perspective, the emotional intelligence, tactful questions, and benefit of the doubt offered by agents to customers arrive at a sum greater than its parts. What will you be known for? The channels you offer and the quality of service delivered via those channels will set you apart from your competition!

Jul 15, 2022
5 mins

6 Ways to Use Contact Center Analytics to Improve Operations

Contact Center analytics uses technology to generate actionable insights from raw data. Here are 6 ways to use contact center analytics & reporting to improve operations.

Contact Center

What is contact center analytics?

A single customer service conversation can yield a seemingly infinite amount of information about both your consumers and customer service agents, and contact center analytics provide the method behind the madness to make sense of all that information.

Contact center analytics use technology to generate actionable insights from raw data—data which allows B2C teams to identify patterns in their customer service data and pinpoint potential product issues or contact center optimizations.

How to use contact center analytics to improve operations

The true power of contact center analytics lies in its ability to dramatically improve your team’s operations. This data is only as potent as it’s application, however, which begs the question: how do I put contact center analytics to work in my organization?

Get a holistic view of contact center key metrics at a glance

Just like a beautiful painting, it’s a lot easier to understand the nuance in the finer details once you’ve seen the whole picture. Sometimes, the best way to get a feel for how your agents are performing is by looking at your contact center from a bird’s eye view.

Contact center reporting and analytics offer a unique opportunity to look at the bigger picture, identifying common trends among support tickets. This could include evaluation of average handle time, first call resolution time, call / support abandonment rate, and then zooming in on individual metrics to identify outliers in each.

Monitoring performance & identifying training needs

Call center analytics can provide you the boost that you need to level up your agents and optimize agent performance by monitoring service and identifying training needs.

By analyzing your contact center data and reflecting on customer sentiments, you can keep tabs on how your customer service reps are performing and identify any areas where additional training in product or platform knowledge would benefit your service team.

Actionable customer service insights across all channels

Preferred methods of customer service can vary significantly from consumer base to consumer base. Are your customers trying to reach you via your social media channels? Is your consumer base largely made up of millennials, who on average prefer digital service channels over phone ?

From common customer demographics to volume patterns in your support requests across channels, B2C teams can leverage contact center analytics to stay ahead of the specific needs of their brand’s consumers, allowing them to better meet customers where they are.

Automate the customer feedback process

With the right tools, B2C teams are capable of automating the customer feedback process, allowing them to glean further insights into how consumers are feeling after interacting with their customer service representatives.

Frequently asking customers the right questions and analyzing their answers provides another valuable data point to include in your team’s contact center analytics. Identify common trends among customer feedback to optimize their support experience, and you just might create a lasting customer relationship.

Generate reports for customer support teams

Call center analytics and call center reports go hand-in-hand—while distinct from one another, they’re nearly inseparable in how they’re discussed by the industry at large. In the right hands, these two things work together harmoniously to provide a continuous cycle of improvement for data-driven support teams.

Essential metrics reports track relevant current and historical data, so you can identify trends over time. From customer satisfaction to agent productivity, the right contact center solution should provide reporting capabilities that enhance your ability to measure what matters most and provide a 360 degree view of a customer’s past and present needs.

Help contact center managers with resource allocation

Remember when we said it’s important to know your demographics, and how they like to be supported? Contact center reporting and analytics can act as a cheat code for your team to know where they need to be, when they need to be there, and allow you to tailor your team’s hours, channels, and skillsets to the support needs of your consumer base.

A modern contact center should provide visibility into the most demanding support needs of your organization by providing real-time data on your team’s activity and performance, allowing you to shift resources accordingly.

Using contact center analytics to improve customer experience

With more options for the consumer to choose from than ever before, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to separate yourself from your competition. The importance of differentiation through exceptional customer service cannot be overstated, and contact center analytics allow you to do exactly that.

Every support conversation is an opportunity to refine your customer service offering through effective customer communication, evaluation of common trends in your customer feedback, and then taking action to reduce customer friction.

Leverage built-in contact center analytics with Contacto

PlivoCX Service is a cloud contact center software for B2C teams built with customer and agent satisfaction in mind. With Contacto, agent teams are supported by powerful reporting and analytics functionality, helpful automations, a unified desktop, and an omnichannel experienceto exceed consumer needs and create happy customers and agents alike.

If you’re looking to keep up with the demands of the new era of support operations, we’re here to help.

Book a demo with our sales team, and we’ll help you find the right solution for your team’s needs.

Jul 8, 2022
5 mins

15 Survey Questions to Measure Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction surveys help businesses to evaluate their performance in serving their customers. Find the best CSAT survey questions here!

Customer Experience
Customer Satisfaction

15 Survey Questions to Measure Customer Satisfaction

With the incredible number of products for consumers to choose from, creating customer satisfaction and customer loyalty has never been more important for B2C businesses.

One of the best ways to measure how your customers are feeling is through the use of a customer satisfaction survey, or CSAT survey for short.

What is a Customer Satisfaction Survey?

As the name implies, a customer satisfaction survey (or CSAT survey for short) is an invaluable way for businesses to measure how satisfied their users are with the products or services that have been provided, while gaining insights into any points of friction that said users may experience.

These surveys are an essential piece of the puzzle when it comes to remaining relevant and competitive in a world where the customer is king.

Importance of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Did you know that the acquisition cost of new customers is nearly 5 times more expensive than the cost of retaining an existing customer? Or that 1 in 3 customers will leave a business they love after a single bad experience? Gathering and understanding customer feedback is an essential ingredient when it comes to growing your business and building a loyal customer base.

Customer satisfaction surveys allow businesses to do exactly that—by understanding the hurdles that your customers have faced when it comes to your product or service, you are able to reduce friction and create repeat customers.

Different Types of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Customer satisfaction surveys can be broken up into four main categories: Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), Product-Market Fit (PMF), and Customer Effort Score (CES). Let’s take a moment to review each of these different types of surveys, and when your organization might want to utilize them.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT surveys provide a scaled measurement of a customer’s satisfaction and/or experience with your team or product.

You should utilize CSAT surveys at different touchpoints in your customer’s journey with your business, such as after a purchase or a support request’s completion, to understand their overall satisfaction with their experience.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS surveys ask customers to provide answers to questions on a scale of 0-10 to determine a refined customer loyalty score on a scale of -100 to 100.

This is achieved by evaluating numerical responses tied to customer satisfaction and categorizing them into three groups:

  • Detractors (0-6)
  • Passive (7-8)
  • Promoter (9-10)

From here, simply add the submitted scores to the following formula to find your NPS score:

(% of Promoter scores) – (% of Detractor scores) = Overall NPS score

This type of survey is best utilized by mature products and teams looking to collect specific feedback that can be incorporated into product or service changes intended to enhance the overall customer experience.

Product-Market Fit (PMF)

A PMF survey is a customer satisfaction survey that provides an indication of whether or not your product has achieved product-market fit or not by asking users how they would feel if they could no longer use your product on a scale of “not disappointed” to “very disappointed”.

This type of survey is commonly used by newer products that are not yet far enough along to utilize an NPS survey.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

This type of survey measures the perceived effort required from the user to accomplish an action with regards to your product or service.

You will commonly find this type of survey used to gain an understanding of how your company might reduce customer friction by removing obstacles they have experienced when utilizing your product or service.

Best Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions

Now that we’ve covered some of the different types of customer satisfaction surveys you might use, let’s talk about some of the best CSAT survey questions you might include when seeking feedback from your users, broken down by category.

Customer satisfaction questions specific to agents

The questions covered in this category can be used to measure how satisfied your customers are with the assistance they have received from your customer support team.

  1. Were we able to resolve your questions or concerns with our product?
  2. Were we able to resolve your questions or concerns in a timely manner?
  3. How much effort were you required to put into finding a resolution for your problem?
  4. How did we compare to your expectations?
  5. How responsive have we been to your questions or concerns?

The responses you receive to these CSAT survey questions will allow your support team to improve upon future customer interactions.

Customer satisfaction questions specific to service channels

The CSAT survey questions included here can be used to measure how well you accommodate users requesting support via a specific service channel.

  1. What is your preferred channel to receive customer support through?
  2. Was this your first time receiving support via [service channel]?
  3. How intuitive was your service experience through [service channel]?
  4. What other channels have you enjoyed receiving support through?
  5. What could we have done differently to enhance your customer experience on this channel?

By evaluating the responses you receive for the above customer satisfaction survey questions, you can determine which service channels your customers most prefer and allocate additional time, training, agents, and resources towards them.

Customer satisfaction questions specific to the product or service

The below survey questions can be used to evaluate your customer’s satisfaction with your product or service.

  1. How satisfied are you with our product / service?
  2. How likely are you to recommend our product / service to a friend or colleague?
  3. How well does our product meet your needs?
  4. If you could recommend one improvement to our product / service, what would it be?
  5. How would you rate the value versus price of our product?

By evaluating the responses your customers leave about your product or service, you can evaluate which features your users care most about to gain valuable insight into your target audience’s preferences.

Best Practices: Keeping in mind the objective and length of the survey

When creating a customer satisfaction survey to share with your users, it’s important to keep in mind both the specific objective of the survey and the length of the survey.

Most people don’t enjoy filling out surveys. People do, however, respond well when they know that their contribution can make a difference. By having a clearly defined objective in mind when creating your CSAT survey, you can decide which questions are most important to ask, exclude unnecessary filler, and encourage user participation all while respecting your customer’s time.

How PlivoCX helps teams to enhance customer service

PlivoCX is cloud contact center software for B2C teams built with customer and agent satisfaction in mind. With Contacto, agent teams are supported by helpful automations, a unified desktop, and an omnichannel experience to exceed consumer needs and create happy customers and agents alike.

If you’re looking to keep up with the demands of the new era of support operations, we’re here to help.

Book a demo with our sales team, and we’ll help you find the right solution for your team’s needs.

Jun 17, 2022
5 mins

How To Increase Revenue By Improving Agent Satisfaction

Agent satisfaction is often overlooked by modern businesses when it comes to increasing their revenue. Learn how agent satisfaction can impact a business.

Customer Experience
Customer Satisfaction

Businesses are so often focused on satisfying the customer that they chip away agent satisfaction in the process. It’s no secret that customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction are very much connected, but what does this actually mean?

Glassdoor’s 2020 Economic Research report revealed that companies with highly satisfied employees are more likely to have high customer satisfaction scores, a stat that holds especially true in industries with higher levels of customer contact.

Taking the necessary steps to improve your contact center agents’ satisfaction levels within your company will increase their loyalty to the team, leading to more dedicated and successful agents and customers.

What is agent satisfaction?

Agent satisfaction is the measure of how satisfied or dissatisfied employees in an organization are. Businesses that actively measure employee job satisfaction are able to track employee motivation, productivity, and loyalty to their organization.

So why is agent satisfaction so important to understand, and what does this mean for modern B2C teams?

Importance of agent satisfaction in modern business

It’s often said that the customer is king, and rightfully so—prioritizing the needs of your customers is a surefire strategy to increase revenue. Which is exactly why agent satisfaction is important.

Agents that are not satisfied with their employer contribute to high agent absenteeism and turnover, and are unlikely to provide the same quality support to customers that a satisfied agent would.

Businesses that emphasize agent satisfaction by prioritizing the needs of their employees can drive positive improvements in customer satisfaction, while reducing agent turnover and agent absenteeism.

Taking into consideration the correlation between customer satisfaction and contact center agent job satisfaction, you can begin to see why agent satisfaction is important and how it can grow revenue for your business.

How to measure agent satisfaction

There are several ways to measure your team’s happiness in their work, but the easiest method is to use the Employee Satisfaction Index (ESI). This index is determined by assigning a numerical value (1-10) to three simple survey questions:

  • How satisfied are you with your current workplace?
  • How well does your current workplace meet your expectations?
  • How close is your current workplace to the ideal?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you can calculate your ESI with the following formula:

  • ESI= [((question mean value ÷ 3) – 1) ÷9]*100

The higher the number, the more satisfied your agents are in the workplace.

Surveying employees allows you to understand how your agents really feel about their job, and gives you the opportunity to meet them where they are.

Agent satisfaction isn’t a static metric, and is sure to change over time—it’s important that your organization keeps a consistent pulse on employee engagement and takes active measures to improve upon this engagement, as this will inevitably grow revenue.

Impact of agent satisfaction on revenue and profitability

Let’s take a look at a few statistics showing the impact of agent satisfaction on revenue, and how highly-satisfied agents can contribute to your business’ profitability:

  • A happy agent is a dedicated agent—business units made up of highly engaged employees are more present and provide a better experience to the customer. 94% of consumers who have a good support experience are “very likely” to repurchase from a company.
  • As we mentioned earlier, happy agents make for happy customers, and increasing customer retention rates by 5% canincrease profitability by up to 95%.
  • Prioritizing your contact center employee’s job satisfaction will reduce agent absenteeism and agent turnover. In 2020, the cost of replacing an agent (screening, recruiting, interviewing, and training) exceeded $12,000.
  • In 2019, Harvard Business Review calculated that a one-star improvement in Glassdoor employer ratings yielded anywhere between a 7-18% increase in long-term market valuation.

How to improve agent satisfaction

With the understanding of why agent satisfaction is important and how happier agents result in increased revenue, we next need to look at how your business can measure and improve upon your agent’s satisfaction.

Here we’ve outlined a few of the methods you can use to measure and improve your contact center team’s happiness:

  • A place to hang your hat (Agent retention)
  • Making an agent feel welcome isn’t something that should only be reserved for their first day on the job. Creating a continuous program to build a team that feels like a family will build agent loyalty and increase agent retention.
  • How can we help you? (Agent surveys)
  • Surveys aren’t only meant for customers! Surveying your agents on an annual or semi-annual basis can build an open and recurring feedback loop with management and identify friction points before they become a problem.
  • Walk before you run (Comprehensive training)
  • Another key driver in keeping contact center agents satisfied is the number of training and coaching hours that they receive. Equip your agents with all of the necessary tools to excel, and you’ll see a marked improvement in morale.
  • Reap the rewards of great service (Reward your agents for excellent performance)
  • Communicating with customers isn’t always easy—be sure to reward your agents that go above and beyond in customer communications with prizes, an extra vacation day, promotions, or some other incentive for a job well done.
  • Make yourself at home (Let your agents work from home)
  • Many working professionals have grown accustomed to working from home since COVID-19 reshaped the way businesses operated back in 2020, and contact center agents are no exception. A Pipkins research report showed that agents who work from home have a retention rate that is 55% higher than those working from an office.

Improve agent satisfaction and increase revenue with PlivoCX

PlivoCX is cloud contact center software for B2C teams built with agent satisfaction in mind. With Contacto, agent teams are supported by helpful automations, a unified desktop, and an omnichannel experience to exceed consumer needs and create happy customers and agents alike.

If you’re looking to keep up with the demands of the new era of support operations, we’re here to help.

Book a demo with our sales team, and we’ll help you find the right solution for your team’s needs.

Jun 3, 2022
5 mins

How to Reduce Customer Friction and Remove Common Hurdles

Customer friction is the biggest challenge for modern B2C teams. Read through this blog from Contacto to understand what exactly is customer friction and how you can eliminate your most critical friction points.

Customer Experience
Customer Service

Now more than ever, the customer is king. The modern landscape of customer service operations is changing, and businesses that have invested in effortless and easy purchase and support experiences will continue to thrive, leaving slow-to-adapt competitors behind.

With the unprecedented events of the current decade creating a sudden and dramatic shift across the global workforce, the customer journey has never been more important. Global labor shortages continue to strain day-to-day operation, complicating business agility to meet customer expectations.

It’s up to B2C teams to adapt for the modern era of customer service, remove common hurdles, and create a frictionless customer experience.

What is customer friction?

Let’s say you’re attending a wedding, and you’ve just received your order for a new outfit to wear to the event, only to find that they shipped the wrong size.

You visit the retailer’s website in hopes of live chatting with an agent, but the only option available to you is to call a support line. Upon calling, you’re met with an automated response advising no agents are available to take your call, and are prompted to leave a message.

Defeated and pressed for time, you decide to return the order and overnight a new outfit from a different retailer in time for the big event.

The barriers you experienced attempting to contact the retailer and resolve your issue are an example of customer friction - any pain point in the customer journey that shapes a customer’s perception of, and relationship with, a brand.

Expectations of the modern consumer

The cost of consumers feeling unheard is a 75 billion dollar problem for industries around the US alone, with customer retention loss rising by more than 37% since 2016 due to poor customer service.

Modern consumers expect to feel like their business matters to the brands they support. With more options available than ever before, businesses that invest in providing a seamless customer service experience will reap the rewards of customer loyalty.

Common customer friction points, and how to remove them

Now that we understand the modern, intelligent consumer’s customer service expectations, we can identify and address common hurdles holding B2C teams back from delivering an exceptional customer experience.

So, what are some of the common hurdles your customers may be experiencing (and how can you remove them)?

  • Support your customers on their terms (true omnichannel)
  • Problem: You might not be where your customers are trying to reach you
  • Solution: Have a presence on the channels where your customers are trying to reach you!
  • Skills to pay the bills (agent skilling)
  • Problem: Your agents might not be equipped to resolve the problems being presented to them
  • Solution: Utilize agent skilling to ensure that the right agent is assigned to the right problem to create a quick resolution
  • We’ve got history (customer ticket history)
  • Problem: Return customers want to know that their business (past and present) matters to your brand
  • Solution: Keeping track of previous support conversations is one of the best ways to let them know you care.
  • Sleep with one AI open (AI support for full support coverage)
  • Problem: Support requests are going to come through 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Some of these problems could be resolved quickly by the customers themselves if they only had the resources.
  • Solution: It’s important that you offer customers the ability to solve more simple problems through the use of AI. Have pre-written solutions to common problems available to be served based on a customer’s initial support request.
  • Stick to it (following up with a customer after a support request has been completed)
  • Problem: Nobody likes to submit a customer support request - it makes customers feel like they had to take time out of their busy schedule to resolve a problem they shouldn’t have had.
  • Solution: Following up with the customer after the support ticket has been resolved makes the customer feel heard, and ensures that the issue hasn’t recurred, creating customer friction.

Building brand loyalty

With these common hurdles removed from your customer’s journey, you’re on your way to leaping over the competition and ensuring customer loyalty. Here are just a few ways that building this brand loyalty with your customer base affects your bottom line:

  • 89% of companies believe that excellent customer service plays a key role in customer retention.
  • An average of 68% of new customers are referred by existing customers.
  • The odds of selling to an existing customer are between 60-70%, while the odds of selling to a new customer are between 5-20%.
  • The acquisition cost of new customers is ~5 times more expensive than retaining an existing customer
  • Loyal customers are 5 times more likely to make another purchase, 5 times more likely to forgive, 4 times more likely to refer, and 7 times more likely to try another of your products.

PlivoCX Service—the right tool for the job

Removing these hurdles from the customer journey, and keeping them out of the customers way, doesn’t have to be difficult!

PlivoCX is cloud contact center software for B2C teams built with customer loyalty (and not complexity!) at its core. With Contacto, agent teams are supported by helpful automations, a unified desktop, and an omnichannel experience to exceed consumer needs and create happy customers.

If you’re looking to keep up with the demands of the new era of support operations, we’re here to help.

Book a demo with our sales team, and we’ll help you find the right solution for your team’s needs.

Mar 15, 2022
5 mins

One place to manage every interaction—Plivo’s commitment to the unified Contact Center

Implementing a Contact Center that unifies the agent workflow and simplifies operations is essential to exceeding the needs of the intelligent consumer.

Contact Center

The business-critical role assumed by Contact Centers has been driven by mounting customer expectations and requires more personalized touchpoints and faster issue resolution.

Consumers and the technologies they use are increasingly intelligent and require smarter solutions as we enter the next chapter of the unified Contact Center.

In the past couple of years, businesses have adopted modules from legacy vendors that promised features like AI, automations, self service, and native analytics within their existing solutions. They thought they were purchasing the future, only to realize three things:

  1. Simplicity and flexibility are key with customer experience technology. Plugging in a module doesn’t necessarily equate to a personalized customer experience.
  2. Contextual agent experience is more important than ever to build customer loyalty.
  3. Voice as a channel contains incremental costs across every CCaaS provider; it adds up quickly, and it doesn’t have to.

While the Contact Center space is approaching maturity, it won’t truly arrive until we accept as an industry certain methodologies and tech prerequisites for the platforms that power the customer service experience.

  • Contact Center software must serve as the primary hub of a modern CX tech stack.
  • Contact Center software needs to provide an intuitive experience for agents and an invisible experience for customers.
  • A single platform that can adapt and be customized is essential. Non-customizable tools with certain non-native features are a non-starter.

Verticalization of the Contact Center

Mid-year 2021, communications API industry veteran Plivo launched a powerful yet simple Contact Center platform—with fully native communication channels and analytics—to address the maturity gaps in an established and fast-evolving space. Plivo’s engineering team built a unified platform to manage the entire CX workflow, optimized the add-on costs of voice communications, and integrated it with the other complementary CX tools in your existing tech stack, all powered by Plivo’s communications API platform.

The result is Contacto, a fully native platform that integrates with tools like Salesforce, Shopify, Zendesk, Kustomer, Servicenow, and more. Contacto was architected to drive customer loyalty and reduce complexity, while ensuring that agents have a simple and seamless experience with their workflows. With common pain points in the customer experience as its focal point, Contacto was built to level up CCaaS technology using real-world CX gaps as the North Star. These include:

  • Customer experience, on their terms: Meet your customers on the channels and devices they demand.
  • Unified agent desktop experience: One platform manages all interactions with continual context available so your customers don’t have to repeat themselves—ever.
  • Simple configuration and drag-and-drop workflow builder: Build powerful no-code workflows that keep your agents moving forward and your customers happy.

Contacto, Powered by Plivo

The Contacto Contact Center experience is the next chapter in Plivo’s rich history. Contacto is built on Plivo’s Premium Communications Platform, which has been proven for scale over the last 10 years with billions of API requests each month. It natively supports voice and emerging channels like in-app chat, WhatsApp, and social media and has prebuilt integrations with existing applications like Salesforce, Zendesk, Shopify, Kustomer, and more.

We are glad to be here, and we can’t wait to bring the Contact Center space to maturity with the help of our amazing customers and our strong foundation in scaling the Plivo API platform globally in 190+ countries.

Mar 15, 2022
5 mins

How retail and e-commerce brands can take a cue from healthcare customer service

Contact Centers in the healthcare industry offer ample learning opportunities to B2C brands looking to optimize their operation.

e-commerce Marketing

Unlock new potential in your contact center by implementing these healthcare customer service secrets.

In the healthcare industry, contact centers are generally more established and mature with efficient routing, tried and true metrics, and continuous quality improvement. Early stage or B2C companies in the retail, ecommerce, regional utility, and non-profit sectors can learn and apply valuable lessons to their (perhaps) less-complex support operations. Granted, the healthcare industry as a whole has a long way to go in leveraging data to eliminate friction and elevate the customer-patient experience, but recent changes to the trajectory of the industry as a whole can inform more nimble contact centers how to offer best-in-class customer interactions.

The notion of the “longitudinal health (or human) record” is one on which even the US government has provided input and guidance to the healthcare industry in efforts to drive improved health outcomes. The basic idea is that all medical providers have access to your single, master copy, digital patient record so as to coordinate, de-duplicate, and improve care delivery. As you consider how to deliver a fast, frictionless experience in your B2C contact center, consider how looking at your customers through the lens of a longitudinal engagement record can inform your contact center priorities:

  • Know Me - Customers expect you - to a reasonable degree - to know who they are and their history with your brand. What are the vitals or key data points your agents need to know about your customers? Contacto’s integrations with industry-standard CRMs and OMSs offers your agents a seamless view into previous customer interactions with the Customer Data and Customer History panels.
  • Help Me - Customers want to be delighted. Contacto eliminates the “swivel chair” system hopping and operational redundancies by empowering your agents with data, context, and line of sight via a single-pane-of-glass workbench so they can go the extra mile with proactive, human-centric service. Kinda like NOT being handed a clipboard at the doctor’s office. One can dream!
  • Keep Me - Customers will come back. If you’ve treated them with dignity and eliminated friction — armed with context, your most valuable asset — transactional and relational scores will be primary symptoms to the underlying dividends yielded in customer loyalty and lifetime value.

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