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Compare 10 AI voice agents for real estate in 2026. Evaluate response time, CRM integration, multi-channel support, and scalability to find the right solution.

AI voice agents in real estate are all about response time, coverage and quick follow-through. If your system can't answer calls immediately, qualify intent, book tours and update your CRM without manual cleanup, it's not helping you win more deals; it's adding another layer for you to manage.

This guide isn't for browsing tools. It's for operators deciding whether to commit to AI voice agents in 2026 and ship something that actually helps you scale. We compare 10 platforms based on how they perform after signup, how fast you can go live, what breaks under real lead volume, and what it takes to keep them working week after week.

Top 10 AI Voice Agents for Real Estate (2026)

The goal here is simple: Helping you choose an option that you can launch confidently, not replace after the first integration headache.

1. Plivo

When aiming to build and scale AI voice agents for real estate, you care about two things: reaching prospects first and converting more inquiries into confirmed showings. Plivo excels here since it gives you production-ready AI voice agents that place instant callbacks, answer listing questions from your data, and book tours directly on your agents' calendars. They operate reliably across phone, SMS, WhatsApp and chat without stitching together telephony, AI models and messaging vendors.

Plivo is the AI agent builder platform for voice-first, omnichannel experiences—built on a carrier-grade telephony network trusted by Uber, Meta, Zomato, and thousands of businesses worldwide. Business teams can launch agents without writing code using Vibe agent. Engineering teams can orchestrate custom voice agents in code with full control. The foundation is Plivo's global communications infrastructure spanning 190+ countries: 15+ years of proven reliable infrastructure, low latency, and the call quality enterprises demand.

Core Capabilities:

Inbound & Outbound AI Voice Agents: Handle live calls end-to-end, qualify intent, route intelligently and escalate to human agents when needed.
Multi-Channel Agent Coverage: Run the same AI agent across phone, SMS, WhatsApp and chat with shared context across channels.
No-Code AI Agent Builder (Vibe): Build and deploy voice agents using plain-English instructions, no prompt engineering or coding required.
Build your way: Business teams launch with no-code tools; engineering teams build custom voice agents with full-code control. You're never forced into a single way of working.
Vertically Integrated Telephony (CPaaS): Voice runs on Plivo's own global telephony infrastructure, avoiding third-party carrier dependencies.
Low-Latency Voice AI Stack: Integrated TTS, STT and LLM orchestration enables sub-500ms response latency, critical for natural voice conversations.
Enterprise-Grade Reliability: Built on Plivo's proven CPaaS platform with 99.99% uptime, 15+ years of reliable infrastructure, and global carrier connectivity across 190+ countries.
CRM & Workflow Integrations: Pull customer context in real time and write call outcomes back to CRMs and support tools automatically. Connect Follow Up Boss, kvCORE, BoomTown, Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Calendar, Outlook, and your MLS/IDX feed.
You own the stack: You get to choose your speech-to-text (STT), text-to-speech (TTS), and LLM while keeping prompts and data portable and avoiding lock-in.

Best fit if you:

Need real-time voice agents that can operate continuously at scale.
Want to avoid stitching telephony, AI and messaging vendors together.
Plan to deploy across multiple channels, not voice alone.
Have defined workflows for lead qualification, routing or follow-ups.

Not a fit if you:

Only need a lightweight voice demo, basic IVR or short-term experiment.
Want a fully turnkey, real estate-specific tool with no configuration or workflow control.
Don't plan to integrate voice agents into your CRM, data stack or operations.

2. Luron AI

Luron AI is best suited for teams that need 24/7 AI voice agents that never miss calls and qualify leads automatically. It supports multilingual conversations and keeps pacing tight across accents and speaking styles. The system handles inbound and outbound voice conversations in dozens of languages and automates bookings and follow-ups without human staffing.

Core Capabilities:

Instant call answer & qualification: AI answers every call, gathers intent, and qualifies leads without hold times.
Multilingual support: Handles AI conversations in 45+ languages to cover diverse lead sources.
Inbound & outbound support: Manages both types of calls and can also run outbound follow-ups.
SMS, chat & email automation: Extends voice agents to text and messaging channels for a unified engagement approach.
CRM & integration options: Connects to existing phone systems via SIP trunking and can integrate with CRMs and ticket systems.

Best fit if you:

Want 24/7 lead capture and qualification without adding staff.
Need multilingual voice conversations for global or diverse markets.
Expect to automate bookings, follow-ups and reminders on voice and messaging channels.
Have a CRM or existing phone system you must integrate with.

Not a fit if you:

Only need a simple inbound answering or IVR replacement without automation.
Want a solution focused on voice only, with limited channel reach.
Prefer fixed, transparent pricing tiers publicly listed.

3. Callers AI

Callers AI is a platform for automating customer conversations with human-like voice agents that handle both inbound & outbound calls and messaging channels, powered by your brand's data and tone. It's focused on scaling high-volume voice interactions while maintaining contextual continuity across channels in a single branded voice experience.

Core Capabilities:

Omni-channel AI interactions: Voice agents run across phone, SMS, WhatsApp and chat from a central AI brain.
Human-like voice calls: Agents answer and place calls in a natural conversational style.
Lead workflows & use cases: Supports lead qualification, cold call automation, appointment confirmation, retention flows and more.
24/7 availability & language breadth: Designed to handle calls and messaging around the clock, in multiple languages.
Context remembering: Conversations carry context across voice and messaging so follow-ups feel continuous.
Integrations & automation: Connects to CRMs and tools (300+ integrations) so call outcomes can update your systems.

Best fit if you:

Want both inbound and outbound AI calling with consistent, natural-tone responses across channels.
Need an AI system that can qualify leads, confirm appointments and manage follow-ups automatically.
Are scaling high call volumes 24/7.
Prefer a central "brain" that keeps context across channels and workflows.

Not a fit if you:

Only want a basic voice or outbound dialer with limited cross-channel logic.
Need a tool focused exclusively on simple IVR or basic routing without AI conversation layers.
Prefer a product you can set up and forget in minutes without upfront configuration or workflow definition.

4. SquadStack AI

SquadStack AI is best suited for teams that want AI-assisted sales and voice engagement workflows supported by configurable human-in-the-loop automation. It blends automated outreach and qualification with options to escalate to human agents where needed, helpful for revenue teams that are focused on pipeline speed.

Core Capabilities:

Automated Lead Engagement: AI enabled workflows proactively contact prospects and qualify them using data-driven sequencing.
Voice & Messaging Channels: Supports outbound dialing, ringless voicemail, SMS and multi-touch sequences.
Human-in-the-Loop Escalation: Configurable handoffs to live agents when conversations need human judgment.
Sales Workflow Automation: Built-in logic for lead routing, prioritization and follow-ups across channels.
CRM Integration + Data Sync: Sync outcomes and engagement data back to CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, etc.

Best fit if you:

Want inbound and outbound automated voice interactions with natural conversation flows and multilingual capability.
Need AI that handles lead qualification, follow-ups and reminders as part of sales or customer engagement sequences.
Are automating sales outreach and conversational workflows alongside voice calls.

Not a fit if you:

Need an AI platform focused on low-latency, bespoke voice agent infrastructure tied tightly to your own telephony stack.
Are building a multi-channel bot with CRM/telephony hooks and developer control from the ground up at scale.

5. Telgent

Telgent leans into MLS and portal context. It is best for businesses that want always-on voice AI calling with automated scheduling, intelligent call handling and quick setup. Its platform emphasizes immediate activation, seamless integration with existing phone systems and natural AI responses that handle calls, schedule meetings and engage customers day and night.

Core Capabilities:

24/7 AI voice calling agents: Always-on call automation that answers and routes customer calls at any hour.
Lead engagement & scheduling: Automatically books appointments, meetings and showings based on natural language conversations.
Inbound call handling: AI answers incoming inquiries, qualifies intent and routes prospects with minimal human intervention.
Automated inquiry responses: Provides instant answers to property questions and responds to rental or sales leads.
Integration with real estate systems: Works with Zillow, Realtor.com, MLS platforms, Follow Up Boss, kvCORE, BoomTown, Salesforce and HubSpot for CRM continuity.

Best fit if you:

Need round-the-clock call handling that captures leads and books appointments without missing inquiries.
Want your voice AI to integrate with core real estate tools and CRM systems so client details are synced automatically.
Are focused on lead conversion and showing scheduling as part of your customer engagement workflows.

Not a fit if you:

Only require basic outbound calling with simple scripts rather than inbound + scheduling automation.
Expect a no-config, plug-and-play voice bot that requires zero setup or customization.
Want a platform that handles only one channel (voice only) without extending into SMS/WhatsApp/chat automation.

6. AIOnCalls

AIOnCalls is positioned as a virtual receptionist that never misses calls or opportunities. Best for teams that want an always-on voice AI assistant that handles inbound and outbound calls around the clock, engages callers in natural language, qualifies leads, books appointments and updates CRM data.

Core Capabilities:

24/7 Inbound & Outbound Voice Handling: AI answers and places calls around the clock across all hours and holidays.
Lead Qualification & Follow-Up Automation: Qualifies callers in real time and automates follow-ups via voice, SMS and email.
Appointment Scheduling & Calendar Invites: Books appointments and sends confirmations during calls.
CRM & Workflow Integrations: Integrates with CRMs like Zoho, HubSpot, GoHighLevel, Google Calendar for real-time lead syncing and activity logging.
Multilingual Conversations: Supports multiple languages and can handle simultaneous call sessions.
Live Agent Escalation: Transfers complex calls to human agents when needed.
Real-Time Analytics & Transcriptions: Provides live call monitoring, transcripts, sentiment analysis and dashboards.

Best fit if you:

Need an AI voice agent that never misses inbound calls and engages leads immediately, 24/7.
Want automated lead qualification, booking and follow-ups in voice, SMS, and email without human staffing.
Are integrating call outcomes and engagement data into CRM or calendar workflows.
Operate in industries where speed-to-lead matters and missed calls are costly.

Not a fit if you:

Only need simple IVR or on-premise call routing without conversational automation.
Prefer a pure telephony or developer API platform without built-in AI conversational layers.
Are looking for a voice agent with deep, specialized industry templates.

7. Brilo AI

Brilo AI is a business-focused AI phone and voice call agent platform that enables teams to automate real-time voice interactions across industries like real estate. It promises fast setup, natural human-like voice responses, 24/7 coverage, integration with business tools and built-in analytics, all without needing a technical team to get started.

Core Capabilities:

24/7 AI voice call agents: Always-on AI phone agents handle inbound calls and customer engagements at any hour.
Human-like voice interactions: Conversational voice responses built to sound natural and engaging.
Appointment booking & scheduling: Voice agents can book appointments with synced calendars and handle reminders.
CRM and business integrations: Integrates with a broad range of business apps (6,000+ app connections claimed) to sync customer context and outcomes.
Real-time analytics & insights: Live call transcripts, sentiment analysis, intent tracking and topic detection support actionable insights post-call.
Lead qualification automation: Agents engage prospects, capture intent and route high-value leads in real time.

Best fit if you:

Need 24/7 automated voice engagement that never misses inbound or high-volume calls for lead capture, scheduling or support.
Need a platform that books appointments, manages follow-ups and drives customer engagement without manual management.
Plan to integrate the voice agent with CRM, calendar tools and analytics pipelines to maintain context across systems.

Not a fit if you:

Simply need a basic phone tree, IVR or traditional call routing system.
Are focused solely on developer-centric API telephony without AI built in.
Require industry-specific compliance guarantees (HIPAA, PCI, etc.) documented publicly.

8. VocalDesk

VocalDesk is an AI-enabled voice and contact automation platform that helps teams automate calling, lead follow-up, support interactions and scheduling. Its focus is on automated voice conversations and multi-channel engagement with CRM integration and configurable workflows that replace manual outreach tasks.

Core Capabilities:

Automated Voice Conversations: Handles inbound and outbound calls using AI to engage, qualify, and route callers.
AI-Driven Lead Qualification: Automated conversation flows that marks lead intent and priority.
Appointment Booking & Reminders: Schedules meetings and sends reminders as part of automated flows.
Multichannel Messaging: Engages customers across voice, text and messaging platforms.
CRM & Workflow Sync: Connects with CRM systems and business tools to log interactions and maintain records.

Best fit if you:

Want to automate call handling and lead follow-up without manual dialing.
Need a solution that combines voice and messaging outreach with CRM context.
Are focused on lead qualification and scheduling as part of broader sales engagement.

Not a fit if you:

Only need basic call routing or IVR without AI handling.
Require explicit developer control over telephony APIs.
Rely on hard metrics like latency, concurrency limits or multi-region telephony SLAs.

9. Calldock

Calldock is an AI voice agent platform intended for instant lead engagement, automatic qualification and scheduling. Its system calls leads within seconds of form submission, conducts natural conversations and integrates with calendars and workflows to automate follow-ups and booking.

Core Capabilities:

Instant lead callbacks: Calls website leads within ~60 seconds of a submission, boosting early engagement.
Calendar booking: Agents can book appointments directly to your calendar during live calls.
Multi-channel follow-up: Agents send SMS and email follow-ups as part of the call workflow.
Seamless handoff & callbacks: You can trigger human handoffs in natural language and schedule intelligent callbacks.
API, webhooks, & integration ecosystem: Support for APIs and pre-call webhooks lets you fetch context before calls and connect with Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, Zapier and thousands more.
Developer playground & documentation: Provides API documentation and code examples for triggered calls and automated workflows.

Best fit if you:

Want immediate lead engagement that happens in seconds.
Need voice agents that qualify, book and follow up automatically across voice, SMS and email.
Plan to integrate voice engagements with calendar and business workflows.
Need a voice agent that works with easy templates for common industries with minimal setup.
Want a low-code or no-code setup that goes live with simple configuration.

Not a fit if you:

Need proper inbound/outbound calling with API integration.
Require deep telephony infrastructure control or enterprise telephony SLAs.
Are building highly custom dialogue systems that need proprietary LLM tuning beyond the existing templates.

10. Ylopo

Ylopo is a digital marketing and lead gen platform built for the real estate industry. It combines lead capture, nurturing, AI voice calling, AI texting, branded websites and marketing automation into one system that integrates with CRMs and helps real estate teams generate and convert leads.

Core Capabilities:

AI Voice Follow-Up: Automatically calls new and existing leads to qualify interest and connect them to agents.
AI Text Conversations: Runs two-way SMS conversations to nurture leads until they're ready to talk.
AI² Voice + Text System: Combines calling and texting into one coordinated follow-up engine.
Automated Appointment Transfers: Delivers live transfers or booked appointments when leads are qualified.
Lead Generation & Nurture: Includes PPC ads, remarketing and IDX websites to capture and feed leads into AI follow-up.
CRM & Website Integration: Syncs AI conversations and lead activity with CRMs and branded real estate websites.

Best fit if you:

Want lead capture with nurturing as a unified system rather than isolated voice interaction tools.
Are a realtor or team that wants AI to automatically engage leads by text and phone, not just manage manual contacts.
Need branded websites with IDX search and integrated lead capture feeding into automated follow-up.
Plan to keep leads engaged over longer time horizons (e.g., 90-day voice follow-up).
Value combined marketing + AI follow-up rather than a single channel (voice only).

Not a fit if you:

Are looking for pure AI voice agent infrastructure like a telephony-first CPaaS platform.
Need tools focused on enterprise-grade telephony performance, low-latency voice systems or custom telephony workflows.

What Matters Most in AI Voice Agents (Beyond the Basics)

1. Telephony Ownership vs. Vendor Stitching

Many AI voice tools rely on third-party telephony stitched together with AI layers. This often introduces latency, call drops and limited routing control at scale.

What to prioritize:

Built-in telephony with direct carrier connectivity
End-to-end control over call routing and quality
Fewer external dependencies

Plivo runs on its own global CPaaS and carrier-grade telephony stack, removing third-party voice dependencies.

2. Real-Time Performance (Latency & Uptime)

Voice conversations break down quickly when responses lag or calls fail. Sub-second latency and high uptime aren't "nice to have"—they're mandatory.

What to validate:

Sub-500ms voice response latency
99.99% uptime or better
Real-time STT, TTS, and LLM orchestration

Plivo's vertically integrated Voice AI stack is designed for low-latency, real-time conversations on proven infrastructure.

3. Multi-Channel Context, Not Disconnected Bots

Leads move between calls, SMS, WhatsApp and chat. Treating each channel as a separate bot creates broken experiences and duplicate work.

What to look for:

Shared context across voice and messaging
Unified conversation history
Seamless handoffs between channels

Plivo supports multi-channel agents that share context across phone, SMS, WhatsApp and chat from a single system.

4. Integration Depth (CRM, Calendars, Workflows)

Voice agents don't operate in isolation. Without deep integrations, they become another silo your team has to manage.

Prioritize platforms that:

Read from and write to CRMs in real time
Trigger workflows during live calls
Integrate cleanly with calendars and support tools

Plivo integrates directly with CRMs and business systems, allowing agents to act on live data and update records automatically.

5. Built for Scale, Not Just Launch

Many tools work well for pilots but struggle under sustained call volume or multi-region deployment.

Ask:

Can this run continuously without degradation?
Are pricing and performance predictable as usage grows?
Will this still work when channels or regions expand?

Plivo's AI agents are built on infrastructure that already powers enterprise-grade voice and messaging at global scale.

FAQs

What's the fastest way to go live without breaking existing operations?

Start with a single, contained flow like after-hours inbound calls or instant lead callbacks. Connect your phone numbers, CRM and calendar, define escalation rules and launch! You can expand coverage once live data validates the flow.

How do I ensure voice quality doesn't feel robotic or laggy?

Voice quality depends on latency and telephony control. Platforms with integrated telephony and real-time STT/TTS orchestration keep responses sub-second, which is critical for natural conversations that callers don't hang up on.

How does the agent stay accurate and compliant with real estate data?

The agent should pull from a restricted, curated knowledge source (MLS, IDX, listings) and operate within defined guardrails. When questions exceed scope like pricing nuance, legal terms, fair-housing-sensitive topics, it escalates to a human automatically.

What happens when call volume spikes or multiple leads call at once?

Calls don't fail—they should queue. High-intent conversations can be routed to live agents, while others are qualified, scheduled or followed up asynchronously. Every outcome is logged so nothing gets lost.

How does this fit into my CRM and follow-up workflows?

The agent reads live CRM data during calls and writes outcomes back automatically in the form of notes, disposition, next steps and booked appointments. Your team picks up conversations with full context instead of starting from scratch.

Try Plivo Free

Curious how an AI voice platform performs in your workflows, not just in theory? Plivo offers a free trial account with credits so you can experiment with voice, SMS, WhatsApp and chat services before committing. When you sign up, you get trial credits, can add a phone number and start testing features like real-time voice interactions and multi-channel engagement using APIs or visual tools like PHLO. This lets you validate performance, integrations, and call flows with your actual data—all without upfront cost.

Plivo's trial lets you test core capabilities immediately, making it easy to see how quickly you can build, launch, and refine agents that handle calls, qualify leads and update systems in real time.

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

Jan 20, 2026

5 mins

Best AI Voice Agents for Customer Support and Service (2026): What to Deploy Now

Compare 10 AI voice agent platforms for customer support. Get a practical 30-day pilot framework, implementation workflow, and outcome-driven selection guide.

1) Plivo — The fastest path to production-grade AI voice agents for customer support

A recent Gartner survey found that most customer service leaders plan to explore or pilot conversational GenAI in 2025—making a clear, near-term mandate to deliver something that works on the phone channel, not just in chat. That's your cue to build a reliable voice front door with an AI agent builder platform designed for voice-first, omnichannel experiences.

Why Plivo is #1

Plivo is the AI agent builder platform that lets you build your way. Whether you're a business leader who needs to launch fast or an engineering team building custom workflows, Plivo meets you where you are. Start with no-code tools that let non-technical teams deploy agents in hours. Go deeper with low-code orchestration for more control. Or build from scratch with full-code frameworks that integrate into your existing stack. You're never forced into a single way of working.

What it does for you

Plivo's Voice AI stack is modular by design. Want speed? Use the fully integrated platform—STT, LLM, TTS, and telephony—pre-configured and ready to go. Want control? Orchestrate your agents using code with Plivo's Agentic STT models and Telephony, alongside your preferred LLM providers. Want just the connectivity layer? Use audio streaming or SIP trunking and bring everything else yourself. You decide where Plivo ends and your stack begins.

Underlying it all is a reliable, carrier-grade telephony platform that scales for enterprises—global PSTN/SIP connectivity, number provisioning and porting, call routing with failover, recording with consent, and clean human handoff with full context into your CRM or help desk.

Segment-by-segment fit

If you're SMB, launch fast with no-code tools that let you deploy agents in hours, plus a simple dashboard and connectors for Shopify and Calendly. If you're mid-market, use low-code orchestration for more control, with a modular stack that lets you use what you need—swap in your preferred LLM, STT, or TTS. If you're enterprise, build with full-code frameworks that integrate into your existing stack, plus a modular Voice AI stack to pick-and-choose what you need, governance features (RBAC, audit transcripts, data residency), and contact center integration for high availability and reporting.

Start with Voice, go everywhere

Voice is the hardest channel to get right—and it's where Plivo leads. But the same flexible building experience extends to WhatsApp, SMS, RCS, and Chat. Build once, deploy across channels, and meet customers wherever they are.

Suitable for

Fintech customer service: consent-first flows, secure keypad capture, dispute status, and callbacks.
Healthcare scheduling: multilingual intake, appointment changes, escalations with a summarized handoff.
Retail and logistics: order status, returns, delivery windows, and SMS/WhatsApp follow-ups.

No more choosing between a locked-in platform that's easy but limiting, or a DIY approach that's flexible but painful. Plivo gives you both—simplicity when you want it, depth when you need it.

Explore the Voice API, check pricing, review compliance, handle numbers & porting, browse case studies, or jump into the quickstart.

2) Google Dialogflow CX — Complex, branching flows without spaghetti

Key features

Dialogflow CX uses a flow-and-page model to capture state and branching, so you can manage multi-step intents like returns, warranty claims, and multi-factor verification without dozens of brittle intents. It supports voice and text and includes versioning, experiments, and test tools. For telephony, you can use partner gateways or SIP; for global reach, put Plivo at the edge and connect to CX.

Why it matters

Complicated support journeys need explicit state. CX gives you that structure. If your "Where's my order?" workflow forks based on identity checks, fulfillment method, and policy windows, you can keep logic readable and testable. CX also plays well with multilingual experiences and mixed initiative, so callers can change course mid-conversation.

Implementation steps

Start with a single high-volume journey and draw it as a CX flow. Add a fallback page with a short menu for noisy lines. Ground the bot in your knowledge base and order system, then add handoff rules. Put Plivo in front for numbers, routing, and recording consent, and pass summaries back to your ticketing system.

Suitable for

Teams with multiple brands or product lines, where branching grows quickly and consistency matters across regions.

3) Amazon Lex + Amazon Connect — AWS-first voice automation that ops can own

Key features

Lex handles the speech and NLU for voice and text. Connect adds the contact-center fabric: routing, IVR, call recording, and agent desktop. It's a natural fit if your data and apps live in AWS and security prefers IAM-managed access. For global numbers or bring-your-own carrier control, front with Plivo and route into Connect.

Why it matters

Staying inside AWS accelerates procurement, security reviews, and monitoring. You can call Lambdas for tool use, search knowledge with Kendra, and use Connect metrics and contact flows your ops team already knows. That shortens time to value and concentrates governance in one place.

Implementation steps

Define one call flow in Connect (ID&V → status lookup → handoff). Build Lex intents from your top FAQs. Add Plivo for number management, routing, and failover. Send summaries back to your CRM or help desk. Keep a barge-in plan for noisy environments and a keypad fallback for payment flows.

Suitable for

IT-led programs where AWS standardization, auditability, and a single pane of glass for monitoring are priorities.

4) IBM Watson Assistant — Governance-first deployments in regulated industries

Key features

Watson Assistant supports omnichannel conversations with documented security and governance options, including deployment paths designed for regulated workloads. If your risk office leads the decision, IBM provides clear guidance on audit logging, data handling, and architectural choices. Add Plivo to handle PSTN/SIP, call consent prompts, and compliant recording policies.

Why it matters

Financial services and healthcare teams often need auditability from day one. When you need clear data-handling boundaries and deployment models that align with internal controls, IBM's documentation and support track help you pass reviews without months of back-and-forth.

Implementation steps

Map your data-classification rules to Watson's deployment options. Keep contact recordings and transcriptions in your approved storage. Use Plivo's routing and consent prompts to standardize intake across regions. Summarize calls into your case system for full traceability.

Suitable for

Organizations with heavy compliance needs, strict data residency, or formal audit trails for every customer interaction.

5) Cognigy.AI — IVR modernization with fine-grained voice control

Key features

Cognigy combines a visual designer with a voice gateway that supports streaming ASR, interruptibility, and transfer control. It integrates with multiple speech providers and enterprise systems like SAP and Salesforce. This lets you tune barge-in sensitivity, error handling, and handoff cues rather than living with a one-size-fits-all IVR.

Why it matters

If callers still hear a menu tree, you're wasting time and goodwill. Cognigy helps you replace rigid menus with natural conversations and graceful escalation. You keep the levers you need—timing, sensitivity, fallback prompts—so the agent feels human, not scripted.

Implementation steps

Start with the two intents that create the most queue time. Set barge-in thresholds conservatively and widen them after you test in live traffic. Put Plivo at the edge to manage numbers, recording policies, and failover. Send summaries with disposition tags to your CRM.

Suitable for

Enterprises with legacy IVRs, high call volumes, and a clear need to reduce effort without ripping out the contact-center core.

6) Salesforce Agentforce — CRM-native service automation where your team works

Key features

Agentforce brings AI agents into the Salesforce console and data model. Your service team stays in the view they know, while the agent handles common intents, drafts summaries, and routes cases. Add Plivo for calling so every phone interaction lands in Salesforce with the right context.

Why it matters

When everything you need to resolve an issue already lives in Salesforce, keeping the agent there shortens integration time and improves analytics. Supervisors can coach on the same dashboard and review case summaries, while admins maintain clear governance over data and automations.

Implementation steps

Pick one queue with repetitive calls. Tie identity checks to account data and warranties. Keep a "press 0 for a human" fallback and make sure the agent passes a clean summary with next steps. Use Plivo for the phone edge so call recordings and consent are consistent across regions.

Suitable for

Service teams that treat Salesforce as the system of record and want automation to feel native—not bolted on.

7) Zoom Virtual Agent for Phone — A 24/7 receptionist and concierge

Key features

Zoom's Virtual Agent for Phone handles greetings, routing, and the most common requests. You train it from existing docs and site content, then turn it on for after-hours or full-time reception. It's built for quick wins like appointment scheduling, store hours, and simple status checks with transfers when needed.

Why it matters

If reception lines clog your switchboard, a front-door voice agent can deflect simple questions without new headcount. As you add skills, you can expand from triage to completing tasks. For broader reach, connect Plivo to add global numbers and transactional notifications via SMS or WhatsApp.

Implementation steps

Start with greeting, business hours, and routing. Add appointment booking next. Keep live-agent transfers one click away. If you outgrow the PBX perimeter, bring Plivo in to manage numbers and cross-channel follow-ups.

Suitable for

Single-number switchboards, high-volume reception desks, and teams that need a quick, always-on front door.

8) Sierra — Enterprise "autonomous" agents with category momentum

Key features

Sierra focuses on enterprise-grade AI agents for customer service with an emphasis on agentic workflows. The leadership and market traction give executives confidence to back bigger bets. If you're evaluating multi-channel automation with rigorous SLAs, Sierra is a credible short-list option. Plug it into Plivo for reliable telephony, recording consent, and global routing.

Why it matters

Momentum reduces perceived risk. When you need cross-functional buy-in, a vendor that's already in enterprise production helps. You still need the phone edge right: numbers, routing, and failover that won't buckle under peaks.

Implementation steps

Define two end-to-end journeys (e.g., ID&V + order update; returns approval). Keep human handoff one step away and capture every call summary in your case system. Instrument containment and transfers, then iterate weekly.

Suitable for

Large teams planning multi-channel agents and looking for vendor accountability with clear deliverables and timelines.

9) Tidio (Lyro) — SMB eCommerce chat that pairs well with voice

Key features

Tidio blends live chat, an AI agent, and eCommerce integrations. It's a practical way to resolve repetitive questions, free up your team, and capture intent while buyers are on your site. Add Plivo for a simple order-status line and SMS/WhatsApp updates so customers get answers by phone as well as chat.

Why it matters

eCommerce teams need fast coverage more than complex architectures. You can start with FAQs, then add checkout and account questions. When phone calls spike—promos, holidays—route a basic voice flow through Plivo and keep your agent consistent across channels.

Implementation steps

Load your top FAQs and shipping policies, add a returns flow, and set clear handoff rules. For voice, route a single Plivo number to a lightweight agent that authenticates by order ID and ZIP code, then offers a callback option during peaks.

Suitable for

Lean teams that want to reduce repetitive chat volume now and add phone coverage without standing up a full contact center.

10) Robylon — Multi-channel AI agents focused on support teams

Key features

Robylon specializes in AI-driven customer support across voice, chat, email, and messaging. It integrates with help desks like Zendesk and Freshdesk, supports multiple languages, and offers analytics dashboards designed for service leaders. It's a pragmatic fit if your help desk is the hub of your operation.

Why it matters

You want human-like conversations that escalate cleanly. Robylon's positioning around support workflows means your ticketing, SLAs, and dispositions stay intact. For reliable calling, use Plivo for numbers, routing, and recording consent so your phone channel matches the quality of your chat channel.

Implementation steps

Start with account updates and appointment scheduling. Ground the agent in your help-desk knowledge base and macros. Track resolution time and transfer reasons; refine weekly.

Suitable for

Mid-market support teams who want a focused system that plugs into existing help-desk processes and expands to voice without heavy lifting.

How to run a safe, high-signal pilot in 30 days

Define success first

Pick three metrics: containment, transfer rate, and average resolution time. Write a one-line target for each and a go/no-go threshold. Everyone should know what "good" looks like before you take your first call.

Start with narrow, high-volume intents

"Where's my order?", appointment changes, returns, account updates. These are predictable, frequent, and measurable. Script your handoff sentence so agents never start from zero.

Build the right guardrails

Add a consent prompt, a keypad fallback for sensitive inputs, and a short backup menu for noisy environments. Keep the escalations simple: one route for billing, one for everything else.

Ground every answer

Connect the agent to your CRM/help desk and knowledge base. If the answer doesn't exist in your source of truth, escalate. Summarize every call into the ticket with disposition and next steps.

Iterate weekly

Review 20 call transcripts together. Fix the top three friction points. Update prompts and knowledge. Ship changes. Repeat.

FAQ

What's the fastest way to launch a voice agent without changing my stack?

Keep your telephony and routing on Plivo, connect your preferred conversation engine, and ground it in your CRM/help desk and knowledge base. Start with one number, one intent, and a simple fallback.

How should I measure success in the first 30 days?

Track containment, transfer rate, and resolution time. Listen for barge-in moments and interruptions—they reveal prompt and timing issues that you can fix quickly.

How do I implement consent, recording, and PCI/PHI safely?

Play a clear consent prompt before any recording. Use keypad input for payments or sensitive data. Store recordings and transcripts in approved systems and keep audit logs.

When is Dialogflow CX better than Lex, IBM, or Cognigy?

Choose CX for complex branching flows and multilingual journeys; Lex when your team standardizes on AWS; IBM when governance and deployment control are paramount; Cognigy when you're modernizing IVR with fine-grained voice settings.

How do I handle accents, noise, and barge-in in production?

Use a robust ASR, tune your barge-in sensitivity, and keep a keypad fallback. Test in noisy environments and shorten prompts. Summaries help human agents pick up without asking callers to repeat themselves.

Conclusion: Build the voice edge once, then scale what works

A measured result to anchor ROI. McKinsey reported that, at one company with thousands of agents, applying generative AI raised issue resolution and lowered handling time—small percentage gains that compound into real savings at scale. That's the kind of lift your leadership expects—and the reason to start with a focused pilot that moves one metric.

Bring your "brain" of choice, but keep the phone edge on Plivo so every call connects, every consent is captured, and every handoff carries context. Define three KPIs, pick one journey, and go live with a human fallback. Review transcripts weekly, then scale to the next two intents.

Ready to hear what real-time voice feels like? Build your agent or talk to an expert today.

Jun 19, 2025

5 mins

RCS Marketing 101: Your Complete Guide

Discover how RCS marketing delivers rich, branded messages that drive engagement for your business.

SMS marketing works, but let’s be honest: it feels a bit outdated compared to modern apps.

But what if you could send rich, interactive messages with branded content, images, buttons, and carousels straight to your customers’ native messaging apps?

Rich communication services (RCS) makes that possible.

If you’re ready to explore how RCS marketing can transform your engagement strategy, this guide will walk you through everything you need to know. Let’s get started.

What is RCS marketing?

RCS marketing uses rich communication services to send interactive, branded messages through a customer’s default messaging app. It’s a modern upgrade to SMS that lets businesses share images, buttons, carousels, and more — all without needing third-party apps.

A user on Reddit summed up this perfectly:

Screenshot of a Reddit comment explaining what RCS is — *RCS explained by a Reddit user*

RCS lets you send messages that are visually branded with logos and colors while remaining interactive. This turns static updates into an app-like experience inside a message.

This shift is part of a broader industry move, led by Google and backed by major mobile carriers, to upgrade messaging infrastructure and make RCS the default standard on Android devices.

As support continues to grow, businesses are adopting RCS as part of their customer engagement strategy. Platforms like Plivo make that adoption easier with a reliable, enterprise-grade gateway to deliver rich, reliable RCS campaigns at scale.

RCS vs. SMS marketing: A quick comparison

Marketers today are looking for ways to deliver more interactive and visual communication, and RCS is clearly leading the way.

While SMS still works well for simple alerts, it lacks the creativity and engagement that RCS marketing offers.

Let’s take a quick look at RCS vs. SMS marketing.

Key feature	SMS marketing	RCS marketing
Message length	Limited to 160 characters; with longer messages split	Up to 8,000 characters in a single message
Multimedia	Supports only plain text and links; needs MMS for multimedia	Natively supports high-resolution photos, videos, audio, and GIFs
Security and verification	No built-in sender verification	Includes verified sender profiles with business name, logo, and custom colors
Read receipts	No standardized way to know if a message was delivered or read	Provides delivery and read receipts for real-time engagement tracking
Typing indicators	Doesn't show when the other party is typing	Displays typing indicators, creating a more conversational feel
Interactive buttons	Not supported; calls to action (CTAs) are limited to plain text links	Allows interactive buttons with predefined replies and actions
User experience	Static, text-heavy, and transactional	Dynamic, visually rich, and conversational — feels more like a mobile app
Analytics and reporting	Basic delivery tracking (if supported by carrier)	Advanced analytics: opens, clicks, conversions, and user behavior tracking

4 key benefits of RCS marketing

RCS marketing makes messaging feel more natural for both you and your customers. And since you can see what’s working and what’s not, it’s easier to pivot your strategy and get better results.

Here are its four key benefits.

1. Improved user interaction

One of the biggest advantages of RCS marketing is how seamless it makes the experience for your customers. Instead of typing out replies or clicking a link to open a website, users can just tap a button right inside the message.

Want them to book a demo, check order status, or browse products? It’s all possible with just a tap.

Fewer steps mean less effort, and that leads to more people following through. In fact, individuals spend up to 37 seconds engaging with RCS messages, which is a lot longer than most other types of mobile messaging.

Image showing the engagement results of RCS messaging — *People engage more with RCS than any other platform*

That extra time and interaction can make all the difference when you’re trying to convert interest into action.

2. Consistent brand experience

RCS marketing doesn’t just tell people who you are — it shows them.

Verified business profiles help people know they’re getting messages from the real brand. Every message shows your brand’s logo, name, colors, and a checkmark. These small details make it clear that the message is coming from a genuine source.

Image showing that MAYI - HOMES sends a verified RCS message with branding — *Verified RCS message from MAYI - HOMES*

This consistency matters because 88% of people are more likely to buy from a brand they trust.

3. In-depth analytics

With RCS marketing, you can track open rates, button clicks, and how people interact with each part of your message.

You get clear visibility into what’s working and where users are dropping off.

This makes it much easier to measure the return on investment (ROI) and fine-tune your campaigns. The more you understand how people engage, the better you can shape your messaging for results.

4. Higher conversion potential

RCS marketing makes it easier for customers to take action — whether that’s browsing products, booking a service, or making a purchase — all within the message itself.

With fewer clicks and no need to switch apps, the path to conversion feels effortless. And when it’s that easy, more people follow through.

For example, EaseMyTrip used RCS to run a post-COVID travel survey. They added quick-tap answer options and followed up with a thank-you coupon. The campaign saw a 4x higher click-through rate than email, 10x more survey completions, and a 2.7% increase in conversion rate.

5 major use cases of RCS marketing

Here are five major use cases showing how brands are using RCS marketing effectively.

1. Product promotions

RCS makes product promotions feel more like browsing a store than reading a message. Brands can send image carousels that customers can swipe through to explore new arrivals, check product details, and see what’s available without leaving their messaging app.

Verified RCS message highlights a 25% off promotion on all items — Verified RCS message from Daily-donuts

Example: A fashion retailer promoting its spring collection could send an RCS message featuring a carousel of outfits with styled images, prices, and buttons like “View Lookbook” or “Shop Now.”

Tapping a button could open a mini product page inside the chat, letting customers browse and buy without switching apps.

2. Abandoned cart reminders

The average cart abandonment rate is over 70%, which means most shoppers never make it to the finish line. RCS marketing can help bring them back by making the reminder more engaging and easier to act on.

You can send a message that shows exactly what they left behind, along with a clear button to complete the purchase. It’s visual, straightforward, and the entire experience stays within their messaging app.

Example: A home electronics store could follow up with customers who left a pair of wireless earbuds in their cart. The RCS message might include a product photo, the price, and a “Buy Now” button that takes them straight to checkout.

3. Appointment confirmations and reminders

A PhD thesis from Manchester Metropolitan University found that forgetfulness is the most common reason people skip their appointments.

RCS makes it easier for both businesses and customers to stay on the same page. You can send a message that shows the appointment details along with a simple calendar view. Add buttons to confirm, reschedule, or cancel — all within the chat.

Image depicting an interactive RCS booking confirmation message — Booking confirmation via RCS with quick action buttons

Example: A dental clinic could use RCS to remind patients of upcoming cleanings. The message might show the date, time, and location of the appointment, plus a “Confirm” button and options to “Reschedule” or “Cancel.”

Patients can respond instantly, helping the clinic manage its schedule more efficiently.

4. Customer surveys and feedback

Getting feedback is important, but most customers lack the time or patience to complete lengthy forms. RCS marketing makes it easier by allowing brands to ask short, targeted questions and receive quick responses.

Plus, the rich features of RCS let you include images, ratings, or multiple-choice options, making feedback feel more like a conversation.

Example: A restaurant could send an RCS message after a meal asking customers to rate their experience with simple buttons like “Excellent,” “Good,” or “Needs Improvement.”

The message might also include a photo of the dish they ordered and a quick question like, “What did you like most?” This quick interaction makes it easy for customers to respond and gives the restaurant valuable insights.

5. Customer support follow-ups

After a support request is resolved, following up shows customers you care and helps close the loop on their experience. But if the follow-up message gets buried in an email inbox or goes unnoticed, that opportunity to connect is lost.

With RCS marketing, you can send a quick message to check if everything’s working fine. You can include helpful buttons like “Change Password,” “Manage Account,” or “Talk to Support.”

Support bot provides instant replies and follow-ups for customer queries — AI-powered support for account management

RCS marketing myths and realities

Despite RCS marketing’s growing adoption and proven results, some common misconceptions still hold businesses back from trying it. Let’s look at a few of the biggest myths and what’s actually true.

Myth 1: RCS marketing is too expensive

At first glance, RCS business messaging can seem like a pricey upgrade. Rich visuals, tap-to-action buttons, and branded layouts look premium, so it’s easy to assume they come with a hefty cost.

But cost alone doesn’t tell the full story.

What you get in return matters more. RCS drives significantly stronger engagement with higher click-through rates, increased interactions, and better overall outcomes.

Take Club Comex, the loyalty program of North American paint brand Comex. They sent two rich and interactive RCS campaigns to their members and saw a 10x higher click-through rate, which helped increase revenue by 115%.

That’s the value side of the equation. Better targeting and richer content mean more people click, engage, and convert.

Myth 2: RCS marketing doesn’t reach enough users to be worth it

This concern made sense in the early days of RCS, when adoption was still catching up. But the landscape looks very different now.

In June 2024, the 12-month growth of RCS users reached 36.3%, showing faster uptake than other messaging channels. More Android devices support RCS by default, and it’s being rolled out across more networks globally. Even Apple has announced support, which means RCS is on track to reach a massive number of smartphone users worldwide.

With that kind of growth and widespread support, the hesitation around RCS is starting to fade. Brands can confidently invest in RCS marketing knowing it will connect with more customers than ever before.

Myth 3: RCS gets treated like spam and ends up ignored just like emails

Unlike email, RCS messages appear directly in the user’s primary messaging app alongside personal conversations. They include rich media and interactive elements, making them more engaging and less likely to be ignored.

This creates a more natural, conversational experience that drives higher open and response rates than traditional marketing channels.

Why choose Plivo for your RCS marketing needs

With RCS, you can turn simple messages into rich, branded conversations that feel more like chatting than broadcasting.

Plivo gives you the tools to make that shift without the hassle. From verified messaging to smart automation, everything works together to help you connect better and respond faster.

When combined with AI Agents and a unified customer data platform, RCS becomes more than just messaging. You can deliver personalized experiences at scale, automate everyday interactions, and keep conversations flowing without lifting a finger.

Here’s what you get with Plivo’s RCS API:

Real-time personalization: AI Agents tailor conversations using customer profiles and behavior triggers to improve engagement and conversions.
Multi-channel fallback: If RCS isn’t supported, messages automatically switch to SMS to ensure delivery and maintain consistent communication.
Conversational automation: AI Agents handle FAQs, process orders, schedule deliveries, and route complex queries within RCS.
All-in-one messaging platform: Manage RCS, SMS, WhatsApp, Voice, and more from a single dashboard.
Reliable performance: 99.99% uptime and global infrastructure keep your campaigns running smoothly.

With Plivo’s no-code tools, you can quickly launch AI-powered RCS messaging across channels and deliver a consistent customer experience from day one.

See how you can launch your first RCS marketing campaign with Plivo by requesting a demo today!

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Jan 8, 2021

5 mins

How to Send and Receive SMS Messages Using Python and Plivo’s Messaging API

Discover how to get started with Plivo’s SMS API and Python to easily send and receive SMS text messages.

Python SDK

SMS

How To

Prerequisites

To get started, you need a Plivo account — sign up with your work email address if you don’t have one already. If this is your first time using Plivo APIs, follow our instructions to set up a Python development environment.

Send an SMS message using Python

Now you’re ready to start. Create a file called send_sms.py and paste into it this code.

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import plivo

client = plivo.RestClient('<auth_id>','<auth_token>')
message_created = client.messages.create(
  src='<sender_id>',
  dst='<destination_number>',
  text='Hello, world!'
)

Replace the auth placeholders with actual values from the Plivo console. Replace the phone number placeholders with actual phone numbers in E.164 format (for example, +12025551234). In countries other than the US and Canada you can use a sender ID for the message source. You must have a Plivo phone number to send messages to the US or Canada; you can rent a Plivo number from Phone Numbers >Buy Numbers on the Plivo console or via the Numbers API. Save the file and run it.

$ python receive_sms.py

Note: If you’re using a Plivo Trial account, you can send messages only to phone numbers that have been verified with Plivo. You can verify (sandbox) a number by going to the console’s Phone Numbers > Sandbox Numbers page.

Receive an SMS message using Python

Of course sending messages is only half of the equation. Plivo supports receiving SMS text messages in many countries (see our SMS API coverage page and click on the countries you’re interested in). When someone sends an SMS message to a Plivo phone number, you can receive it on your server by setting a Message URL in your Plivo application. Plivo will send the message along with other parameters to your Message URL. You can implement this using a Flask web app.

First, optionally, set up a virtual environment to keep these packages isolated from others on your system. Then create a file called receive_sms.py (or whatever name you like) and paste into it this code.

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from flask import Flask, request

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/receive_sms/', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def inbound_sms():

    from_number = request.values.get('From')
    to_number = request.values.get('To')
    text = request.values.get('Text')
    print('Message received - From: %s, To: %s, Text: %s' %(from_number, to_number, text))
      
    return 'Message Received'

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', debug=True)

Save the file and run it.

$ python receive_sms.py

You should then be able to see your basic server app in action on http://localhost:5000/receive_sms/.

That’s fine for testing, but it’s not much good if you can’t connect to the internet to receive incoming messages and handle callbacks. For that, we recommend using ngrok, which exposes local servers behind NATs and firewalls to the public internet over secure tunnels. Install it and run ngrok on the command line, specifying the port that hosts the application on which you want to receive messages.

./ngrok http [portnum]

Ngrok will display a forwarding link that you can use as a webhook to access your local server using the public network.

Now you can create an application to receive SMS messages (follow our Quickstart guide for details).

Conclusion

And that’s all there is to sending SMS with Python. Don’t use Python? Don’t worry — we have SDKs for Java, PHP, Node.js, Ruby, .NET Core, .NET Framework, and Go.

Haven’t tried Plivo yet? Getting started is easy and takes only five minutes. Sign up today.

Dec 23, 2020

5 mins

Connectivity and Communications for Better Customer Experience in 2021

A CPaaS can help businesses create better experiences and drive loyalty in the upcoming year.

CPaaS

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how we work, learn, and interact. Social distancing guidelines have led to a more virtual existence, both personally and professionally.

We’ve all reduced the number of in-person interactions we have, so network connectivity and communications have taken center stage. Many businesses have increased their reliance on digital channels and have accelerated the pace of their digital transformation, implementing solutions for connecting their employees, customers, and partners in a remote environment, and relying on communications platforms like Plivo to do so.

Even prior to COVID-19, communications platform as a service (CPaaS) was becoming mainstream for businesses to stay ahead of customer expectations without having to overhaul their existing IT infrastructure. It’s a low-risk, pay-as-you-go cloud solution that enables businesses to conveniently and instantly connect with their customers.

Now we’re seeing an even more demand for real-time communication, with the expectation of a 24/7 multichannel experience, especially as it relates to sharing critical information, scheduling appointments, and receiving essential services.

Here are a few ways businesses can meet new and changing customer expectations to create better experiences and drive loyalty in the upcoming year.

Proactively reach out to customers

Proactive outreach is key for maintaining customer relationships and promoting customer loyalty. From health systems needing advanced communication with at-risk patients to retailers needing to handle delays for supply chains, SMS API solutions can automatically contact individuals or groups via text interaction, auto form fills, and response tracking. CPaaS can enable all the critical messaging capabilities a business needs, and this kind of automation enables them to scale up quickly and reliably.

Consider an omnichannel approach

The best way to satisfy customer demands is via omnichannel, 24/7 solutions with features such as intelligent routing, interactive voice response (IVR), and workflow automation. For instance, if a customer reaches out to your business with a text message late at night, you can configure prebuilt auto responses to confirm receipt and provide a response based on the words they used. You can also add the message to a queue for your customer service team to follow up on during normal business hours, to help deliver a more personalized experience for your customers.

Offer more self-service options

Self-service tools enable customers to solve their own problems quickly. They also free up agents to handle more complex queries. If you integrate an IVR system with your CRM platform, you can let customers open service tickets, pay bills, schedule payments, book appointments, and track order shipments. If you handle large volumes of IT requests, you can offer guided instructions for resetting passwords or rebooting customer applications. Whenever a customer has an inquiry that can’t be resolved with an automated option, you can redirect them to a live agent for more personal attention.

To take even more advantage of self-service, you can implement a skill-based routing system to ensure that the most qualified person, rather than the first available agent, is the one who answers a call. With the right programming, your IVR menu can qualify, filter, and route calls to the team member best suited to address your customer’s needs.

A CPaaS solution enables more effective communication between an organization and its customers, employees, or patients. Sophisticated tools like Plivo enable a fully integrated and automated experience to help scale communications and to engage and advance the user experience. Building these three strategies into your company’s CPaaS strategy in 2021 can turn your automated technology into a customer-first tool that exceeds expectations.

Dec 22, 2020

5 mins

Improve Conversions with Multichannel 2FA

Multichannel two-factor authentication offers superior reliability and seamless customer experience, and guarantees high delivery rates across the globe.

2FA

Security is critical for all businesses. Strong authentication tools are the first line of defense against hackers and other bad actors.

Generally, passwords serve as the first authentication factor today. Every computer user is familiar with how passwords work. Security best practices call for long passwords, and if a string of letters and numbers is too long or complex to remember, users can employ a password management application to remember passwords for them. But passwords can be hacked, copied, or stolen, so passwords alone don’t provide adequate security — thus the need for a second factor.

Two-factor authentication choices — pros and cons

Many businesses use two-factor authentication (2FA) to secure access to enterprise resources and data. Organizations have many options for the second factor — biometrics, a hardware or software token, or a message sent over a separate communication channel from the one people log in on. Each has pros and cons.

Biometric authentication offers high security. Credentials are impossible to transfer to unauthorized individuals and difficult to spoof. But biometrics relies on special hardware, such as a fingerprint reader, which adds to the cost, and may deliver a false positive result, thus providing authorization wrongly.

Hardware tokens are difficult to spoof or tamper with and don’t require users to be connected to any network. However, they’re an extra item that organizations have to pay for and that users have to carry around and sometimes lose. Battery-operated tokens that work by generating a PIN code have limited lifetimes.

Software tokens that generate PIN codes can be a good alternative to hardware tokens. Users can generate them through applications on mobile devices, even if they’re not connected to a network. But users must download one of the token-generating apps that provide the numeric codes they exchange, and have to be trained on how to use them. And, like any software, apps can be hacked. Worse, if the mobile device is lost, the authentication credentials may be difficult or impossible to recover.

SMS messages may be the simplest and best choice for 2FA. For 2FA to work effectively, any authentication factor has to be easily accessible to users who need to authenticate. Just about everyone has a mobile device nowadays, and SMS comes native on all mobile devices — no additional app install required. And everyone knows how to read and reply to text messages, so no training is required. On the downside, it costs organizations money to send SMS messages, and in some cases it costs users to receive them. The technology relies on users being connected to a network. And SIM swapping attacks can attempt to compromise authentication.

The importance of a fallback authentication channel

Regardless of which approach an organization takes, it’s critical that the authentication method be reliable. You can’t improve security if your security enhancement keeps people from accessing the resources they need. That means your second factor needs a Plan B that’s just as secure as the original.

That’s a tall order for biometric and token-based authentication. If face recognition fails to authorize you or you lose your token, what’s your alternative authentication method? You may have to fall back on an emergency passcode — and that nullifies the advantage of a second authentication method, because passcodes are no more secure than passwords.

In this respect, SMS has an advantage over biometrics and tokens.

Though SMS is very reliable, it can be subject to delayed or dropped delivery, thanks to snags such as high network loads, unreliable carriers in some countries, and a host of other issues.

But when SMS authentication fails, organizations can easily implement a fallback channel for authentication — voice messages. Voice has the same advantages of ubiquity and intuitive use that SMS offers. Because voice calls sync immediately versus being stored or forwarded like SMS, voice calls are prioritized on the carrier network, and as a result, they’re more reliable than SMS. And the combination of SMS with voice fallback is the most reliable of all.

Voice as a fallback channel from SMS for 2FA

We’ve written a post on best practices for SMS and voice-based 2FA. It talks about how to ensure that 2FA messages arrive within the 10- to 15-second window that avoids disruption in the customer experience: The communications platform has to be able to identify invalid phone numbers, discover the fastest routes for optimal message delivery, and support high throughput for delivering high volumes of messages and in a timely manner.

Any company that intends to verify or authenticate users via SMS or voice calls needs superior reliability globally to ensure a seamless customer experience. Your SMS and voice API provider needs to offer a high-quality carrier network to guarantee high delivery rates across the globe.

Plivo customer Bigo, a Singapore-based provider of video-based products and services, uses SMS and voice to verify signups. It used PHLO, Plivo’s visual development tool, to quickly build a workflow that issues a one-time password (OTP) via SMS and then defaults to voice verification to improve conversions. Using PHLO makes building workflows simple; you can start with an existing template and easily adapt your verification and authentication requirements via drag-and-drop modules.

Reliability and security second to none

Plivo is all about reliability. Our platform supports more than a billion transactions every month while maintaining 99.99% API uptime. Our infrastructure is globally distributed and uses a network of eight data centers around the world to power global communications.

And when it comes to security, we eat our own dog food. Plivo’s CPaaS platform itself uses multifactor authentication, among other security features, to keep customer access and data secure.

Dec 14, 2020

5 mins

How to Send and Receive SMS Messages in Java Using Plivo’s SMS API

Get started with Plivo’s SMS API and Java to send and receive SMS text messages.

Java SDK

SMS API

How To

Your company has settled on Plivo to handle its voice and messaging communications, and now it’s your job to start integrating Plivo into your company’s applications. Don’t worry — Plivo has a Java SDK to help you out. You can use it write Java applications that send and receive SMS messages.

In this guide, we’ll explain how to send and receive SMS messages in Java. We'll walk you through the process of setting up your account, writing code snippets for sending messages and receiving responses through our SMS API. By the end, you'll be ready to leverage SMS communication for notifications, alerts, or even two-way interactions in Java.

Prerequisites

Before we walk you through the steps to send SMS in Java, you’ll need a few prerequisites in place:

A Plivo account— sign up with your work email address if you don’t have one already.
Install (or update) Java 1.8 or higher
Install IntelliJ IDEA
Install Spring and the Plivo Java SDK

To make sure you’re ready to go, refer to our guide Set up your Java Dev Environment for Messaging. This guide will go into more detail to help you set up a development environment to trigger API requests in Java. The entire process takes around five minutes.

Send an SMS in Java

Now you’re ready to start. Create a Java class in the project called SendSMS and paste into it this code.

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import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Collections;
import com.plivo.api.Plivo;
import com.plivo.api.exceptions.PlivoRestException;
import com.plivo.api.models.message.Message;
import com.plivo.api.models.message.MessageCreateResponse;

class SendSMS
{
    public static void main(String [] args) throws IOException, PlivoRestException {
        Plivo.init("<auth_id>","<auth_token>");
        MessageCreateResponse response = Message.creator("<sender_id>",
                "<destination_number>",
                "Hello, from Java!")
                .create();
        System.out.println(response);
    }
}

Replace the auth placeholders with actual values from the Plivo console. Replace the phone number placeholders with actual phone numbers in E.164 format (for example, +12025551234). In countries other than the US and Canada you can use a sender ID for the message source. You must have a Plivo phone number to send messages to the US or Canada; you can rent a Plivo number from Phone Numbers > Buy Numbers on the Plivo console or via the Numbers API. Save the file and run it.

Receive an SMS in Java

Of course sending messages is only half of the equation. Plivo supports receiving SMS text messages in many countries (see our SMS API coverage page and click on the countries you’re interested in). When someone sends an SMS message to a Plivo phone number, you can receive it on your server by using a Spark web app. Install Spark by editing pom.xml and adding dependencies for Spark and the Simple Logging Facade for Java (SLF4J), which you’ll also want.

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.sparkjava</groupId>
    <artifactId>spark-core</artifactId>
    <version>2.9.1</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
    <artifactId>slf4j-simple</artifactId>
    <version>1.7.21</version>
</dependency>

Then create a Java class in the project called ReceiveSMS and paste into it this code.

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import static spark.Spark.*;

public class ReceiveSms {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        get("/receive_sms", (request, response) -> {
            // Sender's phone number
            String from_number = request.queryParams("From");
            // Receiver's phone number - Plivo number
            String to_number = request.queryParams("To");
            // The text that was received
            String text = request.queryParams("Text");
            // Print the message
            System.out.println(from_number + " " + to_number + " " + text);
            return "Message Received";
        });
    }
}

When you run the project you should see your basic server app in action on http://localhost:4567/receive_sms.

./ngrok http [portnum]

Ngrok will display a forwarding link that you can use as a webhook to access your local server using the public network.

Now you can create an application to receive SMS messages (follow our Quickstart guide for details). You can also create a Java class to reply to incoming SMS messages.

Why you should use Java to send and receive SMS

Java’s platform independence, ease of use, and security make it a great programming language for sending and receiving SMS messages. Compared to other programming languages, Java is simple to use and easy to understand.

Java is also an object-oriented programming language, meaning developers can easily reuse objects in other programs. Because it’s platform independent (e.g., Write Once Run Anywhere, or WORA), Java SMS applications can run on various platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux, etc.) without modification.

Finally, Java provides robust security mechanisms to protect sensitive SMS data. SSL/TLS support for SMS transactions makes secure communication channels easy to establish.

Get started with Plivo to send SMS in Java

That’s all there is to sending and receiving SMS messages using Plivo’s Java SDK.

Don’t use Java? Don’t worry — we have SDKs for PHP, Python, Node.js, Ruby, .NET Core, .NET Framework, and Go.

Haven’t tried Plivo yet? Getting started is easy and takes only five minutes. Sign up today.

Dec 8, 2020

5 mins

What is Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)?

Plivo’s two-factor authentication offering is a reliable, scalable phone number authentication solution in a single API.

2FA

Two-factor authentication (2FA) protects organizations from unauthorized access to data by requiring an additional level of authentication beyond usernames and passwords. Common 2FA types include one-time passwords (OTP) sent through a separate communication channel; biometric factors such as a fingerprint, retina scan, or facial or voice recognition; and an authenticator app or hardware token that provides a time-sensitive code.

Plivo’s two-factor authentication offering, which uses SMS- or voice-based OTP authentication, can secure accounts, prevent takeovers, and protect high-value transactions.

Why should I implement 2FA?

Security best practices call for organizations to use 2FA before granting users access to their digital assets. With account takeovers on the rise, passwords alone don’t provide the level of security organizations need. Having a separate, unconnected authentication channel makes it difficult for malicious actors to compromise secure systems.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted many customers and employees to remote, mobile, virtual, or distributed locations, which makes 2FA even more important.

Read the complete guide on How to implement 2FA ?

How does Plivo 2FA work?

When a user signs up or logs in to a customer’s application, the application calls the Plivo API.
The Plivo API sends a numeric code to the user’s mobile device via SMS message or voice call. Our APIs sync these codes with the customer’s application to authenticate the login, even when a device is offline.
The person with the mobile device enters the verification code they received into the application.
The application verifies that the code is the same as the one that was sent, and if it is, gives them full access.

Why should I choose Plivo as my 2FA provider?

Plivo enables users to access their accounts and files from multiple devices thanks to our ability to provide consistent high deliverability of time-sensitive 2FA SMS and voice calls.

To ensure timely delivery, Plivo leverages deliverability reports from a global network of test nodes and our Feedback API, enabling us to proactively route messages to the most effective carrier. We offer senders a direct route to end users, with a one-hop maximum, and without route dilution or blending. Users can make calls and send SMS messages to every country in the world, avoid delays, and avoid paying for repeated, undelivered messages.

By the way, we use 2FA ourselves to protect access to the Plivo console. Our documentation has more information on how to implement 2FA within your own applications.

Dec 6, 2020

5 mins

Announcing Secure Trunking on Outbound Trunks

Secure SIP trunking enables outbound trunks to use TLS to encrypt signaling and SRTP to encrypt media during the time a call is traveling through the public internet.

Zentrunk

SIP Trunking

Plivo now supports secure trunking for Zentrunk’s outbound trunks. SIP security has become a major priority for businesses — networks often hold classified information, and if a hacker gains access to it while it’s in use, the damage can be severe.

With this new functionality, Plivo customers can use Transport Layer Security (TLS) to encrypt signaling and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) to encrypt media during the time a call is traveling through the public internet.

How it works

Secure trunking operates almost entirely the same as any SIP trunk. The only difference is a short exchange at the beginning of a call to negotiate a security cipher suite and key to encrypt the call. Once the call is on the internal side of the Plivo network, encryption is no longer used.

Two types of data packets are involved in a successful SIP call over the internet — signaling and media. Encryption of signaling happens over the TLS protocol, and ensures authentication between two transport endpoints over an unsecured path for the SIP messages. Think of this as validating that the packets are from the correct source (either the customer or Plivo), and that they haven’t been altered during transmission. We support TLS versions 1.2 and 1.3. SRTP is used when securing RTP packets, which ensures that the media packets and actual contents of the call remain private and secure during the transmission. This kind of end-to-end encryption allows businesses with strict information security practices to reap the benefits of both SIP trunks and cloud communications.

To learn more about our implementation and how to configure your VoIP infrastructure with secure trunking, check out our documentation.

With a redundant infrastructure across multiple geographies and at least three local carrier connections across countries, Plivo offers a secure SIP trunking solution with robust authentication and encryption. You can rest assured that the communication lines in your company are safe from data attacks.

Haven’t tried Plivo yet? Getting started takes only five minutes. Sign up today.

Nov 18, 2020

5 mins

Holiday Messaging: Don’t Let Covid Upend Your Success

How to ace Holiday Messaging in the midst of a Pandemic?

SMS API

As COVID-19 cases continue to rise, governments are implementing new travel restrictions, gathering sizes are limited, and many holiday traditions are sure to look different this year. The pandemic has impacted many areas of business planning, including holiday messaging campaigns. With in-person communications scaled back, it’s likely that your company is rethinking how to reach its customers. SMS and MMS messaging offer a way to cut through the clutter and directly reach customers with critical information.

Who might be pivoting more of their communications to SMS and MMS in the next few weeks? Here are some examples of businesses whose communications can’t fail at the peak of the holiday season:

Retailers sending updated promotions, store capacity limits, or reduced opening hours
Ecommerce vendors sending delivery notifications and updates for gifts
Grocery stores or restaurants arranging for curbside pickup or home delivery
Airlines notifying passengers of flight changes or updated health and safety guidelines
Ride-hailing platforms notifying of passenger pickup and mask requirements

Make sure your messages reach their intended audience this season. Here are a few tips to remember if you’re making a sudden switch of communication channels.

Don’t forget the visuals

Multimedia messages can help you stand out. If your store is closed or its hours have changed, but you still need to promote a Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale, use MMS messaging to send a variety of formats: pictures, audio, and video. With Plivo’s MMS API, you can send and receive MMS messages using any number type (long code, toll-free, short code) across the US and Canada.

Use the right number

Phone number validation minimizes delivery errors by determining whether a customer’s phone number is valid before including that number in your contact list. This validation process reduces errors and helps increase conversion rates by segregating landlines from mobile numbers. Make sure you’re messaging numbers that can actually receive them. Plivo’s Lookup API determines number format, type, country, and carrier for any phone number worldwide and in real time.

Short isn’t always sweet

Short codes offer a clean, fast, and legally compliant option for sending high-volume, one-way application-to-person (A2P) communications. But, compared to other SMS number types such as long codes and toll-free numbers, short codes are the most heavily regulated number type. Short codes take the longest to get approval for and have the most expensive rates. If you’re trying to make a sudden switch, a short code may not be the best option. Read about best practices for using short codes with an SMS API and get your timelines correct.

Be recognizable

If you’re sending messages outside the US and Canada, a sender ID can help identify your brand via a custom alphanumeric phrase like the company’s name or service, thereby increasing engagement with recipients. Some countries require you to register sender IDs. If you’re on a tight deadline, make sure to check our blog post on sender IDs for more information.

Turn up the volume

If you’re changing tactics and suddenly incorporating more messages than you originally planned, you’ll need a solution that automates the sending of potentially hundreds of thousands of messages. Plivo Powerpack automatically determines how many phone numbers you need to deliver those messages, and can also find the best phone numbers for reliable delivery. Powerpack can ensure that the “from” number is always a local phone number, increasing open and read rates. Powerpack is designed to meet large-scale SMS and MMS message throughput and volume requirements.

It’s easy to get started with Plivo messaging. It only takes minutes to set up an account and send your first message. If you’re suddenly facing a holiday crunch and need some guidance, let us help! Talk to an expert today.

Nov 18, 2020

5 mins

Introducing Plivo Browser SDK for Mobile Browsers

We now support the Plivo Browser SDK in mobile browsers: Safari on iOS, Chrome and Firefox on Android.

Browser SDK

The Plivo Browser SDK lets users make and receive calls using Plivo applications directly from a web browser. Using our SDK, you can create applications like click-to-call, conferencing bridges, and even web phones.

Developers have been using Browser SDK for several years to write applications for desktop browsers. We now support the Plivo Browser SDK in mobile browsers — namely Chrome and Firefox on Android and Safari on iOS. This means that customers can use the Browser SDK to build audio calling applications designed for the mobile web.

Use cases include:

Call center — Build a more efficient call center workflow by allowing your agents to make and receive calls via their browsers and control call flows in your app using our API.
Click to call — Whether you’re building a feature-rich call center or adding click-to-call to your CRM app, Plivo runs seamlessly in the background to allow your users to interact via audio communication.
Web-based help desk — Create great service experiences and workflows. Your sales and support agents can access customer info while making calls directly from their web browsers.
Web conferencing — Build rich conference experiences with Plivo’s out-of-the-box features, including unique call flows, recording calls, and branded conference greetings.

Mobile support enables developers to deliver engaging experiences for users who prefer using their mobile devices without downloading a native app. To leverage this functionality, you need to use the latest version of the SDK and update your application UI for the mobile form factor.

While our Browser SDK supports most of the standard functionality in the corresponding mobile browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Safari), due to various browser engine limitations, support for features differs by browser and platform. We tested the Browser SDK on mobile browsers and documented the functional limitations below, along with some performance benchmarks.

Functional feature support

	Chrome	Firefox	Safari
Make and receive calls	Supported	Supported	Supported
Mute and unmute	Supported	Supported	Supported
Support for DTMF	Supported	Supported	Supported
Call quality metrics tracking	Supported	Supported	Not supported
Microphone and speaker toggling	Supported	Not supported	Not supported
Move browser to background during ongoing call	Call continues	Call continues	Call continues
Receive incoming call when browser is in background	Rings only when the browser is brought to the foreground; then the call can be answered as usual.	Rings only when the browser is brought to the foreground; then the call can be answered as usual.	Rings only when the browser is brought to the foreground; then the call can be answered as usual.
Incoming PSTN call during ongoing SDK call	Both calls happen in parallel.	SDK call will be overwritten by PSTN call (audio running in background and no audio heard from app), but when PSTN call is disconnected, SDK call continues.	Both calls happen in parallel.
Echo cancellation and noise reduction	Supported	Supported	Supported

Performance

	Chrome	Firefox	Safari
CPU usage on-call	Max 7%	The browser doesn’t provide this information at the JavaScript library (SDK) level.	0.116
CPU usage idle state	Max 1%	0.019
Memory consumption on-call	Max 5MB	Max 4.8MB
Memory consumption idle state	Max 3.1MB	Max 4.8MB
Network usage	Total requests: 23 Transferred over network: 645B Resources loaded by the page: 1MB Finish: 1.55 sec (async loading of objects)	Total requests: 7 Transferred over network: 1.26 KB Resources loaded by the page: 778.32 KB Finish: 19.88 sec (async loading of objects) DOMContentLoaded: 121 ms Load: 142 ms	Domains: 4 Resources: 6 Total loaded: 2.97KB Bytes transferred: 536B Time: 0
Jitter	4 ms	No jitter	No jitter
RTT	122 ms	105.91 ms, 100.12 ms	150.48 ms, 100.28 ms
Packet loss	No packet loss	0.03% (no packet loss)	No packet loss

Functional feature support

Get started today and build real-time communications into your apps in a few minutes with just a few lines of code. The Browser SDK seamlessly connects to Plivo’s global infrastructure, enabling you to create and deliver better customer experiences instantly. Haven’t tried Plivo yet? Signing up only takes five minutes! Try it today.

Nov 16, 2020

5 mins

Best Practices for SMS and Voice-Based Two-Factor Authentication

Best practices for SMS and voice-based two-factor authentication to ensure that every 2FA OTP message gets delivered quickly.

2FA

Security best practices call for organizations to use two-factor authentication (2FA) before permitting authorized users to access their digital assets — but for 2FA to work securely, businesses need a reliable second channel. For many organizations, 2FA involves the use of one-time passwords (OTP) as a secondary verification method, on top of usernames and passwords. Often, businesses generate and get confirmation of OTPs through messages sent through voice and SMS channels. The theory is that having a separate, unconnected authentication channel makes it difficult for malicious actors to compromise secure systems.

It’s critical that all 2FA voice and SMS OTP messages get delivered quickly. A lot goes on behind the scenes to ensure that those messages arrive within the 10- to 15-second window that avoids disruption is the customer experience. For that to happen, a communications platform has to be able to identify invalid phone numbers, discover the fastest routes for optimal message delivery, and support high throughput for delivering high volumes of messages and in a timely manner.

Let’s look at what that means for the components that make up the platform.

Phone number validation

Communications platforms need to look up and validate the phone numbers users provide for 2FA. They should offer an API that handles number validation and formatting, accesses carrier information, and retrieves the portability information associated with a phone number. The API should use multiple sources to return the most accurate response for a given lookup type: for number validation and formatting, for example, it can use international numbering plan data, and for carrier information it can use mobile number portability and numbering plan data from each country’s phone number regulator. The goal is to retrieve the most accurate and up-to-date data for each query.

Efficient, dynamic routing

Businesses can and should support multiple carriers for high availability. Having multiple carriers offers another benefit — it gives a communications platform routing options. The platform can offer dynamic routing to ensure that all messages are delivered over the best-performing carrier route to the destination mobile network. That’s especially critical with 2FA, because people expect to receive their authorization messages immediately, and any delay impedes their ability to accomplish their tasks. In an ideal world, the platform would be able to identify that, for example, carrier A has a conversion rate of 85% and carrier B 94%, and intelligently choose carrier B to ensure the lowest latency. How can a communications platform determine the most efficient carrier route?

One technique is to deploy global test nodes across all countries that have multiple carriers, using real phone numbers from carriers local to each region. The platform can then send messages to the test nodes and receive back results that confirm voice and SMS deliverability, report speed of deliverability, give confirmation of sender ID, and indicate correct message concatenation.

The platform should also use feedback from delivered messages. With this approach, developers can mark OTP messages as trackable. Then, when a user successfully authenticates their account using a verification code from the platform, data gets reported back. Especially in countries where carrier networks are generally unstable, this feedback can play an important role in choosing a carrier to ensure consistently high delivery rates for 2FA and OTP SMS messages.

Messaging at scale

As an organization grows, it can find itself sending large volumes of messages — hundreds of thousands or more at a time. Its communication platform must be able to automate the complex logic of making text and call distribution effective and reliable at scale. Often the organization grows not just vertically but horizontally, expanding into new markets, which may be served by different telecom carriers. Each region has different regulations, each carrier has different capabilities, and these different constraints often factor into the type of phone number (long code, toll-free, short code) that businesses use to send SMS or voice messages.

To support enterprise messaging demands, a communications platform can use a pool of phone numbers from multiple carriers, and automatically route messages to recipients using the phone number that’s most convenient for them, ensuring a high deliverability rate. The pool should be able to support various phone number types in different regions or area codes, and the platform should be able to prioritize phone numbers that match subscribers’ regions and area codes, while also taking into consideration carrier restrictions, for more efficient communications.

Ensuring efficient, reliable message delivery

Plivo addresses all of these factors with a robust API platform and global carrier network. Specifically:

Number validation— Plivo’s Lookup API provides real-time phone number validation to reduce fraud and improve conversion
Message routing — Plivo’s Conversion Feedback API sets up a customer feedback loop and brings message conversation data into the platform, while our global test nodes constantly test carrier networks and relay the results into our network automatically. Our dynamic routing algorithm uses this data to proactively route SMS and voice messages to the best carriers for optimal, timely delivery.
High-volume messaging — Powerpack ensures reliable SMS and MMS distribution at scale.

A solid communications platform is key to implementing 2FA using voice and SMS channels. Plivo’s Voice API and SMS APIs work in tandem with carrier and network infrastructure to ensure reliable deliverability. See for yourself how well it works — sign up now for a free trial.

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

What is an AI voice agent?

Types of AI voice agents

Rule-based AI voice agent

AI-assisted voice agent

Conversational AI voice agent

Voice-activated voice agent

How does an AI voice agent improve customer engagement?

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

Benefits:

Use case: Improve language learning for students

Benefits:

Use case: Improve patient outcomes in healthcare

Benefits:

Use case: Streamline routine financial services

Benefits:

Use case: Get personal shopping assistance

Benefits:

Features of an AI voice agent

Natural language understanding (NLU)

Personalization capabilities

Multi-language support

Integration with other platforms and services

Benefits of voice agents

Enhanced user experience

Better cost efficiency

Accessibility for users with disabilities

Data collection and analysis for improved services

24/7 availability

Future of AI voice technology

Key upcoming trends:

Launch an AI voice agent with Plivo

AI Voice Agents for Real Estate (2026): 10 Tools Compared, Real Limitations and What Actually Scales

Top 10 AI Voice Agents for Real Estate (2026)

1. Plivo

2. Luron AI

3. Callers AI

4. SquadStack AI

5. Telgent

6. AIOnCalls

7. Brilo AI

8. VocalDesk

9. Calldock

10. Ylopo

What Matters Most in AI Voice Agents (Beyond the Basics)

1. Telephony Ownership vs. Vendor Stitching

2. Real-Time Performance (Latency & Uptime)

3. Multi-Channel Context, Not Disconnected Bots

4. Integration Depth (CRM, Calendars, Workflows)

5. Built for Scale, Not Just Launch

FAQs

What's the fastest way to go live without breaking existing operations?

How do I ensure voice quality doesn't feel robotic or laggy?

How does the agent stay accurate and compliant with real estate data?

What happens when call volume spikes or multiple leads call at once?

How does this fit into my CRM and follow-up workflows?

Try Plivo Free

Best AI Voice Agents for Customer Support and Service (2026): What to Deploy Now

1) Plivo — The fastest path to production-grade AI voice agents for customer support

Why Plivo is #1

What it does for you

Segment-by-segment fit

Start with Voice, go everywhere

Suitable for

2) Google Dialogflow CX — Complex, branching flows without spaghetti

Key features

Why it matters

Implementation steps

Suitable for

3) Amazon Lex + Amazon Connect — AWS-first voice automation that ops can own

Key features

Why it matters

Implementation steps

Suitable for

4) IBM Watson Assistant — Governance-first deployments in regulated industries

Key features

Why it matters

Implementation steps

Suitable for

5) Cognigy.AI — IVR modernization with fine-grained voice control