[Podcast] AI Voice Agents: Big CX Wins, Smarter Lessons, Better ROI

Automation alone isn’t enough—designing human-centered AI experiences turns cost-savings into brand-building.

Richard Lin Archives - Doing CX Right

Doing CX RightStacy Sherman

Award-winning Host Stacy Sherman of Doing CX Right and Richard Lin CEO of Anyreach

Understanding AI Voice Agents

AI voice agents combine real-time transcription, large language models, and natural text-to-speech to handle calls, chat, and ad responses. When each response lands in under 500 ms, conversations feel fluid—no more robotic “dead air.” These systems let companies staff 24/7 support, burst capacity during peaks, and speak every customer’s language on demand.

Maximizing Efficiency

By automating routine inquiries—“order status, appointment bookings, FAQs”—AI agents slash operational costs while maintaining quality. “One person on a team has an output of like 10 or 50 people,” Richard notes, as AnyReach’s agents handle endless concurrent calls. Behind the scenes, every interaction is logged, tagged, and fed back into dashboards, revealing friction hotspots and “missed revenue opportunities” to be addressed by human teams.

Personalized Customer Interactions

Forget one-size-fits-all IVRs. Advanced voice bots detect caller language mid-conversation and switch seamlessly—no hold music, no manual transfers. “You can switch languages during calls,” Richard explains, letting agents say “Hola” one moment and “Bonjour” the next. Combined with “memory features” that recall prior interactions, these agents deliver contextually rich dialogs that feel tailor-made.

Turning Feedback Into Action

Every call is a goldmine of insights: sentiment shifts, feature requests, competitive mentions. “Use AI to proactively gather rich customer insights and act on them,” Stacy urges. AI can auto-extract themes and surface them in real time to product, marketing, and support teams, enabling faster issue resolution and “features your customers actually want.”

Transparency in AI Use

Trust is the cornerstone of great CX. Always inform customers they’re talking to AI—“Hi, I’m an AI assistant here to help,” Richard suggests. Simple disclosures and “option to escalate to a human” links turn potential distrust into delight. “I wouldn’t want my voice cloned and used in nefarious manners,” he adds, advocating clear ethical guardrails.

The Future of AI in Business

The next wave isn’t just AI assisting humans—it’s AI operating autonomously across sales, service, onboarding, and collections workflows. “AI voice agents is big. It’s here. It’s not coming. It’s right now,” Richard repeats. Mundane tasks will fade from human job descriptions, leaving people free for strategic, empathetic, and creative work.

Dealing with AI-to-AI Communication

“There's actually more AIs on the call than there are humans,” Stacy laughs. Richard foresees billing AIs negotiating with procurement AIs—“We have a simulation environment… you create an AI customer, you can actually do real phone calls where AI is talking to AI.” Preparing for AI-to-AI requires robust APIs, secure identity protocols, and shared ontologies.

AI for Business Growth

Proactive outreach—renewal reminders, cross-sell suggestions, health-check calls—drives incremental revenue and retention. “Imagine a world where you can talk to every customer at any point in time, be extremely proactive,” Richard envisions. Combined with predictive scoring, AI agents can prioritize high-value customers and tailor scripts for upsell or churn prevention.

Adapting to AI

Start small: “Explore AI, play around with it, make it a part of your everyday life,” Stacy recommends. Identify the top 3 call types that follow clear scripts and pilot a voice agent. Measure cost per interaction, resolution time, and CSAT side-by-side with human agents, then expand based on learnings.

Leadership and AI

Richard’s leadership mantra? “If you tell a fish to climb a tree, it’ll think it’s stupid.” Play to people’s strengths by appointing “AI champions,” running hackathons, and celebrating “10× productivity hacks.” When everyone experiments, the organization evolves together.

Conclusion

Deploying AI voice agents isn’t a checkbox—it’s a strategic design exercise. By prioritizing transparency, personalization, and future-proof architectures, you turn automated calls into brand-defining conversations. Start small, iterate fast, and watch AI become your greatest CX ally.

Keywords: AI voice agents, customer experience, CX automation, ethical voice cloning, AI trainers, AI-to-AI calls, open-source models