AI voice agents

The call you don't pick up doesn't show up anywhere

An unanswered WhatsApp message stays there, in bold, nagging until someone opens it. An email, the same. A missed call on the business phone, no: if the number isn't saved or nobody checks the log, it's gone and nothing is left. Not who it was, nor what they wanted, nor whether it was the big quote of the month or someone asking your opening hours. That's the odd gap in this channel: you lose customers without knowing you've lost them, so it never comes up in any meeting. The first thing a voice agent does, before booking anything, is turn that into something you can read.

If there's nobody to hand the phone to, nobody answers it

In Spain, 54.4% of companies have no employees at all: just the owner, according to the central business directory of Spain's National Statistics Institute (INE). There's no reception to divert the call to. The phone is carried by the same person who is under a car, with a patient in front of them or driving. Answering means dropping what you're doing; not answering means it's lost. Hiring someone just for that rarely adds up, and voicemail only works if the caller bothers to leave a message. A voice agent fills that gap, and doesn't tire when several calls come in one after another.

Source: INE (Spanish National Statistics Institute), Central Business Directory (DIRCE) as at 1 January 2025

What it leaves in writing when it hangs up

Two versions of the same Monday. Version A: three missed calls at half past nine, two of them with no number. Version B: three records. A customer whose van has broken down and wants to bring it in tomorrow, with a phone number and a slot at ten. Someone moving their appointment from Thursday to Friday, already moved in the diary. And someone asking something the agent can't answer, with the reason written down and flagged for you to call back. The agent collects whatever you tell it to: the reason, the registration number, the file number. And it leaves it where you'll look: your diary, your CRM or the WhatsApp of whoever is on call.

It isn't the usual answering machine

What people picture when you say phone agent is press one for appointments, press two for billing. This isn't that: there's no options tree; callers speak the way they speak, say what they need in their own way and the agent understands. You can interrupt it mid-sentence and it replies without the usual awkward silence. That said, it isn't magic. With lots of background noise, two people talking at once or poor signal, it gets things wrong. What matters more is what it does then: it doesn't leave the caller going round in a loop, it puts them through to a person or takes a message.

It has to say it's a machine, and it does

The EU AI Act requires an automated system to identify itself as such to the person it's talking to. No pretending to be Ana from reception. In practice it's dealt with in the first sentence, and it isn't the commercial problem you imagine: what annoys callers isn't talking to a machine, it's being unable to get things sorted and unable to get out. So the agent says what it is and always leaves open the option of speaking to a person. Add the obvious: if you record calls, you have to tell people they're being recorded.

Source: European Commission, regulatory framework for artificial intelligence

You test it by ringing it, and sometimes we'll tell you no

You can judge this before signing up. We set up the agent with your services, your hours and the questions you really get asked, and you ring it from your mobile. If hearing it doesn't convince you, we stop there. And there are cases where it isn't worth it: if you get few calls and answer them all, if every conversation is a different negotiation that needs judgement, or if you have no digital diary to write the appointment in. Nor do we build agents to cold-call people who haven't asked to be called: it isn't legal in Spain and it doesn't do you any good. Tell us about your case and we'll tell you whether we can do it, how we'd approach it and what it would cost. If it isn't for us, we'll tell you that too.