S1. Ep16 - How AI Voice Agents Are Revolutionising Business Operations

Katie: Welcome to the AI Automations for Business Podcasts. We're your hosts, Katie and Noll, and we'll be discussing how you can use AI for your business along with the latest news, updates and automations to help you stay ahead of the curve, allowing you to grow and scale your business more efficiently. Please be sure to subscribe

Noel: and I hope you enjoy this episode.

Katie: Hello, welcome back to another episode. Hi, I'm Katie and I've got Noel here with me. Hey, Noel.

Noel: Hello.

Katie: How you doing?

Noel: Oh, amazing. Absolutely amazing. Looking forward to this one.

Katie: I feel like you say that every week.

Noel: Well, I look forward to this. This is nice to record our podcast. Yeah, I do enjoy it.

Katie: Oh, that's nice to hear.

Noel: Yeah. Says the crazy introvert.

Katie: You said it. So this week, we are talking about AI voice agents. So, will kind of explain what they are, how they work, what you can use them for, and even how you can set them up as well. So I guess the first question, Noel, that kind of needs addressing is what exactly is an AI voice agent?

Noel: So I guess to start off, look, a voice agent is anything that you talk to and then it will go off and then figure out the tasks that it needs to do. that that could be we've been using it for years so it could be like Siri so you say hey Siri hope it doesn't start no could you call call my mum and it will go off and it will go okay so he wants to call his mum let's look in the contacts there it is stop the call you know and same with Alexa like you know can you order me some more dog poo bags and it will go off and do that for you so so that's got their voice agents we've been using for a very very long time I think you know so Yeah,

Katie: everyone's kind of very aware of Siri and Alexa.

Noel: Yeah, but I think now with other tools and advancements that are coming out, with the advancement of AI, you know, it's becoming a lot easier for us to integrate that into our businesses. And yeah, it's a very exciting time to be able to, you know, get these sort of voice agents in there that are either customer facing or internal that we can chat to and it can do, you know, tasks and things for us. Yeah.

Katie: So we've kind of said like, you know, Siri and Alexa. So yeah, I think it's clear like what a voice agent is. But from a business point of view, like how would we use this? Like can you like share some examples?

Noel: Yeah. So a real simple example would be somebody fills in a form on your website and within there you've got your phone number or you've asked them for their phone number, shall I say. And once they filled out the form, that would then trigger an automation. And in that automation, you would then trigger a voice agent, which would then phone them up and basically enrich that lead and get a bit more information of the services they're looking for and things. And also book in a call. So you can give this voice agent, access to your calendar and it will say, well, would you like to book in a call with Noel? They go, okay, he's free on Friday, one o'clock are you? Yes. And it books it all in and it's done. So that's kind of like a very simple integration that you can do. But yeah, there's so many.

Katie: So it's almost like you're qualifying your leads before you get on a discovery call with people.

Noel: Yes, exactly that, yeah.

Katie: Because although they might go ahead and book a call, you might be then going back and look at the answers that they've provided from the call that they've had with the voice agent and go, actually, this person hasn't like qualified what I require in a lead. So I'm just going to go ahead and cancel that call.

Noel: Yes, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, you can give your agent like a list of questions or like a goal that it needs to get to within that call. So if it needs to figure out, like, what sort of services they're after and things like that, it will go off and it will do that and give you all the information back. So, yeah, yeah, really powerful. It saves you picking up the phone and sorting it out yourself. Yeah,

Katie: so it's saving a lot of, a lot of time, really, isn't it, for business owners?

Noel: And I can really see this working,

Katie: like, particularly well. in terms of like estate agents real estate because I feel like they are constantly on the phone like trying to get information from you know potential clients and

Noel: I feel

Katie: like this is such a great way to gather that information that's that was just like one industry that just came to my head like straight away and

Noel: I know it's

Katie: going to work for like so many other industries but Yeah, straight away,

Noel: that's what popped into

Katie: my head.

Noel: Because although the example I gave was kind of like an outbound version, you can do an inbound version. So if I like the real estate one, somebody phones up and they say, well, they would talk straight to the AI agent, voice agent, and then say, well, I'd like to sell my house and they go, right, so then it would then go through like a prescribed list of things, like where is it? You know, what sort of property do you have, how many bedrooms, you know, what's your expected value, you know, when can you book in for reviewing, you know, so we can come around and value the property and things like that. So, yeah, yeah, we're really powerful.

Katie: Yeah, that's super interesting.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: So with the voice agent, how does it actually like learn to respond or ask questions that makes sense for a particular industry or specific business?

Noel: So this comes down to the old issue of prompt engineering, unfortunately.

Katie: Oh, we love prompt engineering.

Noel: We do. Yeah, there isn't a platform yet that does voice agents that doesn't need some sort of system prompt for it to understand what's going on. So the platform I've been playing around with is retail.ai, fantastic platform, by the way. Not sponsored by, but it's brilliant, super easy. but they're in there they've got like a full system prompt that you've got to put in things like and you can then say well look to start off a conversation so if it's you calling them maybe you should find out if you're talking to the right person first so you can pass in like variables and say well you're calling this number this is the person's name so it would go hey how are you am i talking to katie and they go yes brilliant and that will carry on so then you can kind of like within the system prompt build out like a typical phone call and yeah it works incredibly well it doesn't sound too robotic either because you can look I would say like the AI voice is you know it's becoming a lot lot better and with these sort of agents like you can even interrupt it you know and say well hold on I'm not interested and they go okay fair enough that's fine okay and then yeah it would then change its tack and then below look to when the call and things are. So yeah, it's very clever.

Katie: Yeah, really cool. So I know you've given like a couple of examples, but, you know, how can this save like businesses, time, even, I guess,

Noel: money in the,

Katie: yeah, in day-to-day, like, you know, business operations, for example.

Noel: So it can save you save you so much time because you're not having to as a person let's say you said to me no you need to go and call this particular supplier of a product and you know make sure that they're still compliant with certain regulations you know or whatever so I would then have to go off look up who this person is and then you know look up the products so I understand what I'm talking about make that call and then you know at some point then probably create a report and then say, yeah, they're all good, or I've got to update the database to tick it off, say that I've called them, and that's done. So that could take, you know, I guess that could probably take half an hour, at least, if not an hour, depending on what, you know, what level of research and what level of output you need to produce. So, yeah, I mean, an AI agent, you know, you would just say, right, call that one, and then you would input all of the information automatically from your database, so it knows what it's talking about, it does all the stuff and it creates a report within two minutes of everything. So, you know, that could be done in 10 minutes. And there's no kind of fluff either. So although it's good to have conversations with people and, you know, build that rapport, that voice agent isn't really going to do that as such. It's just going to go in, get the information, get out. But be polite about it, of course. Yeah.

Katie: But how reliable Or do you think, you know, these voice agents are for handling the questions for...

Noel: They can be very good. So I have done a bit of testing and it's kind of been, sometimes it's been a bit hit and miss, but mostly that's because of my system prompt. So I needed to tweak that. But with most of these agents, you can give it access to a full knowledge base. So if anyone asks like a question that isn't really within your system prompt and script, it can then still go through your entire knowledge. base and then go, I'll actually, there's the answer to that question. And then can they carry on that conversation with that person? So, yeah, they are very intelligent in that sort of thing. Okay, cool.

Katie: So if someone wanted to get started with setting up a voice agent, what would they need? Is it like super technical?

Noel: Not really, no. So we would need an automation platform, you know, my old friends, make.com, would be a good start.

Katie: Not sponsored a guy, unfortunately.

Noel: But maybe if you're

Katie: listening and you want to sponsor us, then we're totally up for that.

Noel: But you could trigger it with other platforms. You've got Zapier, any of those sort of ones would be able to integrate. So you kind of need to, it depends on the use case that you have. So if you've got a form that they're filling out, you need a way to connect that form into make or your platform of choice and then send that then off to the voice agent. So if you're doing like retail, you would connect the two together and then that's it, then off it will go. So as soon as that data's received, it would then go off, make that call and then, you know, you would then also then need a way to like create the report afterwards. So where would you like that saving? Would it be like an email that it would send to you after the call? You know, does it, you know, do something in your database, your CRM? So you've kind of got to figure out, you know, which tools you want to connect is probably the first big problem. But then after you've got other tools, I know I've talked about Rettel, but there's also like VAPI. That's a very similar service, but I think their pricing is a bit extortionate, if I'm honest. They've just changed it. So, yeah, it's getting quite pricey. Okay.

Katie: Okay, so you've picked what platform that you want to use.

Noel: Mm-hmm.

Katie: And then I'm guessing there's then, you know, apps that you can then, like, plug it into, like, you usually can.

Noel: Yes, yeah. So you can connect into any other 2,000 apps that they've got on their platform as an example. So it could be a CRM, could be Gmail, you know, Google Sheets, if you're still using those, you know, it could go anywhere at all. Okay. But the other thing you do need to do, obviously, is to go and get a phone number. So these sites connect into a platform called Twilio, and you can basically go off and like, I think it's like 80 cents. You can go and buy a phone number. And that's kind of what, you know, creates those external calls. So, yeah, you're a bit limited on the number that you can buy. So it might not be something that's similar to your current business, but it could be local, it could be mobile, all sorts. Yeah, that's also quite cheap, actually, in terms of, yeah.

Katie: So as we're talking, like something's popping into my head,

Noel: and it's kind of like,

Katie: what do you think, like, the risks of using voice agents are, like, because I'm very aware that people might just think this is, like, like a spam phone call? Mm-hmm.

Noel: It could be used for good and evil. Definitely. Yeah. Obviously, we advocate for using it for the good, so you're reaching out to people that have already contacted you. You know, we're not scraping phone numbers and then, you know, calling them. That's not what we would say to do.

Katie: So when we do get these spam calls that, you know, like, that start you know with like you you know it's like a bot but they're using like a very humanised voice yeah um this is kind of like the same process in what they're doing technically yes

Noel: i would say most of the spammers are actually quite bad at doing it oh course they are I mean,

Katie: I don't even say hello and they, you know, it's triggered it and it's fighting off some crap.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: Yes.

Noel: But yeah, they also don't use like the decent voices as well. So not only could you use, so there's a tool called 11 Labs and they have some incredible voice actors on there. And yeah, if you've got a call using one of those voices, you would probably struggle initially to figure out that it's actually AI. but you can kind of figure it out eventually. You know, you can soon pick up on bits. There might be like the odd awkward pause or things that. But one thing that retail does in the background is like you can have like background noises. So it sounds like they've got an office in the background. That's mad. Or like they're in a coffee shop and things that.

Katie: Oh my God, that's so crazy.

Noel: So there's that bit of background noise and you think, is it? Oh, I don't know. But, yeah, sometimes you can, yeah, you can easily spot it. But with things like 11 labs, you could trade that with your own voice and then plug that into it as well. I think that would be better,

Katie: yeah.

Noel: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, you could do all kinds of stuff with it instead of using an actor.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: For good, not evil. Yeah.

Katie: I mean, that appeals to me more than anything. Yeah,

Noel: definitely, yeah. Yeah. Because at least then you've got the right voice tone.

Katie: Yeah. Yeah.

Noel: An accent. Yeah.

Katie: So do you think, like, the AI voice agents are going to, I don't want to say the word explode, but do you think they're going to become more popular over the next few years? Because I feel like we have been using voice agents for such a long time now, and it's kind of always been at the same level. So kind of, like, what would make it now kind of get more and more. popular.

Noel: Yeah. So I think like with text-based agents, that's gone crazy this year. But that's kind of like stuff that we were probably working on six months ago. So yeah, I think it's going to take a bit of time for this sort of thing to catch on. But I think once it does and businesses start to realize like the real value of these things, you know, that their staff can be, you know, doing other more important things instead of picking up a phone and then asking 10 people the exact same questions, you know, that's not really probably a good use of their time. So I think once people start cottoning onto that, that's when it will start to become a lot more mainstream. Okay.

Katie: So we kind of need like some of the bigger businesses to start using it first for it to become then like normalized and then it almost like them filters down, doesn't it?

Noel: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You just got away for like someone like Microsoft co-pilot to say, oh, now we've got our own voice calling agent. and then everyone goes, oh, right, yeah, and we could use that. Yeah.

Katie: As well, I think it would be quite good for membership, how you know, because if you've got someone who's, like, within your membership and maybe they want to speak to someone on the team because they're feeling stuck, they know, like, you know, there's all this information within the membership, but they're not really sure how it, like, well can help them or where to start first or maybe they're just feeling like really overwhelmed especially if it's like business to business I find um you know i i think this would be quite a good thing to use so that member who's feeling like stuck or overwhelmed could have a voice agent call where they talk through you know the the questions and rather than then you know a member of your team having been on a call for like say 30 minutes they can kind of just review the data that the answers that that member has given them and then they can like almost send them an email going you know from from the answers you've provided or they can even call them back do you know what I mean um and just say from from what you've you've told us on that phone call like we've we've given you this personalized plan you know roadmap to go through, you know, here's a, here's a link to all the resources within the membership. And then you've got a really happy member that's, you know, probably, you know, going to stay in that membership for the foreseeable future.

Noel: You know,

Katie: you've, you've kept that member. Yeah.

Noel: And I think there's also other ways as well. So let's say they phoned that number. You could connect that voice agent into the knowledge base. So it already has access. to all of the content that's already been created by that coach or whatever. So it can kind of answer those questions.

Katie: Oh, like straight away?

Noel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you connect it into anything. So yeah, it can find that answer and then give it to them. Yeah. But then, like you say, with like a roadmap or, you know, like a follow-up, you know, email that goes out, you know, you could then send like the transcripts and the outputs of that voice call into another AI. which has access to the knowledge base again and then goes right well based on this call these are the things that we we would suggest that you do first you know and have that sort of thing as well so then the person that runs the business all they've got to do is look at their drafts folder check everything over make sure it all makes sense and then just click send and then you know that's that should be fingers crossed a happy customer

Katie: yeah okay

Noel: they've done nothing up to the point of reading an email. That's the beauty of it. Yeah,

Katie: that's really cool, isn't it? For someone who has listened to us talk on this podcast episode about AI voice agents, maybe they're a little bit skeptical, maybe they're concerned by increased spam phone calls. What would you say to them, do you think this is a trend? Do you think it's something that's going to stay? Do you think it's something that's going to get more popular? What are your thoughts?

Noel: I think it's definitely here to stay and will definitely get more popular. They just need to watch out for the nefarious people that use it for means that you probably shouldn't. Will it mean you will get more calls, potentially? But then do you

Katie: not think the technology is going to catch up with that? Because like before, on our, like, we have iPhones. I don't know how it works on Android, but like when a number calls us and it's not in our contact, sometimes it says like potential spam, whereas like a few years ago, that would never have come up.

Noel: So the

Katie: technology on that side is also catching up, isn't it?

Noel: It is, but I think that's kind of easy to get around. So when you use a platform like Twilio to go off and buy your phone number that you're going to use,

Katie: No, don't say anything that is going to help the spammers. Yeah, that's true.

Noel: Whoops.

Katie: That's it. No more. Don't say anymore. So you think it's going to get popular. You don't think it's just a trend.

Noel: Yes, it will. Yeah, it will be definitely more popular. And a lot easy to integrate in use. But, yeah, lots of use cases within a lawful business. It will save lots of time. I guess the other thing is, like, people might be worried, like, if you work in a call centre, is it going to take my job and things like that? And I get, in a way, potentially, but I wouldn't be worried about it just yet.

Katie: You still need the human part for the reasoning. Do you know what I

Noel: mean?

Katie: Because AI isn't able to reason with another human, you know, with a human being.

Noel: True.

Katie: You know, so sometimes, you know, yes, we have call centres for things that are very like, yes, no, okay, you know, whatever.

Noel: But then we

Katie: also have call centres where actually you need to tell the, you know, the person, the situation. And you also need to be able maybe to, you know, have that reasoning with someone and they, you know, when they need to understand your point. of you or your concern. So I think some jobs maybe in course centres will go, but I think we all will always need that human-to-human point because of the emotion, because of the reasoning.

Noel: Yeah, yeah, because you always need that escalation route, don't you as well? So you need to be like, no, I need to stop talking to a robot.

Katie: Yeah, and some things like people pull up for a call centre are very sensitive.

Noel: Yes, true, very true, yeah.

Katie: Especially, like, if it's insurance or if it's something to do with finance, you can necessarily, like, you know, have an AI voice agent, you know, when it comes to someone's like, I don't know,

Noel: hedge fund or something,

Katie: do you know what I mean?

Noel: Give it access to their bank detail and stuff. Let's not do that. Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah. Because even like, I don't this isn't a voice agent thing, but it kind of comes back to it. So I saw an image this week from somebody that took a screenshot of PayPal and their chatbot function. So someone had said, you know, I've had fraud on my account. I really need help. Can you help me? And its response was great, Mark. And it's like, oh, that doesn't really. And you kind of need to, you know, put that into your voice. agent as also, you know, if there are certain trigger words within your business. So if you're like the PayPal, you would have fraud, known transactions, you know, and all that sort of stuff. You'd program that in and then your agent would then go, we'd be them more sympathetic and then be like, right, okay, we need to get this fixed now. Yeah, it'll be a bit, maybe a bit more urgent to, you know, get the answers that it needs to then pass you on. Yeah.

Katie: But I'm guessing you would be able to do that with a voice agent as well. Like, Sometimes it would, like we almost need it to be able to filter out actually when a human needs to get involved or whether it can continue with that voice agent.

Noel: Yes,

Katie: definitely. And again, it comes back to that prompt engineering, doesn't it?

Noel: Yes, yeah. Yeah, it's quite easy to do. You just put in a load of trigger words and say, well, look, if this is mentioned, you know, these particular phrases, then potentially start looking at offloading the call to a human, yeah, transfer. And that's all in retail as well. So they have the transfer options. So if the agent comes to a point where it needs to, it can offload the call. And then just put you straight into like the normal, you know, calling loop that you would normally do, like the 0800 numbers or whatever in the UK.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: So yeah, that's all in there as well, which is really clever. Yeah.

Katie: Okay, so lots to think about it. And I think it's going

Noel: to be really

Katie: interesting to see how they evolve over the next year or so.

Noel: and to see who

Katie: actually uses it as well.

Noel: Yes, yeah. Hopefully lots of people in the right ways.

Katie: Yes, for the good. Definitely, yes.

Noel: If I get a spike of spam calls, I'm in trouble. Well,

Katie: I feel like you wouldn't be able to complain about that now.

Noel: No, no. I could sell my services and tell them how to do it better.

Katie: Yeah, pitch to them. Do that, do that.

Noel: Yeah, next time. Yeah.

Katie: Well, we really hope that you have enjoyed this episode all about AI voice agents. If you've got any questions about anything that we have mentioned in this episode, then you can find us in our free LinkedIn group called AI Automations for Business. It's completely free. Everyone's welcome to join for the good.

Noel: Yes.

Katie: And we will catch you next time for another. episode very soon. Thank you so much for listening.