AI Finds its Voice

Tim Howes, CTO

The Evolution of Voice Technology

Key Insights:

• Peak-hour phone chaos is killing sales: Restaurants are missing orders and loyalty due to call volume overload, especially on busy nights.
• Call centers solved one problem, created others: They reduced missed calls but introduced high costs, impersonal service, and frequent mistakes.
• IVR & IVA made things worse:  Robotic menus frustrated customers and led to hang-ups. Automation without intuition just doesn’t cut it. Early voice systems couldn’t handle noise, accents, or anything unscripted. Conversations still felt robotic.
• LLM-powered AI Agents have changed the game: These bots can understand natural language, carry real conversations, and represent your brand voice 24/7.
• AI Voice is no longer just a feature, it’s your frontline: The best AI agents today offer friendly, branded, and scalable customer service that drives revenue and loyalty.

The Friday Night Crunch

Anyone who’s been to a pizza parlor on a Friday night knows the scene. The air smells like fresh dough and melted cheese, the line’s out the door, and the phone won’t stop ringing. Staff hustle to serve customers, fire orders, and somehow keep up with the flood of calls. But too often, the calls go unanswered, the orders get missed, and loyal customers quietly slip away. 

This isn’t just a pizza problem, it’s a Friday night problem for restaurants everywhere. 

In the chaos of peak service, it’s the voice on the other end of the line that can make or break the experience. For decades, the industry’s been stuck with outdated solutions leading to missed calls, clunky phone trees, or outsourced service that lacks the brand’s touch. 

But that’s changing. A new generation of AI-powered voice agents is stepping in: fast, smart, and always on-brand. That voice is your frontline for service, sales, and loyalty.

The Call Center Solution

To address these challenges, in the 1980s many businesses turned to call centers. By outsourcing phone orders, they aimed to ensure every call was answered. The promise was a centralized system to handle customer interactions, reduce missed calls, and improve service consistency.

Call centers have many drawbacks. The cost associated with maintaining or outsourcing to a call center is substantial. 

The lack of brand customization or personalization can leave customers with a “good, but far from great” experience. And the potential for communication errors and order entry mistakes by unfamiliar staffers can lead to customer dissatisfaction.

Enter IVR: Interactive Voice Response

The robots began arriving in the 90s with the introduction of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems. These automated systems allowed customers to use their phone’s keypad or basic voice commands to navigate a series of menus to place orders or get information.

IVR systems offer a more scalable solution and eliminate many of the accuracy issues inherent with human operators. However, their rigid structures and lack of human touch often lead to frustration and hang-ups, which equate to lost business. Navigating through multiple menu options is time-consuming, and any deviation from expected responses often results in errors or call drops.

IVA: A Step Towards Intelligence

In the 2000s, Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) introduced basic speech recognition and natural language processing (NLP), allowing users to speak their choices instead of pressing buttons. This advancement aimed to create a more natural interaction between customers and automated systems.

Despite these improvements, IVAs still have limitations. They often struggle with understanding diverse accents, handling background noise, or managing unexpected queries. The reliance on predefined scripts means that any deviation leads to confusion or incorrect responses.

The AI Revolution: Full Modality Conversational Agents

Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence large language models (LLMs) trained on the sum total of information available on the internet have led to the development of conversational agents capable of understanding and processing natural language in real-time over either text or voice. These systems can handle multi-turn conversations, understand context and intent, and seamlessly integrate across various platforms including voice, text, and chat.

For businesses, this means enhanced customer satisfaction, reduced operational costs, and improved efficiency. Like an employee, these AI Agents can be trained to communicate with the voice of your brand, provide personalized interactions based on customer data, and even do gentle upselling (Would you like to add a salad or drink to your order?). These always-patient, always-upselling AI employees can be available 24/7, to represent your brand and serve your customers, even when you can’t.

A Cure for the Hype Hangover

The challenge now is that while true conversational AI has finally arrived—powered by LLMs and capable of handling complex, human-like interactions—the term “AI” has already been dragged through the mud. Many businesses have been burned by so-called AI before in the form of brittle IVRs or overpromised NLP bots that couldn’t understand them, much less help their customers. Customers are understandably feeling like Charlie Brown with Lucy holding the football and telling him that this time it will be different.

The good news is that AI has taken a gigantic step forward, and things really are different now. Today’s capabilities have surpassed even many of the dreams of yesterday.

Embracing the Future

The journey from missed calls to intelligent conversational agents highlights the importance of adapting to technological advancements. Businesses that embrace these innovations position themselves to offer superior customer experiences, streamline operations, and stay ahead in a competitive market. Time to pick up that AI ball and run.