How To Grow ROI on Sales Calls with AI Call Agents & Other AI Tech

As a call-reliant business, you’d like to collect actionable data on inbound callers – who they are and why they are calling – and connect them to the best-matching sales representatives. At the end of the day, you want to grow your ROI while making callers happy. 

If so, AI agents and AI call agents in particular might be what you need, especially if you process a large number of inbound calls daily and don’t want your customers to wait in call queues or receive suboptimal service. 

“Gone are the days when companies are getting a bunch of lead forms, have to call the people back, and then they can’t get a hold of them: the contact rate is pathetic, and the lead quality isn’t always great. But when you’re driving calls, you’re reaching the business objectives much quicker. You’re connecting the consumer directly with the call center they can do business with. Logistics have to be in place to step into space. The companies must be prepared to receive the calls and handle the volume before engaging in a campaign.” – Evan Weber, an expert in B2C and B2B digital marketing and online advertising, Phonexa’s Amplify Webinar Series

Numbers don’t lie: AI-powered call centers report up to a 30% reduction in operational costs and a 20% increase in customer engagement, and it’s only a part of the benefits you can get with AI call agents. Your call flows will become personalized and contextual, with AI factoring in all the previous interaction history and customer data it has access to. 

No repeated questions, mistakes, or redundancies – AI call agents will likely become an invaluable asset to your business, with more call leads driven to conversions.

Read on to learn everything you need to know about AI agents and AI call agents.

Book a demo to learn how Phonexa’s AI Call Agents can improve call flows for your business.

AI Agents vs. AI Call Agents: What’s The Difference?

First, let’s put things into perspective:

➥ AI agents are varying software solutions that can autonomously handle a wide range of tasks, from data processing to decision-making across various marketing avenues. In contrast, AI call agents are AI agents focused solely on voice-based interactions over phone calls, enabled by speech recognition, natural language processing, and other technologies.

So while AI call agents make the biggest impact on a conversation, you might also need other AI-powered agents to get the most value out of inbound calls. At the very least, you need an intelligent call routing system that analyzes incoming metadata (caller ID, location, intent, etc.) and connects callers to matching sales reps.

AI Call Agents to Boost Your ROI from Inbound Phone Calls

It’s no secret that phone calls are way more profitable than web leads. But it’s one thing to run a one-size-fits-all call campaign and another thing to handle every call individually based on real-time data and performance patterns. 

Read also: How to Prepare Your Inbound Calls for Conversions

Did you know 91% of consumers prefer brands that provide personalized experiences? AI call agents might be your best tech when it comes to calls.

Tech Behind AI Call Agents

Natural Language Processing (NLP)	Analyzes and interprets human language
Machine Learning (ML)	Helps AI adapt and improve its responses
Speech recognition	Converts spoken language into text for processing

No other technology can talk to callers like a real sales rep would. Imagine having thousands of expert-level sales and customer support reps and managers who handle inbound business calls around the clock without getting tired or distracted. That’s exactly what AI call agents do, mimicking real conversational flows with unprecedented accuracy.

Here’s how AI call agents work in practice:

➥ A customer makes a call. An AI call agent greets them and asks questions like “What type of service do you need?” Then the AI call agent qualifies the lead and routes the caller to a matching sales representative.

As a client with Phonexa, you get access to AI Call Agents as part of Call Logic, Phonexa’s call tracking and distribution platform, which will allow you to customize call flows however you want. Adding AI Call Agents is seamless, no integration required; simply enable this feature and add them as modular blocks within your free IVR Builder tool.

Here are some key features of Phonexa’s AI-enabled Call Agents:

• Personalized interactions: Aside from pre-set conversational flows, Phonexa’s AI Call Agents can interact with the caller based on their input and historical data. This means they won’t ask redundant or irrelevant questions and will customize responses based on the caller’s profile (location, intent, and other data).
• Seamless integration: AI Call Agents are added as modules within your IVR builder within Call Logic, so you can simply insert them where needed without having to redesign your call architecture. The setup is simple and quick for all Call Logic users and new clients.
• Industry relevance: Unlike regular generative AI, which often provides generic responses, Phonexa’s AI-enabled Call Agents is enriched with industry-specific knowledge, making conversations accurate and insightful. When setting up AI Call Agents for your Call Logic products, you can select your industry and get access to the knowledge base and instructions that help ensure optimal industry-specific conversations.
• Flexibility: If your industry isn’t pre-built, you can set up a custom industry yourself. Then the AI will guide the conversation based on the FAQs you’ve entered.
• Conversation transcripts & recordings: On the call history page, you can monitor the conversations of AI Call Agents and get actual recordings. You can also use all other reports with Call Logic, such as Call Details, Call Summary, and many more.

While Phonexa’s AI Call Agents are well-enriched with information regarding different industries, you can make them even better by creating industry-specific or personalized FAQs. The user will experience a dedicated AI Agent to answer any questions they may have. If the conversation leads to a human expert, Phonexa will route them to the live agent that best matches the information gathered (real-time data transfer does wonders).

Book a demo to learn how Phonexa’s AI Call Agents can help you close more calls.

AI-Driven Agents: Beyond the Over-the-Phone Conversation

AI call agents are great even standalone – they ensure 24/7 availability for your business, personalize conversations, and help route your calls most effectively – but not all inbound calls result in an instant sale. Many callers will request further assistance, delay the decision, and some will bounce – and you have to address all of these cases equally well to grow your ROI.

Read also: AI Lead Generation Predictions for 2025 and Beyond

What I’m saying is that phone calls are a part of the journey, not the entire journey. So, in many cases, you need other AI agents to nurture the customer beyond the call, such as sending a contextualized follow-up to their email address.

The good news is that today’s AI-enabled agents handle almost all types of tasks:

Chatbots	Employed on websites and messaging platforms, chatbots handle customer inquiries around the clock and can decrease customer service costs by up to 30%.
Virtual Assistants	Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and other AI virtual assistants handle requests of hundreds of millions of users daily
Recommendation Engines	Netflix’s and Amazon’s recommendation engines provide personalized recommendations and raise consumer satisfaction by 20%

Whichever industry you consider, it already has some use cases for AI agents. Insurance AI speeds claims approvals, home services AI simplifies scheduling and dispatch, robo-advisors provide tailored investment recommendations, healthcare AI assists in diagnostics and treatment plans, and so on. 

Of course, the most prominent use case is still content creation. While Google frowns upon AI-generated content, over 44% of companies use AI in their content workflows, cutting production times by 30-50%

Here’s how AI agents can help you handle call leads:

• Real-time caller analytics: AI-driven agents can analyze the caller’s data pulled from other systems in real-time to score leads and provide suggestions to the live operator. For example, an AI agent can fetch a caller’s billing history and recent complaints and present a few possible solutions to the caller’s request based on this information.
• Post-call analytics: As you accumulate more historical data, AI agents can identify performance patterns for different caller groups and suggest how to handle specific calls. Likewise, AI agents can handle routine tasks like updating CRM records and triggering follow-up actions (callbacks, emails, etc.).
• Agent performance analytics: AI-enabled agents can analyze all inbound and outbound calls each of your operators has ever had to evaluate their performance. Then you can adjust your call routing architecture to maximize conversions.

One special use case is predictive modeling. AI software can predict the outcomes of future campaigns based on real-time performance, and then you can simulate campaigns in a safe environment to see how this or that set of marketing variables plays out.

AI Call Agents in Call Centers & Contact Centers – Are They Truly Omnipotent?

According to McKinsey studies, AI can cut consumer service costs by up to 30%. Without a doubt, AI call agents reduce wait time, improve personalization, and raise productivity – but are they flawless? Do they come with no risk whatsoever, or is there still a chance things go wrong?

Here are some possible AI-associated risks:

• Dependence on data quality: AI’s performance depends on the data it’s trained with. If the data is inaccurate or biased, the AI may provide incorrect answers, leaving customers frustrated.
• Data privacy and security: AI systems sometimes manage private consumer data, including payment information. Therefore, you must adhere to regulations such as the TCPA or GDPR in Europe.

But then again, AI call agents are so efficient that no challenges can justify not using them.

AI Call Agents for Businesses That Don’t Have a Call Center

The good news is that AI-enabled call agents can operate with or without a contact center, and none of the options reduce their effectiveness. Phonexa’s AI Call Agents are cloud-based, so you can deploy them quickly and upgrade your cloud-based call infrastructure in just one day. As a small business, you can use AI call agents to answer common questions without hiring additional staff.

Likewise, depending on how many sales reps you have, you can employ basic routing strategies – for example, connecting callers from the United States to agent A and international callers to agent B, or distributing callers based on the language they speak. 

Likewise, AI call agents might be the best solution for nuanced businesses where you want to qualify callers and connect them to a knowledgeable expert trained in a specific topic, rather than a call center representative who provides scripted responses and doesn’t necessarily possess deep product knowledge. This way, you can cut operational expenses and grow your ROI.

AI Call Agents for Businesses That Have a Physical or Cloud-Based Call Center

In traditional and cloud-based call centers, AI-enabled call agents are the first line of defense that help with repetitive tasks and resolve simpler queries like balance checks or password resets. For more complex requests that AI cannot handle on its own, callers are qualified and routed to a matching live operator. 

The bigger the call volume, the more helpful the AI call agents, enabling unlimited scalability and 24/7 availability for your business. From the caller’s perspective, receiving AI-generated information fast is usually better than waiting in a call queue.

Grow Your Call ROI with Phonexa’s Eight-in-One Software Suite

Phonexa’s AI Call Agents are a powerful tool, but stronger if used as a part of Phonexa’s all-encompassing performance marketing software. With pre-built verticals and product ingestion from your existing setup, you can seamlessly integrate AI Call Agents into your workflows, making conversations even more seamless. 

“Put everything in one place – that’s what we tried to do. Phonexa is about tracking everything – the call outcomes, the source of the calls, the route that call went through, which publisher did it come from, which IVR model did it go through, which buyer bought the lead, and what happened next. Then you get reporting on everything to the point where you can analyze it in real-time.”– David Pickard, CEO at Phonexa, Phonexa’s Amplify Webinar Series

Additionally, you can pull data from LMS Sync in your call campaigns and automate email follow-ups with E-Delivery, ensuring consistent omnichannel experiences for customers. So if you’re looking for campaign automation with a personal touch, we’ve got it for you at Phonexa.

 

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are AI agents and AI-enabled call agents?

AI-driven agents are software that can handle a wide range of business tasks, including sending emails, communicating with customers, providing basic information like order status, and many other routine tasks that don’t necessarily need a human customer support representative. 

AI-enabled call agents are a specific subset of AI solutions that focus on over-the-phone communications with callers, from greeting them to questioning them for qualification purposes. Sometimes, AI call agents can solve requests independently without involving a human agent, which helps effectively redistribute business resources. 

Can I Customize AI Call Agents?

Yes, in addition to the templates we provide, you can customize Phonexa’s AI Call Agents and then enable them as a modular block with Phonexa’s IVR system. Likewise, you can use our test call feature to fine-tune each agent’s performance before launching them.

What are the best AI call center solutions for business?

AI call agents are surely the centerpiece of a well-thought-out call center infrastructure, paving an optimal journey for every caller while collecting actionable customer data. However, from a broader perspective, you should also have technologies that address the caller’s needs if or when they decide to engage via other marketing channels, such as live chat, email, or social media. 

Phonexa’s comprehensive software suite brings together eight solutions that cover the entire customer journey, even when callers or web leads transition from one channel to another. This gives you, the platform user, full visibility into your campaigns, end-to-end through one centralized global dashboard. 

So, whether you sell or buy leads, you can always know how they behave and what they need. 

How much does an AI-powered contact center cost?

An on-site contact center may cost millions, but you can get a cloud-based call center with Phonexa at a fraction of that price. Our Cloud PBX is a fully-fledged cloud-based phone system that can handle thousands of concurrent calls without any delays or quality loss. You can also use it with the rest of your products, pulling data from systems like LMS Sync or E-Delivery.