Voice AI Best Practices: How to Build Voice AI Agents That Help Customers

Voice AI has come a long way. Gone are the days where phone menus or voicemail are the only options for NZ Businesses when it comes to answering callers at peak call times or out of hours.

Now, Voice AI Agents can answer calls, book appointments, qualify leads and resolve customer enquiries around the clock - to help free up your team for work that needs a human touch.

But there’s one thing we’ve learned from building and implementing Voice AI Agents - success isn’t always determined by the AI itself - it’s very often determined by how you set it up.

Here are five best practices to help you get the most from your Voice AI Agent/s.

1. Give your AI a clear role

Think of your Voice AI like a new employee. They need to understand their job before they can perform it well. The clearer the role, the more consistent the conversations they will be having with your callers.

Define:

• Who they are (e.g. Receptionist, Sales Assistant, Support Agent)
• Their tone of voice
• Their primary goals

For example, say you’re setting up a receptionist agent:

“You are the first point of contact for (Your Business Name). Your role is to answer common customer questions, qualify new sales enquiries, and transfer callers to the appropriate team when required.”

2. Set clear boundaries

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is expecting one AI Agent to answer everything or perform every function. Instead, be explicit about what it should and shouldn’t do. This is to ensure AI doesn’t hallucinate or make up details that could mislead your caller, as well as keep your call times (and costs) low.

For example, your AI should know:

• Which questions it can answer confidently
• When to transfer or escalate to a person
• When to say it doesn’t know or to shut down a conversation
• Which information it should never guess

Ensure you do plan for those edge cases. Decide in advance how the AI should handle complaints, emergencies, abusive callers, or requests outside its scope - sometimes people will try to trick and trip up your agent once they realise it’s AI, or AI will stick at a call too long when really it needs a human escalation. Customers are far more likely to trust an AI that says, “I’ll connect you with one of our specialists,” than one that confidently gives the wrong answer, entertains silly questions/conversations or stays on the call too long.

3. Keep your knowledge base clean and up to date

Once you’ve set the boundaries, you typically make one of those that your AI can only answer using the information it’s given (a Word Doc, a website, internal wikis etc). If your documentation is outdated, duplicated or contradictory, your AI will struggle - just like any new human starter.

Before launching your Voice AI, review your knowledge base by:

• Removing outdated documents
• Eliminating duplicate information
• Using consistent terminology
• Keeping policies, pricing, and team member names & roles current

Another tip, adjust your knowledgebase for spoken conversations. Knowledge bases often contain long paragraphs if used internally. AI performs better with concise, conversational content and clear headings.

4. Focus on your most common customer questions

We recommend keeping your agents to a maximum of five questions, to help focus, easier agent management and not increase the call time & cost. Start with the repetitive questions your team answers every day, such as:

• Business hours & locations
• Pricing, service variations
• Booking appointments
• Service availability
• Basic troubleshooting
• Other frequently asked questions about your product/service

Additionally, it is just as important to choose questions to be asked versus attempting to script your Voice AI Agent entirely. If you script your Voice AI agent too much, it can struggle to respond dynamically and try to stick to the script too closely, even when your customers aren’t responding in a way that was scripted for.

5. Review conversations and keep improving

Launching your Voice AI Agent/s isn’t the finish line, it’s the beginning. Just like any other team member, you should reflect on your agent’s performance (which is easier if you have visibility of this, like in Voyager’s VAIA portal).

Regularly review agent conversations to identify:

• Questions customers ask that the AI couldn’t answer
• Information gaps in the knowledge base
• Opportunities to simplify conversations
• Places where callers requested a human

But also, measure success. Track metrics like first-call resolution, successful bookings, transfers to humans, and customer satisfaction/sentiment. This can help you understand your investment and return on investment of your Voice AI Agents clearer.

Remember, even small updates can significantly improve performance over time, and continue to build trust with your customers and callers, that using Voice AI isn’t a compromise, but an extension of your great service.

Great Voice AI is built, not bought

The AI matters, but the setup matters even more. While the technology is always improving, so should your processes to implementing Voice AI.

When you give your Voice AI clear instructions, realistic boundaries and accurate information, it becomes a reliable member of your team, dynamic, conversational and genuinely helpful to your customers and teams - not just another automated phone system.

Ready to get started with Voice AI?

Voyager’s Voice AI Agents (VAIA) are built to make setup simple, as they were designed with these best practice foundations in mind. Start with a pre-made agent template based on common business functions like reception, booking or taking messages, then customise it with your own knowledge and business processes. You’ll also have access to your own VAIA portal, giving you full visibility and control to make tweaks as you need.

If you’d rather leave the setup to us, our team can configure your AI for you and guide you through getting the most from it. Either way, you’ll have experts to answer questions, provide advice and help you continue improving your Voyager Voice AI.

Explore and book a demo for Voyager’s Voice AI Agents here and discover how easy it is to create and manage a Voice AI Agent that’s built around your business.