Notes on building and running voice agents.
A caller notices delay long before they can name it. Here is where the time actually goes between someone finishing a sentence and an agent starting one — and which parts of that budget you control.
Porting is slow, risky and rarely necessary. Importing the number you already own keeps your carrier relationship intact and the number unchanged.
Real callers interrupt, change their mind, and answer a question you did not ask. Surviving all three is mostly a question of where you put the branches.
Naturalness is the wrong thing to audition for. What to listen for instead, when the voice you pick will speak on thousands of calls.
A transcript is the only complete record of what your agent said. Reading one properly means knowing which lines were decisions and which were consequences.
Calling out to a CRM mid-conversation buys accuracy and costs silence. When that trade is worth making, and how to cover the wait.