Voice agents are delivering demos quite well and many start to believe it will be a good option to make cold calls too. However, in reality they failed badly to make cold calls.
Cold calls are not like structure demos. Here every prospect requires different nurturing. Yes, cold callers do have scripts too, but it’s customizable. And voice agents are incapable of making out of the box responses.
This blog analyzes why voice agents work for demos but are feeling terrible about making cold calls.
What is Voice Agent and How Does It Make Cold Calls?
Voice agent is a software program that’s run by artificial intelligence to engage in a human-like conversation. Recently cold calling agencies have started to use it too. Voice agents are basically an intelligent software that utilizes Artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP) to maintain conversation like a human.
How Voice Agents Were Introduced to Business as Cold Callers?
In recent times AI has seen dramatic progress. Voice agents were introduced a long time ago but mainly for customer support and service related tasks. But using voice agents to make cold calls is a new concept.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are now so advanced that they can answer critical queries accurately and by maintaining emotional intelligence as well.
From operational perspective business have started to include it because:
- It needs a low CAPEX ( capital expenditure) to start
- Total cost of ownership (TCO) is significantly low for voice agents to run
- Needs less asset to maintain
- Management overhead is low
- Easy to scale
- Overall operation cost is fairly low
Even though voice agents are intelligent, they still lack the immense skill to make cold calls. Because cold calls are not like scripted demos with clear CTAs.
Cold calling professionals recently had a discussion in reddit. The topic was how AI is doing well with demos but failing badly with cold calling.
The reason is simple, cold calling requires understating human behaviour with top notch observation quality. Which voice agents lack a lot.
Voice Agents Fail to make cold calls but success in demos
Let’s just admit, voice agents are not like Iron Man’s Jarvais. Cold calling is a tough task to do where prospects decide in the first 3 seconds . Besides making cold calls for services like, B2B appointment setting, list building or lead generation, every call requires a different approach.
For example, a real cold caller can immediately understand if the call is connected with a gatekeeper or decision maker.
According to reddit user r/AISystemsEngineering, AI agents only do good at demos but fail with engaging conversations because prospects get frustrated with their style. And humans talking emotions are near impossible for voice agents to mimic.
Demos Use Clean Scripts and CTAs, Cold Calls Don’t
Demos are structured and program centric. Mostly they don’t require complex understanding and go outside base codes. However, cold calls can go anywhere. Because while making purchase decisions prospects often make unpredictable questions and demands that AI voice agents fail to respond.
Anton Carver described in Quora that even advanced AI models find it difficult to respond to unpredictable queries. Beside that, customization, soft negotiation and arguments requires human touch as well. AI fails to understand tricky human nature.
Intent Can Change Mid Conversation
Complicated tasks like market survey, warming up leads or medical appointments can be tricky. Optimizing market qualified leads to sales qualified (MQL to SQLs) is a core feature of cold calls which voice agents lack.
AI voice agents may be able to initiate a conversation but their funnel conversion capacity is significantly low.
Decision making is a complex duty and during cold calls even a high intent lead can change their mind for a subtle detail. Skills to recover from these situations still lack with voice agents. Besides, can only be implemented by real cold callers, not ai powered voice agents.
Reliability and Failure Issue
Even With a high performing cold calling team, connection and conversion rates barely touch 10%. It’s because in most cases the prospect’s brain freezes or shifts into defense mode when they realize it’s a cold call.
Breaking this wall needs using tone, pace, script and offer strategically for person to person. However, when doing cold calling, voice agents have limited imaginary and observing capacity to understand prospects latent motives. They use similar tactics to warm up leads which fails more compared to a human cold callers call.
Beside that, in r/Futurology discussion voice agents users explained that it often lags, hangs and shuts down mid conversation. Which hampers brand value.
Decision Makers Detects Security Threats With Voice Agents
Successful cold calling depends on agents’ appearance more than product quality. B2B decision makers observe every small detail while having a conversation with a cold caller.
Call centric fraud has increased a lot. That’s why decision makers first make a security assessment just after receiving the call.
Even with human agents and solid openings, a huge number of calls ends up too fast due to perceived risk. So when an AI powered voice agent makes the cold calls, contacts respond more aggressively.
Overall, B2B buying committee members mostly avoid any bot sounding calls. That’s why voice agents fail to make conversions.
Internal Resistance and Ethical Issues
Voice agents inability is not the only problem that leads to cold calling failures. Internal support can be a major issue too. Every new idea and technology faces resistance or doubt in the beginning. The same goes for voice agents too. Employee’s views on this are highly doubtful.
Except that, there is an ethical angle too. AI makes mistakes, so does voice agents. They can generate replies or responses to convert leads which may not exist in reality.
If these inappropriate replies lead to a conversion, it can significantly damage a business.
Let’s say, your AI powered voice agent offers something that you are totally unable to provide. But your prospect agrees with it.
In this situation, you need to either cancel the deal or source it from somewhere else. In both cases, it damages your business and reputation. That’s why businesses are not keen to engage with voice agents for cold calling.
Final Thoughts
Voice agents are useful for demos but their capacity to make cold calls still lacks. Although AI has seen a dramatic advancement, for cold calling it still has a long way to go.
Voice agents are capable tools when operating on scripted or structured tasks like demos. But fails when the tasks become too complicated like cold calling it fails to achieve required performance.
