An AI voice agent is software that answers phone calls in natural speech: it understands what the caller says, replies from your approved information, books appointments and passes everything else to a person. Praxen sets one up in about two weeks for £950 plus £249 a month (£665 and £174 under the launch offer), excluding VAT, with call minutes billed at provider cost, typically 6–15p a minute.
What callers get from each option
An IVR menu plays a recording and asks the caller to press a key or say a word from a short list, then routes the call to a queue or an extension. It cannot answer a question, so the caller still waits for a person or leaves a message.
Voicemail records the message and leaves the work for later. Some callers hang up without leaving one and ring the next business on their list.
An AI voice agent holds a conversation. The caller explains what they need in their own words, and the agent answers, asks follow-up questions and takes the next step while the caller is still on the line.
| On the call | IVR menu | Voicemail | AI voice agent |
|---|---|---|---|
| How the caller asks | Presses keys or says one word from a list | Leaves a recorded message | Speaks in full sentences |
| Answers to questions | None; it only routes the call | None until someone rings back | From your approved information, during the call |
| Bookings | Only through a person | Only after a call-back | Made in your calendar while the caller waits |
| Out of hours | A “we are closed” recording | A message to deal with in the morning | The same service as in the daytime |
| What you can check later | Menu choices | The recording | Recording, transcript and a short summary |
Calls an AI voice agent handles well
- Bookings. New appointments, changes and cancellations, checked against free slots in Google Calendar, Outlook or your booking system and confirmed by text.
- Common questions. Opening hours, parking, what a service includes and the prices on your approved list, answered in wording you have signed off.
- Messages. Name, number, reason for the call and how urgent it is, sent to the right person by email or text, or saved straight to your CRM.
- New enquiries. Your qualifying questions, such as postcode, type of job or budget, asked one at a time, with the answers logged in HubSpot, Pipedrive or a spreadsheet.
- Status questions. Where an order, a booking or a job stands, read from your system when there is a connection to it.
- Routing. Callers who ask for a named person or team are put through during the hours you set.
Where it needs a person
Speech recognition still mishears words, and some calls need judgement no rule covers. The setup plans for both.
- Details that are easy to mishear. Names, postcodes, email addresses and phone numbers are read back to the caller to confirm. A noisy street or a poor mobile signal makes mistakes more likely.
- Advice. Clinical, legal and financial questions go to a qualified person, however the caller phrases them.
- Card payments. The agent never takes card numbers by voice. It can text a secure payment link or pass the call to your team.
- Complaints and distress. As soon as the agent recognises either, it passes the call on.
- Calls nobody planned for. If a request fits none of the call types you set up, it takes a message and tells the caller when to expect a call back.
Handover to people
After a handover, the caller should not have to repeat anything. Depending on the hour and the reason for the call, the agent either transfers it with a short summary or takes a full message.
- Triggers. The caller asks for a person, the agent has failed to understand twice, or the call mentions an emergency, a complaint or money. A caller who sounds distressed is handed over too.
- In office hours. The call goes to the extension or mobile you choose, and the summary arrives by text or in your CRM at the same moment.
- Out of hours. Urgent calls follow your on-call rule, such as a transfer to the duty engineer’s mobile. Everything else becomes a message with a call-back time.
- If nobody picks up. The agent comes back to the caller, takes the details and marks the message as urgent.
What it costs
You pay for three things: a one-off setup, a monthly fee and the minutes your calls use. Standard prices are £950 for setup and £249 a month; the table shows the launch offer. Minutes run on telephony and AI accounts in your name, at the providers’ own rates. None of the prices include VAT.
Here is an illustrative month: 400 calls averaging three minutes each come to 1,200 minutes. At 6–15p a minute, usage adds £72–£180 on top of the monthly fee. The volumes are invented for the example; the free audit uses your own call logs.
How to test it before going live
- Collect the real call types. Pull a month of calls from your phone system and list the reasons people ring, most common first.
- Write the rules. For each call type, agree what the agent may say, what it can book and when it hands over.
- Run scripted test calls. We make 50 or more calls from your list, including awkward ones: a caller who interrupts, two requests in one call, callers with different accents, traffic in the background and a request for a discount.
- Check what lands in your systems. Each test booking should appear in the right calendar, and each message should reach the right person.
- Test the handover. Ring during office hours and after them, ask for a person, and confirm that transfers and urgent messages arrive.
- Go live on part of the line. For the first week or two, forward only evenings and weekends, or calls nobody answers within a set number of rings.
- Review and widen. Read the transcripts each week, correct wrong answers and forward more calls once the person who runs your phones is happy.