AI EngineeringVoice AI
Voice AI
Call handling and appointment booking, designed to answer on the first ring and hand off to a person the moment it matters. Every conversation is transcribed and logged for your team.
Most of what comes in follows a script: booking, rescheduling, opening hours, order status, first-line triage.
A voice agent handles most of those end to end, including outside office hours, so a caller who rings at seven in the evening still gets an answer.
Where the missed calls go
The routine calls are the ones you lose, because they are the ones nobody is free to take.
Phones ring while your team is with a customer, mid-task, or gone home. The caller does not leave a message: they ring the next number on the list. A menu tree does not fix it; it just tells the caller to press 4 and wait. A voice agent picks up, understands the request in plain speech, and either handles it or puts the caller through to a person.
Voice AI covers the routine volume (bookings, opening hours, order status, simple questions) so the calls that need a human get one faster, and the ones that used to go to voicemail get answered instead.
What we build
OpenKit builds voice agents that answer on your own numbers and hand the call logs over with them.
- Inbound call handling
- Designed to pick up on the first ring, around the clock.
- Appointment booking & rescheduling
- Wired into your real calendar.
- First-line triage
- The caller’s need captured and routed with context.
- Conversational assistants
- The same limits and handoff rules, on WhatsApp and web.
Every build ships with full call logs. We measure how many calls it handled end to end against your baseline.
Voice is one of four builds under AI engineering, alongside agents, retrieval systems and language-model development.
What the system is built on
A voice line that holds up is mostly decisions made before anyone records a greeting.
- Scoped to the real calls
- We listen to what your callers actually ask for and where the current line loses them, then scope the assistant to the routine volume.
- A stack chosen for the job
- Natural speech via ElevenLabs, real-time call infrastructure via LiveKit, and a language model that knows your business. We resell none of them, so the choice moves when a better one appears.
- A designed handover
- The assistant introduces itself and confirms what it heard on anything that matters, then hands to a person the moment the call turns emotional or goes out of scope.
- Wired into your systems
- Calendar, CRM and telephony connected so a call updates the records you already use. The engagement covers access, handover and who runs it.
How the build runs once the audit has costed it
The agent takes real calls on a slice you choose, before anything goes near your main line.
- In the audit
Ranked
Call audit: what actually comes in, and where it sits against the rest
- Scripts mapped
- Baseline measured
- On the roadmap
Costed
A cost, a place in the order of work and the hours it gives back, before anything is built
- Build or buy settled
- Sequenced by payback
- In implementation
Built
Voice agent on your number, calendar and CRM wired, inside an agreed delivery allocation or a separately scoped build
- Live on a slice of real calls first
- Handoffs reviewed with your team
- In use
Measured
Calls handled end to end, counted against the baseline
- Reviewed with the people who take the calls
- Logs and handoff rules walked through
Where a voice build sits
Voice is rarely bought on its own. It arrives inside one of two engagements, and the first one is where the call audit happens.
- Scoped in an AI Audit
-
The audit ranks and costs the work first. Building it is a separate decision you make once you have the roadmap.
How the audit runs - Built with an Embedded AI Lead
-
More numbers, more scripts, other channels, carried as an agreed backlog inside the delivery allocation your engagement reserves. Where you want one piece of work rather than an ongoing engagement, we scope that on its own.
How the embedded engagement runs
MyPain Clinician-supervised conversational AI AI pain triage
It cannot invent a condition, because the clinical team owns the list it draws from.
The same limits and handoff rules every voice build ships with.
- Web and WhatsApp, one shared conversation
- Six months from MVP to live service
MyPain is a text build on web and WhatsApp rather than a voice one. Read the case
Sometimes a person should just answer
Four calls we will tell you not to automate, before anyone spends.
- The call is emotional or high-stakes. Complaints, distress, and sensitive decisions need a person: a good design routes them straight through instead of trying to hold them.
- A form or a text chat would serve better. If the customer would rather type or self-serve, voice adds cost and friction, not value.
- The environment is too noisy or the vocabulary too niche. Where speech recognition will struggle, we confirm aggressively and hand off early, or advise against voice entirely.
- You want to hide that it is AI. Pretending an assistant is human breaks trust the moment it slips. We will not build one that does.
Voice is harder than chat to get right, so we only recommend it where the phone is genuinely how your customers want to reach you.
What teams ask before the first call
Will callers know it’s AI?
Yes, it introduces itself honestly. Callers stay with it because it answers straight away, not because it pretends to be a person.
What happens when someone gets upset or off-script?
Immediate handoff to your team, with the conversation so far attached. You set the handoff rules; we build them in.
Does it work with our phone system?
Voice agents sit on standard telephony, and most builds keep your existing numbers.
What about accents and bad lines?
Tested on a slice of your real calls first, not a demo set. We measure how many calls it handled end to end before it takes the rest.
Is this safe for regulated work?
The conversation is bounded to what you approve, a person stays in the path for anything that carries weight, and every exchange is logged. That is the pattern MyPain runs on.
What is voice AI, and what can it do?
Voice AI is software that holds a spoken conversation. It answers an inbound call, works out what the caller wants, and acts on it. OpenKit builds voice AI that handles routine calls end to end: booking and rescheduling appointments, answering common questions, taking details, and passing anything unusual to a person, without a menu tree.
What is the difference between voice AI and conversational AI?
Conversational AI is the broader category, any system that holds a natural conversation, by voice or text. Voice AI is the spoken half of it: real-time speech in and out over a phone line or a web call. OpenKit builds both, and often the same underlying assistant serves a phone line, a website widget, and a messaging channel from one place.
What does OpenKit build voice AI with?
We are builder-neutral and choose tools to fit the job, but a common stack pairs ElevenLabs for natural speech with LiveKit for the real-time call infrastructure, over a language model that understands your business. Whichever components a build uses, the assistant answers on your own numbers and the call logs are handed over with it.
Is voice AI secure and GDPR compliant?
It is built to be. OpenKit holds ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 and designs to operate under UK GDPR: call recordings, transcripts, and customer data are handled to your retention policy, in a UK region where required. Callers are told the call may be recorded, and access to recordings is controlled and logged.
Can voice AI handle appointment booking and rescheduling?
Yes. It is one of the strongest cases. The assistant checks live availability, books, reschedules, and confirms, writing straight into your calendar or booking system. Because it answers out of hours and doesn’t queue callers, it catches bookings a busy line would lose.
What does voice AI cost to build in the UK?
Published UK market ranges put a voice AI build at roughly £25,000 to £60,000, driven up by real-time latency targets, multiple languages, and telephony integration (OpenKit AI development cost guide). Running costs depend on call volume and the speech and model providers. OpenKit scopes each build to an outcome rather than a day rate, and our own fees are on the pricing page.
Not ready to talk? The free AI readiness check scores where you stand in about five minutes.
What could your business do with AI?
Find out with experts who become part of your team. We uncover opportunities, get ideas working, and help your people build on the results.
We reply within one working day.