Voice AI agents — phone assistants in practice
A whitepaper for CTOs and customer service leaders: how voice AI reached natural-conversation quality in 2024–25, when it's worth deploying, what you lose with it, and when you shouldn't. Architecture (STT + streaming LLM + TTS), containment rate, warm handoff, ROI model, industry benchmarks, 7 typical mistakes and a 4–6 month roadmap.