More Customers Chose the AI Agent Than Anyone Expected | Tom Chen, Aircall

What It Covers

Tom Chen, Chief Product Officer at Aircall, covers how AI voice agents are transforming customer communications for small and mid-sized businesses. Aircall operates across 10+ global offices, handles 100 concurrent AI calls per line, and positions voice as a competitive advantage previously too costly for most companies.

Key Questions Answered

• •AI Deployment Entry Point: Start AI voice agents with after-hours and overflow call handling before touching core business hours operations. This "upside-only" approach lets companies test performance with minimal risk — missed calls that went unanswered anyway — then expand coverage incrementally as confidence builds from real customer data.
• •Customer Choice Architecture: When one Aircall customer in Australia offered callers a choice between a human agent or faster AI-assisted service, far more customers selected the AI option than anticipated. Giving customers an explicit, honest trade-off increases both operational efficiency and customer satisfaction scores simultaneously, rather than forcing AI on unwilling callers.
• •AI vs. Human Performance Benchmark: AI voice agents are unlikely to match a company's top, longest-tenured human agent who carries undocumented tribal knowledge. However, they consistently outperform median call center representatives on two measurable dimensions: script adherence and infinite patience — making the median rep, not the best, the correct performance comparison.
• •Scalability Economics: A single AI voice line on Aircall handles 100 concurrent calls, operates 24/7 without breaks, and deploys instantly without training costs. Tom Chen estimates the fully loaded cost delivers value at roughly one-third to one-tenth the expense of an equivalent human operation, making the ROI calculation straightforward for most small teams.
• •Knowledge Gap as the Real Bottleneck: The primary obstacle to high AI resolution rates is not model capability but undocumented tribal knowledge inside smaller companies. AI performs well given complete information, but SMBs rarely have processes documented thoroughly. Businesses should audit and document operational knowledge before deploying voice agents to avoid underperformance and unrealistic automation expectations.