What makes it a phone agent
Plenty of AI can talk in a browser or an app. A phone agent has to work where Indian customers actually are: on a regular call to or from a mobile number, often on a patchy network, with no app to install and no link to click. It rings like any other call, the customer says hello, and the conversation starts.
That puts the telephony layer at the centre: which number the call comes from or goes to, how it is registered, how audio survives a weak signal, and how many calls can run at once.
Both directions on one agent
| Direction | What triggers it | What the agent does |
|---|---|---|
| Outbound, instant | A new lead from Meta, Google Ads, a website form, a CRM or a portal | Calls within 30 seconds, qualifies, books, logs |
| Outbound, bulk | A CSV list scheduled as a campaign | Holds a conversation with each contact, with calling windows, retries and DND screening |
| Inbound | A customer rings your business number | Answers 24/7, handles the enquiry, qualifies, books the appointment, logs everything |
| Voice broadcast | A list and one fixed message | Plays the recorded or synthesised message and ends the call; no conversation |
The pieces behind an AI phone call
| Component | What it does | How Outpero handles it |
|---|---|---|
| Phone number | The number customers see and call | A dedicated number at ₹649/month, including compliance and carrier fees |
| Registration | Lets the line make commercial calls legally | DLT-registered calling line |
| Concurrency | How many calls run at once | Channels: 1 included with the number, each extra ₹649/month (one call at a time per channel) |
| Speech pipeline | Hears, thinks and speaks | Speech recognition, a language model and the Swara voice engine, about 0.8 to 1.3 s response time |
| Call actions | Does things mid-call | Calendar booking, spreadsheet read/write, custom API, WhatsApp messages |
| Records | What you keep | Recording, transcript, summary, sentiment, custom fields, webhook |
| Uptime | Keeps calls going | 99.9% uptime SLA |
Why the number matters
People decide whether to pick up in a couple of seconds, based on the number. A consistent, dedicated number that customers can recognise — and call back — beats rotating unknown numbers, which caller-ID apps quickly flag. With inbound answering, a callback to that number reaches the same agent at 11 pm on a Sunday instead of ringing out.
What an AI phone agent does for Indian businesses
- —Calls back a new enquiry within 30 seconds, while the person still has their phone in hand.
- —Answers the clinic line overnight, books the patient into tomorrow's slot and sends the address on WhatsApp.
- —Confirms tomorrow's appointments for a dental clinic in Hyderabad and reschedules the ones who cannot make it.
- —Calls COD buyers in tier-2 towns before dispatch to confirm the order and address.
- —Reminds borrowers of an EMI due date and records a promise-to-pay date.
- —Screens job applicants for a staffing agency: location, notice period, expected salary.
Phone-audio realities in India
Hear it on a real call before you read further?
Real phone calls are messy. People answer on speakerphone while driving, from a crowded bus, from a basement shop with one bar of signal, or with a pressure cooker whistling in the background. A phone agent has to cope by keeping its questions short, asking again rather than guessing when it did not catch something, and reading back the details that matter — a date, a time, an amount, a pincode — before it books anything.
Write those habits into the brief, and test the agent from an ordinary mobile in ordinary conditions before launch. A demo in a quiet office over Wi-Fi tells you little about how it will do with a customer in a Lucknow market.
Languages on the phone
Phone calls are where code-switching is heaviest. Outpero's AI phone agent speaks Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam and Indian English and switches to English mid-sentence when the caller does, in the same voice. Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Odia, Urdu and Assamese are not available yet.
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What AI phone calls cost
No setup fee, no monthly base, no contract. You buy credits (1 credit = ₹1, never expire) and pay per connected minute: ₹5 Standard, ₹6.8 Premium. Outbound calls that are not answered are not billed. A dedicated number is ₹649 a month. So 500 two-minute calls on Standard cost ₹5,000 in talk time, plus the number — compared with a telecaller's ₹15,000–₹25,000 monthly salary for a single line that is busy whenever they are on a call.
Phone rules: TRAI, DLT and calling hours
Every outbound business call in India sits under TRAI's TCCCPR 2018. Promotional calls must skip DND-registered numbers and come from registered senders; service calls should relate to an existing relationship or request. Set calling windows that respect daytime hours, and for collections follow the RBI's direction that recovery calls happen only between 8 am and 7 pm. Outpero's line is DLT-registered and bulk campaigns are screened against DND. Inbound calls are customer-initiated, so these outbound rules do not restrict when the agent answers.
Choosing an AI phone agent
- —Ask what number your customers will see and whether you can have a dedicated one.
- —Test on an ordinary mobile, on a weak signal, not only through a web demo.
- —Ring the number yourself after hours to check inbound handling.
- —Confirm concurrency limits and what happens when they are hit.
- —Check that call recordings and transcripts are exportable.
What an AI phone agent will not do
It can transfer a call to your team when a person should take it. Otherwise, when a caller insists on a person, the agent captures the request and flags it in the summary and webhook so your team calls back. For calls that need human judgment — a serious complaint, a negotiation, bad news — keep a person on the phone.