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April 24, 2025
How our voice AI actually works (and how it’s different from the rest)
Cassandra Stumer
Product Marketing
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Phone support is still one of the most important (and frustrating) channels in customer service. It’s expensive to staff, hard to scale, and often leads to poor experiences for customers and agents alike. Long hold times. Confusing IVRs. Endless repetition.
Many voice AI tools were built for things like scheduling or outbound sales — not resolving support issues. Assist Voice AI is different: it’s purpose-built to fully resolve customer support issues using automation and real-time context.
With billions of support tickets analyzed and years spent partnering with the world’s most customer-obsessed teams, we’ve seen what actually works in high-performing support orgs — and we’ve built Assist to reflect that.
In this post, we’ll pull back the curtain on how it all works — from understanding natural speech and identifying intent, to taking action across your tools and escalating to agents when needed. Along the way, we’ll show why this isn’t just a better voice experience — it’s a fundamentally different approach to support automation.
What your customers experience
Assist AI Agent for Voice integrates with your existing IVR solution to create a smarter, more natural phone experience — no need to rip and replace.
This isn’t your standard phone tree. Here’s what customers experience when Assist picks up the call.
1. Call connects to Assist
A customer calls your support line and is immediately greeted by Assist, layered on top of your IVR, creating a branded experience that replaces the old-school phone tree. You can fully customize the welcome experience.
2. They just talk — naturally
No menu trees. No scripted phrases. They can explain the issue in their own words, interrupt mid-sentence, and even ask follow-up questions. Assist picks up on what customers really mean — even if they don’t say it perfectly — and delivers answers with the speed, accuracy, and context of your best agents.
3. Fast, full resolution
Unlike traditional bots, Assist doesn’t stop at information lookup — it completes multi-step workflows using real-time data from your support stack. Whether it’s checking an order, updating account info, or processing a refund, customers get what they need — without waiting on hold or repeating themselves.
As Bobby Thompson, Founder & CEO of Retention Express, puts it, support isn’t about answering phones — it’s about actually solving problems:
“We’re not an answering service… We are first call resolution oriented. We're solution oriented. When we onboard our new customers, we talk through all of those scenarios… Consumers are consumers and they need to be heard.”
4. Smart handoff if needed
If Assist can’t fully resolve the issue, it passes the call to a live agent — with full context from the conversation — so your agents can pick up right where the conversation left off. Customers never have to repeat themselves.
How Assist voice AI works
The Assist Voice agent goes beyond a basic bot — it’s a complete support resolution engine built to interpret, act, and adapt in real time, using state-of-the-art technology. Here’s what’s happening beneath the surface of every call.
1. Voice input and cleanup
Every call starts with noise filtering, so Assist can understand customers clearly — even on speakerphone or in loud environments.
2. Real-time speech understanding
The audio is processed using ElevenLabs' best-in-class speech-to-speech engine, which includes:
- Automatic speech recognition (ASR) for live transcription
- Spoken language understanding (SLU) to interpret natural patterns, interruptions, and tone
- Phoneme and sentiment analysis to detect emotional cues and conversational nuance
It picks up on nuance like a human — only faster and more consistently. It handles multiple languages, backtracking, and mid-sentence corrections with ease.
3. Identifying intent and sentiment
After transcription, Assist analyzes the call using a smart orchestration layer that chooses the best model for the task at hand.
- Detect customer intent
- Generate a summary of the conversation
- Assess sentiment to inform tone or routing decisions
4. Choosing the best resolution path
Based on intent, Assist routes the issue through one of three support-specific workflows:
- Knowledge lookup: Uses semantic search to pull accurate answers — not just keyword matches
- Agentic workflows: Executes agentic workflows (like processing a refund or updating an order) directly in your systems using the latest AI models
- Human transfer (when needed): Classifies the case, collects key details, and hands off with full context to the right agent
5. Brand-aligned, empathetic responses
Whether it’s resolving the issue or transferring the call, Assist generates lifelike responses that reflect your brand voice and tone. Customers get fast, helpful support that still feels human.
6. Integrated, automated reply
Every interaction is automatically synced with your systems — from ticketing and telephony to CRM — so your team stays aligned and in the loop.
Why support teams choose Assist
Most voice AI tools weren’t built for support — they’re retrofitted bots or sales tech in disguise. Additionally, they’re often built on “old” tech stacks. These days outdated means pre-2023. Assist is different: it was purpose-built for the realities of high-volume, high-stakes support for the modern era.
1. Built on proven experience
Assist reflects years of hands-on work with the world’s most customer-obsessed companies. It’s designed to resolve, not deflect — resulting in fewer tickets, faster resolutions, and less pressure on your agents.
That experience matters just as much — if not more — to high-volume teams that don’t have Fortune 100 resources behind them:
“I’m not Walmart. I’m not Home Depot. Even though we’re high volume, we’re still a small, medium growing company… We needed someone who gets our use case.”
— Bobby Thompson, Founder & CEO of Retention Express
2. Shared intelligence across every channel
Assist AI Agent for Voice runs on the same automation engine that powers our chat and email AI agents. Build it once, and Assist carries it across voice, chat, and email — with consistent workflows, smart routing, and unified reporting.
For Bobby and his team, unifying voice, chat, and email into one automation engine helps them focus on what really matters: solving the tough problems, not repeating the easy ones.
“If I can solve voice, I can solve chat, and I can solve email — I’ve solved 95% of my problems.”
— Bobby Thompson, Founder & CEO of Retention Express
3. Designed to adapt to any support scenario
From quick FAQs to multi-step resolutions, Assist handles it all — and hands off to agents seamlessly, with full context intact.
Real outcomes for real support teams
Assist AI Agent for Voice is already helping leading support orgs:
- Resolve more calls with automation alone
- Reduce average handle time AI-driven intake, triage, and routing
- Improve CSAT with faster, more natural conversations
- Maintain empathy and consistency across every voice interaction
Fast, flexible implementation
Because Assist runs on Assembled’s automation engine, you can:
- Connect your existing CRM, CCaaS, and knowledge tools
- Define workflows in plain language — no code or custom AI expertise required
- Preview how Assist handles your historical tickets
- Launch confidently, then refine over time
Voice AI that actually understands support
Unlike tools that prioritize containment or call deflection, Assist is built to actually help. It understands real customer needs, acts with speed and context, and hands off with empathy when a human touch is needed.
It’s everything great support should be — just faster, more scalable, and always on.
In high-stakes support, a great product only goes so far — the partnership behind it matters just as much:
“As a boutique BPO, we look for partners that invest in us to help us become better… Assemble has the right people who care about the customer and are trying to get everything across the finish line.”
— Bobby Thompson, Founder & CEO of Retention Express
Ready to hear the difference for yourself? Book a personalized demo.