#188 · Why AI Voice Agents (Usually) Suck.
I don’t think you need to constantly learn new no‑code tools. I’m not up‑to‑date on most of them, yet I still make good money in AI automation. I mainly just know the headlines and mention them; I don’t actually use the vast majority of these tools in my work.
Demand for voice agents has slowed down significantly compared to a year or two ago. The initial hype has settled, and businesses realize that current voice AI technology still makes too many mistakes to be truly effective. The core problem businesses face is missing phone calls, but hiring real humans currently offers much better leverage and ROI. Voice agents cost a fraction of human setters, but they generate far less revenue due to lower performance. Give the technology another year or two to improve, but right now it is rarely worth selling.
It's unfortunate that I don't have enough context to give a definitive answer. If you were earning $30k–$40k per month from voice agents and the decline is just a small, recent dip in your front-end offer (like conversion rate), I'd advise one approach. But if you're making little to no money and people are consistently saying no, I'd suggest something else. Ultimately, the key factor is your current revenue: if you're not making much money, any action is better than none—you need to do something to get cash flow. However, if you're already running a successful, scaling business and you observe a real market trend that people don't like voice agents, then it's worth considering a pivot to AI automations.
My first thought is that hotels could work because the average order value isn't high, but there are two big issues. First, the industry is hospitality-focused - if a voice agent sounds robotic, it hurts the guest experience. Second, most bookings happen online via Booking.com or similar; only about 20% involve a phone call, so the value of a voice agent that answers calls is low. Voice agents only make sense in businesses where you need to pick up the phone immediately to capture a lead, like a salon appointment. In hotels, you could outsource routine questions to a call center anyway, so the upside is limited.
The reason most AI agencies sell lead‑gen offers is that lead generation is the core value for most businesses—it’s the simplest way to get a ‘yes.’ Once you have a lead‑gen system in place, AI automation agencies can easily upsell related systems: after delivering leads, you can sell CRM organization, payment automation, onboarding automation, fulfillment automation, and so on. By building a stack of services—from lead generation to conversion, payment, onboarding, and fulfillment—you create natural upsell and retainer opportunities, leading to recurring revenue.