Three generations of voice bots
"Voice bot" covers technology that has changed a great deal in a decade. It helps to know which generation a vendor is actually selling before comparing prices.
| Generation | How it works | Caller experience | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| IVR | Recorded prompts and keypad input (press 1 for…) | Rigid; callers hunt for the right option | Call routing, balance enquiry |
| Scripted NLU voice bot | Speech recognition matches intents to a fixed dialogue tree | Works if you say what it expects; breaks on anything else | FAQs, simple status checks |
| LLM voice agent | Speech in, a language model reasons over a brief and facts, natural speech out | Conversational; handles off-script questions and interruptions | Lead calling, qualification, booking, reminders, enquiry calls |
Outpero sits in the third row. Its agent does not need every phrase a caller might say mapped in advance; it needs a clear brief, the facts, and the fields to capture.
How a modern voice bot works on a phone line
The call audio is transcribed as the caller speaks. A language model reads that text with your brief and decides the reply or an action. The Swara voice engine turns the reply into speech. On Outpero that loop takes 0.8 to 1.3 seconds on average end to end, and the bot stops speaking when interrupted — the two things that most decide whether a caller stays on the line.
Unlike a text chatbot, a voice bot has to cope with phone audio: traffic, a weak signal, a caller walking through a market. Make your test calls realistic for that reason, from an ordinary mobile rather than a quiet office.
Voice bot use cases in India
- —Lead response: calling Meta, Google Ads, website and IndiaMART leads within 30 seconds.
- —Customer service and enquiry calls: answering your business number 24/7, handling the question, qualifying the caller and booking an appointment.
- —Reminders: appointments for clinics and diagnostic labs, EMIs for lenders, renewals for insurers.
- —Confirmations: COD orders before dispatch, delivery-attempt follow-ups for NDR.
- —Surveys: feedback and NPS calls after a service.
- —Reactivation: calling lapsed gym members or past customers with a new offer.
Where no reply is needed — a holiday closure, a branch shifting, a flash offer — Outpero also offers voice broadcast, which plays one fixed message to everyone on a list. That is not a voice bot conversation, and it is billed at a lower rate than AI minutes.
Hindi and regional-language voice bots
A Hindi voice bot that can only handle shuddh Hindi fails most real calls. People say "mera order cancel karna hai" or "EMI ka due date kya hai". Outpero's bot handles that kind of Hinglish natively, and the same mid-sentence switching in Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Kannada and Malayalam.
నమస్కారం, నేను Sri Sai Diagnostics నుంచి మాట్లాడుతున్నాను. మీ health checkup కోసం రేపు ఉదయం home collection slot confirm చేయమంటారా?
Hear it on a real call before you read further?
Voice bots in Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Odia, Urdu and Assamese are not available on Outpero.
Voice bot pricing in India
Enterprise voice bot projects have traditionally come with implementation fees and annual contracts, because each dialogue tree had to be built by hand. Language-model bots cut most of that work. Outpero charges no setup fee and no monthly base: prepaid credits at 1 credit = ₹1, billed only on connected talk time.
| Voice tier | Price per connected minute | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | ₹5 | Most lead calling, enquiry calls, qualification and bulk reminders — the all-rounder |
| Premium | ₹6.8 | Curated native-speaker voices with ultra-low latency, for high-value conversations |
A dedicated number is ₹649/month. A human telecaller, by comparison, costs about ₹15,000–₹25,000 a month and handles one call at a time.
Voice bots and TRAI rules
Pre-recorded robocalls and AI voice bots both count as commercial communication when they promote something. TRAI's TCCCPR 2018 requires DLT registration and bars promotional calls to numbers on the DND / NCPR list. Service calls to people who expect them — appointment reminders, order confirmations, a callback they requested — are where voice bots stand on the firmest ground. Outpero uses a DLT-registered line and screens bulk lists against DND; consent for your list remains your responsibility.
How to choose a voice bot vendor
- —Ask which generation it is. If every flow has to be drawn as a tree, it is a scripted bot.
- —Test with real callers, real background noise and real code-switching.
- —Check that it captures structured data, not only a recording.
- —Ask whether one bot covers both outbound calls and calls to your own number.
- —Get the price in rupees per connected minute, plus any setup, platform and number fees.
What to measure once a voice bot is live
Do not judge a voice bot on how it sounds in a demo; judge it on what happens across real calls. Four numbers tell you most of what you need: how many callers hang up in the first ten seconds, how many calls reach the goal (a booking, a confirmation, a captured promise), how often the summary flags a question the bot could not answer, and how sentiment shifts across the call.
On Outpero every call carries a transcript, summary and sentiment, so a weekly read of twenty or thirty transcripts shows exactly where callers get confused. Most improvements come from editing the brief — a clearer opening line, a fact the bot was missing, a shorter question — not from changing the technology.
When a voice bot is the wrong answer
For routing callers to departments, a simple IVR is cheaper and fine. For complaints that need judgment, refunds or empathy, use people; the bot can transfer a call to your team when a person should take it, or flag the request for a callback. A voice bot earns its keep on conversations that are repetitive in structure but need real replies.