This week I gave a short talk at AI-phoria, a meetup hosted by the Institute for the Development of Artificial Intelligence. I shared what we’ve learned at FrodX over the last two years building and rolling out voice-based virtual assistants. With a few live demos I walked people through the journey we’ve taken – from the first virtual concierge for Aminess Hotels & Resorts all the way to Kinetara. And I explained why, if you want a real business breakthrough, you can’t just tweak the tech. You have to change the business model and reposition yourself – in our case as an Agentic Business Process Outsourcing provider.
The Q&A after the talk went on longer than the talk itself. That’s usually a good sign people heard something they don’t hear every week. On my way to the parking garage one of the attendees stopped me. He said it was fascinating to see (and hear) everything live and that only now he really gets how AI is actually taking over customer support in practice. Then he added that it was the first time someone had explained so clearly how you can gradually and systematically hand work over to artificial intelligence. And then he asked the question that never made it into the room: “Do you think AI will also take over sales calls? Will we really get to a point where the first contact – the discovery call and lead qualification – is handled by artificial intelligence?”
Here’s how I look at it…
In 2017 we bought the CRM line of business from SRC and S&T Slovenia (today Kontron). That’s when we significantly expanded the team and landed our first bigger international clients. Most working meetings with these clients ran over WebEx – a pretty clunky video platform, the ancestor of Teams and Zoom. Clunky or not, it was incredibly efficient for project status and coordination calls. The savings in time, travel and cost were obvious. Around that time I got a question very similar to the one I’m getting now: will sales ever move to WebEx as well? I was convinced it wouldn’t. That in-person meetings were irreplaceable. That sales was something completely different… Then Covid hit – and in less than three years selling any other way was almost impossible. Unlike online shopping, which partly bounced back into physical stores, B2B sales never really returned to “the old normal”. Today at least 90% of my sales meetings are online. So even though I still can’t quite picture a robot calling into companies and booking meetings for me, that scenario feels very likely. And it will be here faster than we think.
In 2017 I didn’t believe we’d be running serious sales processes over video calls in our region. Today I have the opposite challenge: getting salespeople out of Teams and into their cars.
The digital channel didn’t win because we all became lazy or antisocial. It won because it got a new layer: artificial intelligence that sits on calls with us and takes over the work salespeople would happily avoid. If there’s one thing I really dislike, it’s writing call notes and updating the CRM after a meeting. With online calls that work has basically disappeared. A few minutes after the call, I have a summary in HubSpot, tasks assigned and reminders already running. And AI goes further. It qualifies the opportunity for me using the SPICED framework (or MEDICC, if you prefer) and then creates a short “lessons learned” recap: what I did well and what I should improve. I get a coach and a supervisor in one – someone who tells me what I still need to ask the client so we can move the deal forward in the pipeline. An in-person meeting today feels much more like socializing – there I’m on my own for everything. For me, it’s very similar to driving across Vienna without Google Maps or any other navigation.
Before AI starts doing sales calls on its own, a few steps still need to happen. The first one is this: the technology that today works as an “AI notetaker” and generates everything I just described needs to move into CRM playbooks. These are tools that already structure conversations for contact center agents and guide them through dialogs with customers. Over the last few months we’ve been experimenting exactly with that – we’re building a solution that listens to the sales rep and “whispers” in real time how to optimize the conversation, while feeding them relevant context based on how the meeting unfolds. Once tools like this become as common as AI notetakers, we’ll be just one small step away from AI running a structured sales conversation on its own.
The second challenge is how customers will respond to outbound calls from artificial intelligence. We’ve all gotten used to bots greeting us first in contact centers or on live chat. What we don’t know yet is how we’ll react to incoming phone calls from AI – so-called “robocalls”. We already know how mobile operators and phone manufacturers will try to recognize and filter them. What we don’t know is how people will perceive them – and whether they’ll accept them.
Outbound calls from AI are already happening – for very specific, tightly defined processes, not for sales yet. Last month in Romania we built a voice agent for Leanpay that calls debtors and informs them about the next steps in the collection process (apparently that’s much more common there than here, where this is usually handled via SMS or a written notice).
This month we’re building a voice AI agent on Kinetara for a healthcare organization in Croatia. Its job is to call patients with scheduled appointments and handle cancellations and rescheduling. Not because this drastically reduces no-shows compared to SMS reminders, but because AI is better at spotting patients who probably won’t show up – which gives the clinic enough time to fill the empty slot. Still think we’re far away from robotic sales calls? Think about what the next step could be. Maybe a call to an existing customer to tell them it’s probably time for a regular car service, a preventive dental check-up, renewing an insurance policy or registering a vehicle… Once we master selling to existing customers this way, we’re really close. Do you still think we’re that far from letting AI handle the very first sales touchpoint?
Out of habit I’d say: let’s grab a coffee and I’ll walk you through how Kinetara works. But I prefer this version: just book a short Teams call with me and I’ll show you everything live.