A lot of businesses now want an AI agent answering calls. Most of the problems I see come from skipping a few boring questions before anyone writes a prompt.
Start with the calls you actually get. Pull a week of call logs or ask whoever answers the phone to note what people ask. Booking, opening hours, pricing, order status and complaints usually cover most of it. The agent should hand everything else to a person.
Decide where the handoff goes. If the agent can't help, the caller needs a real path: a transfer to a number that someone picks up, a callback request, or a message that lands in a tool your team checks. An agent that loops "I didn't catch that" is worse than voicemail.
Connect it to the systems that hold the answers. An agent that can't see your calendar can't book. One that can't read order data can only apologize. Check which tools you use (CRM, booking system, helpdesk) and whether they have an API before you pick a platform.
Plan for accents, noise and interruptions. Test with real people calling from a car or a busy street, not only from a quiet office. Listen to the recordings and fix the prompts where the agent misunderstood.
Be clear about consent and recording rules. Call recording and AI disclosure rules differ between the US, UK, EU and Gulf countries. Have the agent say up front that it is an AI assistant and check what your market requires.
Measure it. Track how many calls the agent resolves, how many it transfers, and how many callers hang up. Those numbers tell you more than total minutes on the line.
I build these at SiteFusion. If you want to see how we set them up, our AI phone agent Farita is here: https://sitefusion.dev/ai-phone-agent
If you are still comparing vendors, I wrote a longer guide on picking an AI automation agency: https://sitefusion.dev/blog/how-to-choose-an-ai-automation-agency
More about our work: https://sitefusion.dev/