An AI phone assistant is software that handles phone calls autonomously. Inbound and outbound calls are understood, answered, and — when needed — handed off to a human, with no manual operator. The pipeline is always the same: speech-to-text converts voice to text, a language model generates the response, text-to-speech speaks it back.
The value comes from three properties: 24/7 availability, elastic scale during spikes, and consistent quality regardless of staff workload. Typical applications: appointment booking, reception at clinics and law firms, support triage, confirmation callbacks.
What makes a "good" AI phone assistant is measurable: sub-700 ms latency, intent accuracy above 95 %, a clean human-handoff path, DPA/GDPR compliance, and integration with existing tools (calendar, CRM, phone system).