Frontline Agent

"What's the best way to get started with AI?" I keep hearing this question in my conversations with heads of support and operations. It's a question that deserves a thoughtful answer.

Given the state of AI in phone operations, it's understandable that there's no obvious default answer. AI voice today is noisy and fragmented. There's hype, plenty of flashy demos, and promises of "human-level" interactions. But when you dig deeper—when you actually test these agents yourself—the reality usually falls short of expectations.

This leaves many support teams stuck. They know AI has potential but struggle to find a practical starting point amid inflated claims. At Operator, we've spent the last year deploying AI phone support agents for our customers in real-world settings. We've honed in on a few approaches that are pragmatic, realistic, solve real problems today, and most importantly set you up to take advantage of future AI advancements. In this post, I'm going to focus on one of the approaches that has proven particularly effective.

But first, it’s important to clearly understand what AI is not yet good at doing.

In fact, that's why we started this company: to help operations teams take advantage of the AI advances in a thoughtful and pragmatic way.

What AI Can't Do (Yet)

It is hard to picture any support team that would be more effective if everyone got fired and replaced by AI voice agents. You can't just automate away your support team (nor should you want to!).

Today, AI voice agents cannot react and understand situations with the same nuance that humans can. They can't read emotions. They don't handle complex, multi-part problems as well as people do. They don't have access to the same data and tools that humans use. They don't have the creative capacity to troubleshoot like your best support representatives do. Perhaps most importantly, they are not human—and people can tell.

However, this technology is improving at a very fast rate, and it will become much more capable over time, allowing your team to focus on higher-leverage and more fulfilling tasks. In fact, that's why we started this company: to help operations teams take advantage of the AI advances in a thoughtful and pragmatic way.

The Power of Starting Simple

Given today's constraints, what can you do to improve your operations now? And how can you make sure that you have the right systems in place that will compound over time as AI gets better?

We believe that the best way to start is simple. Replace your archaic Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system with a Frontline AI Agent. This is an immediate upgrade. Customers get a 10x better experience, and your team immediately gets efficiency gains from better routing, upfront information collection, and higher deflection rates.

Why Replace IVR First?

The standard frontline for phone support remains stubbornly outdated. Companies either force customers through automated menu trees or hide their phone numbers entirely. Research consistently shows that customers despise these experiences.

An AI agent offers clear advantages. It can:

• Understand what your customer is saying and respond in natural language—no rigid templates or menus.
• Provide a more human-like and dynamic experience, with no wait time.
• Collect all the important information upfront for efficient routing.
• Solve common problems autonomously without human involvement.
• Schedule callbacks, create tickets, or escalate seamlessly to the right team when needed.

One historical analogue is GPS. A few decades ago, GPS was hell to use. It was rigid and frustrating. You had to put in an exact street address, and when you did, GPS would calculate a route with zero real-time information. If you made a wrong turn, the software would struggle to adapt.

Now you can open Google Maps and type in anything, even in natural language, and get multiple route options that update in real-time based on traffic conditions and more. If you forced a 25-year-old today to use the first iteration of Garmin's navigation product, they'd struggle—much like your customers struggle with IVR today. The parallel is clear: an AI Frontline Agent is the modern GPS to 1998's Garmin.

This isn't just an improvement in efficiency—it's a fundamental reimagining of customer support.

Building on the Foundation

But replacing IVR is just the beginning. The beauty of the Frontline Agent approach lies in its scalability. First start by replacing the universally disliked IVR system, then methodically expand capabilities based on your needs and resources. Over time, as AI gets smarter and your team gives it access to more internal tools and data, your agent can start resolving more and more issues for your customers directly, saving precious time for your human representatives to focus on higher-value work.

Consider this real-world example: we recently helped a company replace their IVR with our Frontline Agent. This brought better routing and customer experience right away. Immediately after, with this foundation in place, their team worked to systematically expand the agent's capabilities:

1. They integrated their knowledge base and implemented workflows to resolve common issues automatically without human involvement.
2. For issues that the agent wasn't equipped to resolve, they added instructions for gathering comprehensive case information and documenting it in their CRM system.
3. They shifted majority of their support team to focus on deep problem-solving, instead of constantly juggling the flood of incoming phone calls.

The impact is clear: Support representatives, freed from repetitive phone tasks, now focus on resolving complex issues. Customers receive thoughtful, complete solutions without spending time on hold. This isn't just an improvement in efficiency—it's a fundamental reimagining of customer support.

The Strategic Advantage

Your journey might look different. Some teams may simply replace IVR and stop there. Others might discover even more creative approaches. What matters is taking that first pragmatic step—don't get caught between the extremes of replacing your entire team with AI or dismissing the technology altogether. Start by building a better front line.

The gap between companies that invest in the right foundations for AI systems today and those that don't is going to become increasingly large with time. However, that doesn't mean you should blindly copy what others are doing; it requires a thoughtful and measured approach. We think that when it comes to phone support and operations, starting with a Frontline Agent creates a foundation for continuous improvement. As AI capabilities advance, your system evolves naturally, building upon established processes rather than requiring complete overhauls.

If you want to get started, you can do so with Operator. Book a demo with us—we'd love to show you what more effective support could look like.