AI phone assistant (AI Voice Agent): can AI answer your business's calls?
What an AI receptionist does, where it already helps and where it still struggles
How long did you last wait on the phone for a company to answer? As Kathimerini wrote this summer, the wait "often starts at a few minutes and can reach as much as 45".
And yet, in a survey by EETT, the Greek telecoms regulator, the phone centre was the channel telecom customers used most. Their main request was less waiting.
In a small business, the problem is usually different. The phone rings while everyone is busy, or after the office has closed, and the call goes unanswered. That is exactly the gap an AI phone assistant fills.
What is an AI phone assistant?
A smart AI-powered phone assistant (AI Voice Agent) is a system that picks up your business's phone and talks with the caller, the way a person at reception would. That is why many people also call it an AI receptionist.
It is nothing like the old answering machine, which only recorded a message, or the familiar "press 1". The caller says in their own words what they want, and the assistant:
- answers their questions, based on your business's information,
- books appointments straight into your calendar,
- when needed, passes the call to someone on your team, together with everything it has already learned.
It works with the number you already have and speaks the caller's language, Greek or any other. To be clear from the start: it answers incoming calls. It does not phone customers to sell.
What does the caller hear?
Say someone calls a dental practice for an appointment after the practice has closed.
The assistant answers straight away. It says in its first sentence that it is an AI assistant, and asks how it can help. The patient explains that a tooth hurts and they want to come in as soon as possible. The assistant finds the first free slot in the calendar, offers it, books the appointment and confirms the details. If the patient asks to speak to a person, or the case goes beyond what it is allowed to do, it notes it for the team so they can call the patient back the next day.
In the morning, the team finds the appointments already booked and the calls that need someone from the team, with all the details.
Where is AI already answering the phone?
In healthcare. At WellSpan Health, a group of hospitals and practices in the US, the AI assistant "Ana" answers patient calls and books primary-care appointments. According to the organisation, it handles more than 160,000 patient calls a month in total.
In retail. Home Depot, the US home-improvement chain, is testing an AI assistant in 50 of its stores that answers customer calls with no phone menu. It gives updates on orders and product availability, provides store information and helps the customer complete a purchase. According to the company, it understands why a customer is calling in about 10 seconds, and the customer can always ask to speak to an associate.
At car dealerships. At Sansone Jr.'s Auto Group, a dealership group in New Jersey, the service department now answers every incoming call with no wait, with the help of AI. According to the owner, nearly two in three of those calls end in an appointment.
And in Greece? The big players have already started. A large Greek bank already answers customer calls with AI, and the state itself has signed a memorandum of understanding for voice features on Gov.gr (more on that below). Among smaller businesses, though, examples are few to none. We searched for this article and did not find a single hotel or small or medium Greek business describing publicly how it uses AI on its calls. Greek businesses are very slow to put AI to work.
If you want an assistant like this on your own business's phone, that is exactly what our AI Voice Agent does.
Do Greeks want to talk to AI on the phone?
The answer is "yes, with conditions". In a 2025 Focus Bari survey on voice AI, the public split into three equal groups: positive, positive with conditions, and negative. Those who accept it set one condition: the assistant has to prove fast, accurate and easy to understand.
And in a newer survey by the same company, nearly two in three Greeks said they prefer to speak to a person when the issue is complex. So the assistant should handle the simple, everyday calls, and the caller should always be able to speak to a person.
Where does it still struggle?
With accents and dates. At UK GP practices that put an AI assistant on the phone, patients complained that the system did not understand their date of birth or their local accent. One patient told the BBC she gave up and drove to the practice. So before you switch the assistant on, test it with people outside your team, with different accents.
With recording. If calls are recorded, the caller must be told before the conversation starts. According to the Hellenic Data Protection Authority, this can also be done with a recorded message before the call begins.
With complex cases. A complaint, a negotiation, an upset customer. There the assistant should not try to solve things on its own. Its job is to pass the case quickly to a person, with everything it has already heard.
Greece and AI: where do we stand?
In May 2026, the Greek government signed a memorandum of understanding with ElevenLabs, one of the world's leading voice AI companies. In a first phase, the Gov.gr services citizens use most are due to get voice features. The agreement also covers tourism and preserving Greece's local dialects. It is still at the start, but voice AI is now part of the state's own plans.
There is still a long way to go, though. According to the Oxford Insights index, which measures how ready each country's government is for AI, Greece is behind the US, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, and also behind Italy and Portugal. Its weakest point is the development and spread of AI in the country.
For a business, the question is more practical. A caller who finds no one on the phone may simply call the next business.
Where to start
You do not need to hand every call to an AI assistant from day one. Start with the ones you already lose: when everyone is busy, or after your office has closed.
At first, let it do only two things: answer the questions you hear every day and book appointments. Write those questions and their answers down clearly first. What works for a good instruction to ChatGPT works here too. Listen to the first conversations, fix what needs fixing, and then decide whether to give it more work.
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If you would like to look together at which of your business's calls an AI phone assistant could take on, let's talk.
Auttomix Team