Eps.79 | Voice agents - RingCentral's Carson Hostetter on why everything about customer engagement is about to change

Tim Bond speaks with Carson Hostetter , who leads RingCentral's AI and customer experience strategy, about how voice technology is reshaping business operations from call centres to reception desks. RingCentral handles billions of minutes of voice annually across 500,000 customers globally. Their AI receptionist product launched in June 2024 and already serves over 3,000 customers, demonstrating strong market appetite for automated voice solutions.

The conversation explores two critical benefits. First, voice agents handle customer interactions naturally, without forcing callers through menu trees. Second, every interaction generates transcripts that reveal customer sentiment, sales opportunities, service gaps and product development insights. Carson explains why RingCentral partners with multiple AI providers including OpenAI, Google and AWS, maintaining an open platform rather than building proprietary models. The discussion covers implementation, from five-minute setup for small businesses to complex enterprise integration, and examines how AI enables market expansion rather than just cost reduction.

Topics covered

• Traditional IVR limitations versus natural language voice agents.

• Setting up AI receptionists in under five minutes with minimal configuration.

• Transcript analysis for sentiment tracking, opportunity identification and business intelligence.

• Open platform strategy with multiple AI providers versus proprietary models.

• Performance benchmarks and customer adoption rates since June 2024 launch.

• Use cases spanning reception, technical support and complex customer service.

• Future work patterns and the optimistic case for AI augmentation.

• Moving from defensive cost-cutting to offensive market expansion strategies.

• How small businesses and enterprises apply the technology differently.

Timestamps

00:00:00 Introduction and AI's competitive impact

00:05:23 RingCentral overview and market position

00:09:00 Evolution from ChatGPT moment to voice agents

00:15:17 Market readiness for AI solutions

00:17:50 Why voice AI is easier than traditional IVR systems

00:20:00 The data opportunity from call transcripts

00:25:27 Performance benchmarks and customer growth metrics

00:27:31 Use cases from reception to complex support scenarios

00:30:21 Why "AI receptionist" undersells the platform capability

00:32:31 Future patterns of work and employment outlook

00:36:22 Why choose RingCentral and how to get started

Guest bio

Carson Hostetter leads RingCentral's AI and customer experience strategy, bringing 26 years of communications industry experience. Starting with Nortel Networks in 1999, he joined RingCentral in 2016 to build and scale the company's enterprise business. After serving as Chief Revenue Officer for three and a half years, Carson now focuses on developing RingCentral's next generation of AI-infused communication solutions, ensuring practical customer outcomes whilst maintaining the company's open platform philosophy across partnerships with major AI providers.

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