Voice AI Just Got Real—And It's About Time
PLUS: Find your AI sweet spots + Quick team readiness check
Start every workday smarter. Spot AI opportunities faster. Become the go-to person on your team for what’s next.
🗓️ September 2, 2025 ⏱️ Read Time: ~4 minutes
👋 Welcome
Here's what happened while you were dealing with your latest escalation: voice AI finally grew up. I'm not talking about the usual "sounds more human" marketing speak—I mean actual companies are cutting customer service costs in half and raising millions to do it. The shift? Everyone stopped trying to build the perfect robot and started making their teams superhuman instead.
📡 Signal in the Noise
The pattern I'm seeing everywhere is this: the companies winning with AI aren't replacing their people. They're giving them better tools to do impossible things. Voice AI, smart training bots, context engines that actually understand your business—it's all pointing toward collaboration, not replacement.
🎯 Executive Lens
Look, I've seen enough AI demos to make my eyes bleed. But what's happening now feels different. Voice technology finally doesn't sound like a GPS from 2003, and more importantly, companies are measuring actual results instead of just posting LinkedIn celebrations. If you're still on the fence about voice AI, you might want to start paying attention.
Stories That Matter
🤖 European startup just proved voice AI can handle your angriest customers
A Madrid company called Rauda convinced investors to give them €2.4 million to build AI that handles customer support calls—not the easy stuff, the complicated conversations that usually require your most experienced agents. Here's the kicker: their early customers are actually happy with the results. We're talking about voice AI that can navigate complex product issues, upset customers, and billing problems without making everyone more frustrated.
Why this matters: When European investors bet millions on voice-first customer service, they're not gambling on cool technology. They're betting that voice AI has finally crossed the line from "interesting demo" to "solves real business problems."
Try this: Next time you're listening to customer calls, count how many times your agents have to put someone on hold to look something up. Every pause is an opportunity for voice AI to jump in with instant answers.
Source: Rauda
🤖 This battery company cracked the code on AI customer service
GP Batteries operates in over 50 countries, and their customer service challenge was exactly what you'd expect: people calling to ask "which battery do I need?" over and over again. Instead of hiring more people to answer the same questions, they built an AI system with GPTBots.ai that actually understands their products. Two months later? They've helped over 1,000 customers and cut their service workload in half. But here's the best part—customer satisfaction went up, not down.
Why this matters: This is what success looks like in the real world. A traditional manufacturer with a practical problem, measurable results, and happy customers. No flashy demos, just better service at half the cost.
Try this: Pull your top 20 most common customer questions from last month. If you find yourself thinking "we answer this all the time," you've found your AI opportunity. Start there, not with the complex edge cases.
Source: AI TechPark
🤖 OpenAI just made voice automation way easier to actually use
OpenAI's new gpt-realtime model changes the game because it thinks in voice, not text. Previous AI had to convert your speech to text, process it, then convert back to speech—like having a conversation through three translators. This one just talks. It can understand what customers are showing it, call up the right information, and respond naturally. Plus, it works with existing phone systems, so you don't need to rebuild your entire contact center.
Why this matters: When the biggest AI company builds voice technology specifically for business phone calls, they're telling you where the market is heading. Voice AI is about to get a lot more accessible for companies that don't have massive tech teams.
Try this: Think about your customer interactions that need back-and-forth conversation—technical support, product recommendations, troubleshooting. These are prime candidates for this type of conversational AI.
Source: SalesforceBen
🤖 Apple is quietly training their retail staff with AI (and it's brilliant)
While everyone's arguing about AI replacing jobs, Apple built "Asa"—an AI chatbot that makes their retail employees better at their jobs. Staff can ask it anything about products, features, or sales techniques and get instant, accurate answers. It's being tested before the iPhone 17 launch because Apple knows that even their well-trained employees can't memorize every detail about every product. The AI fills the gaps without customers ever knowing it's there.
Why this matters: This is the smart play—AI as the ultimate training partner and knowledge base, not as a replacement. Your team gets superhuman product knowledge, customers get better service, everyone wins.
Try this: Make a list of the questions your team asks each other most often during busy periods. "How do I handle this?" "What's our policy on that?" An internal AI assistant could give them those answers instantly.
Source: Dataconomy
🤖 Walmart just deployed AI agents across their entire shopping experience
Walmart rolled out four different AI agents to handle everything from helping customers find products to managing supply chains and staffing decisions. These aren't just chatbots—they're AI systems that can actually complete tasks like restocking inventory, scheduling employees, and personalizing shopping recommendations in real-time. The goal? Use AI to keep costs down while inflation and tariffs push everything else up. Early results show the AI agents are streamlining operations and making shopping faster for customers.
Why this matters: When the world's largest retailer bets big on AI agents for customer experience, it's not an experiment—it's a preview of where retail is heading. If Walmart can make AI work at their scale, smaller retailers will follow fast.
Try this: Map out one customer journey from start to finish in your business. Where do people get stuck waiting for information or decisions? Those bottlenecks are exactly where AI agents could speed things up.
Source: Food Digital
🎯 Prompt of the Day
Find your AI automation sweet spots
You're helping me identify where AI automation would have the biggest impact in our customer experience operations. For [YOUR DEPARTMENT/TEAM], analyze our workflows and create a priority matrix showing:
1. **High-Volume Repeats:** Tasks we do over and over that follow predictable patterns
2. **Information Hunting:** Times when staff spend ages looking for answers customers need right now
3. **Customer Frustration Points:** Where people get annoyed or give up entirely
4. **Success Measurements:** How we'd know if AI actually made things better
5. **Implementation Reality Check:** Rank each opportunity from "we could start tomorrow" to "this needs a six-month project"
Focus on finding the sweet spot between high customer impact and manageable implementation.
This cuts through the AI hype to show you where automation will actually help your team and customers. Use it to build a roadmap that starts with wins you can achieve quickly and builds toward bigger transformations.
⚡ Try This Prompt
Assess our team's readiness for AI-powered customer service tools. Evaluate: 1) Who on our team adapts quickly to new technology, 2) What training and support resources we actually have, 3) How we currently share knowledge and best practices, and 4) Where people waste the most time on repetitive tasks. Recommend the smartest first step for introducing AI assistance.
This reality check shows you where to start based on your team's actual capabilities and comfort level, not what sounds impressive in vendor demos.
💭 CX Note to Self
The best AI doesn't replace good customer service teams—it turns them into superheroes.
👋 See You Tomorrow
The voice AI breakthrough is real this time. But the bigger story is how smart companies are using it—not to replace their people, but to give them capabilities that seemed impossible six months ago. The question isn't whether AI can do your job, it's whether it can help you do your job better than anyone thought possible. What's one way you could give your team superpowers this week?
Hit reply and tell me what you're thinking about trying first.
—Mark
💡 P.S. Want more prompts? Grab the FREE 32 Power Prompts That Will Change Your CX Strategy – Forever to start transforming your team, now. 👉 FREE 32 Power Prompts