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Comment by nsokolsky | Hacker News Reader

The demo is nice but it makes me wonder: why would a company have a fully automated voice line rather than a booking interface? As a customer I'm never happy to call a company to make a reservation. I'd be extra annoyed if an AI picked up and I had to go through the motions of a conversation instead of doing two clicks in a Web UI.

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Yes, for booking appointments, a simple interface might do the trick. However, we've seen many excellent use cases of our API that prevent repetitive tasks and help companies save money, like AI logistics assistants, pre-surgery data collection, AI tutor and AI therapists. I believe the future will bring even more voice interface applications. Imagine not having to navigate complex UIs; you could easily book a flight or a hotel just by speaking. Also, older people might prefer phone calls over navigating UI interfaces.

Booking a flight with a voice interface is 10 steps backwards from web UIs where I can see different options, prices, calendars....

As a user, I want to talk to LLMs to answer my random day to day questions. I tried the Retell demo and asked it questions that I had earlier asked Alexa and Google Assistant. The Retell experience was a million times better. I wish I could set it as my phone's (Android) default assistant. If you built that, I would pay good money for it!

However, I agree with others. What I don't want to do is talk to LLMs for customer support. For that, I always want to talk to a real person. It would be infuriating for an LLM to pick up when calling a business.

I totally get that clicking in Web UI is super convenient in many scenarios, and I think GUI and voice can co-exist and create synergy. Suppose AI voice agent can solve your problem, cater to your needs, and interact like a human. In that case, I believe it would be super helpful in many scenarios (like others mentioned, waiting on line for 40 minutes is a pretty bad experience). There are also new opportunities in voice like AI companion, AI assistant, etc that we see are starting to emerge.

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