> Voice agents allow businesses to be available to their customers 24/7 to answer questions, schedule appointments, or complete purchases. Customer availability and business availability no longer have to match 1:1 (ever tried to call an East Coast bank after 3 p.m. PT?). With voice agents, every business can always be online.

I don't get it -- textual support chatbots have been around for decades. Even if we accept the premise that people would rather speak to them by voice, how do voice agents represent some kind of sea change in availability?

(And I personally find customer support chatbots deeply frustrating to use for reasons that have nothing to do with the modality or the quality of the AI model. I only ever need to use one when the question I have is not answered in the documentation, which is often the extent of the chatbot's business-specific training data. Inevitably I end up being led in circles, screaming for a human.)