I Built a Voice Bot for Customer Calls

I have recently created Beardbrand’s own voice customer service agent. And I did it in about a day. We’re still working on it, but the functional aspect is complete.

I used Grok Bot, xAI’s agent platform, and SpaceXAI’s Grok Voice API.

Customer support has been a huge burden for Beardbrand over the years. We have just 10 employees and cannot afford to staff live phone support.

Our solution is synthetic voices from AI agents. Grok Bot has improved over the last year or so. I’m now using it to create images for my blog posts and to dig into our Shopify reports, to analyze the numbers and post them in an Excel spreadsheet. Shopify integrates with Grok Bot.

Here’s my video of my process.

Will Roman at Chisos Boots created AI-agent voice calls for customer support. He shared with me a call the agent had with a live customer. That’s when I decided to do the same for Beardbrand.

To be sure, I’m not a developer. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being developer-level skills, I’m about a 4. I’m familiar with APIs. I can update DNS settings and manipulate WordPress templates. Beardbrand, again, is a Shopify store. However, I don’t know the first thing about code.

Conversation

Here’s the transcript of my conversation with the voice bot as a hypothetical Beardbrand customer.

Bot: Thanks for calling the Beardbrand VoiceBot on a recorded line. What can I do for you?

Eric Bandholz: I’m trying to decide what products would be best for my beard.

Bot: Happy to help you pick the right stuff. Is this for your own beard?

Bandholz: Yeah, I’ve been growing it for about two months.

Bot: Two months. That’s a solid start. How long is it now? Still pretty short or starting to get some length? And is it dry or coarse?

Bandholz: It’s like a typical beard and about an inch long.

Bot: An inch is a nice length where you can start styling it. Is it feeling dry or coarse or pretty manageable? What are you using on it now? And any scents you like?

Bandholz: I’m using a beard care product. It smells all right, but it’s not my favorite. My beard is soft enough, softer than natural.

Bot: Got it. Your current stuff is softening it up, but the scent is just okay. What kind of scents do you usually go for? Something fresh and clean, woody, spicy, or sweet?

Bandholz: I would say kind of like resin — dark, mellow.

Bot: Resinous and dark with a mellow vibe. Sounds like you dig something with woods or resins. Temple Smoke fits that description perfectly. Deep, warm resins with a smoky, earthy, mellow tone from Palo Santo, Frankincense, and Patchouli. Norse Winter is another strong match. Warm and resinous with fir balsam and frankincense, like sacred resins in a winter forest. For an inch-long beard that’s already pretty soft.

I’d start with beard oil to keep the skin happy and prevent any itch or flakes. Do either of those scents make you want more, or would you like to hear about a couple others?

Bandholz: They both sound good. Give me the one that’s most popular.

Bot: Let me check which one’s been getting the most love. Norse Winter just won a big community poll for the next permanent fragrance with over 5,000 votes, and its bundles have thousands of reviews. Temple Smoke has solid fans, but fewer overall. I’d go with Norse Winter Beard Oil. The 1.7 ounce bottle is $29 and should last a couple of months. Want that one or the bigger 4.0 ounce size?

Bandholz: Let’s try the smaller bottle. Can we create an order for that?

Bot: We don’t take payment over the phone for security purposes, but I can build a draft order and email it for you to complete. Would you like to proceed?

Bandholz: Yes. I can work with that.

Bot: Great, let’s get this set up. I see the 1.7 fluid ounce Norse Winter Beard Oil at $29. What’s the best email to send the checkout link to?

Bandholz: You can send it to ***@beardbrand.com.

Bot: Let me confirm that. ***@beardbrand.com. Is that right?

Bandholz: You nailed it. Perfect.

Bot: Your draft order is all set. The checkout link is on its way to your email. Shipping and tax get calculated at checkout.

Bandholz: Sweet. I appreciate your help.

Serve Customers

That was an example of the dialog. It delivers information and explains it to the caller as a consumer.

Again, building the agent took me roughly one day via the X Premium Plus plan, which costs $40 per month. I plan on optimizing the bot for Cloudflare hosting.

I want to add Twilio or some type of texting functionality. I need actual customers to use it. My private community, the Alliance, will hopefully test it with actual orders.

I’m a fan of Grok and of SpaceX. Thanks to those tools and many more, we can serve our customers at a much higher level. It’s good for businesses and good for shoppers.