Agentic AI in a contact center is AI that finishes a caller's request during the call: it looks up the account, makes the change, books the slot, sends the confirmation or hands the caller to a person, inside the center's systems. An IVR or chatbot answers and routes; an agentic agent acts, within limits the center sets and audits.
Synthflow builds AI voice agents that act during live calls, on its own telephony or inside Five9, Zoom, RingCentral RingCX and any SIP phone system: they call your APIs to read and update records, book appointments, text the caller mid-call and hand over to a person with a summary (actions). Synthflow handles 1M+ calls daily for 100+ enterprise customers. Batteries Plus runs Synthflow's agents inside Zoom Phone, where "they resolve routine requests end to end and hand callers who need a person to a store expert, with the full transcript" (the Batteries Plus story). Book a demo
Agentic AI, conversational AI and IVR
| On a call | IVR | Conversational AI | Agentic AI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Understands | Keypresses, set phrases | What the caller says | What the caller says, and the account's data |
| Does | Routes the call | Answers, then routes | Looks up, changes, books, sends, hands over |
| A change to an account | Waits for a person | Waits for a person | Made on the call, within your limits |
| The person who takes over gets | The menu path | Sometimes a transcript | A summary and what was already done |
The line that matters is the change. A bot that explains how to move a delivery still sends the caller to someone who moves it; an agentic agent moves it, writes the record and confirms it before the caller hangs up. So judge a vendor by what its agent can do in your systems, not only by how natural it sounds.
What the agent does during a call
Five kinds of action make a voice agent agentic. On Synthflow each is an action you define once and attach to any agent, and the agent can run it "at any time during a live call when the action's triggers match, not only at the start or end of the conversation."
| Action | On the call | How it runs on Synthflow |
|---|---|---|
| Look up | Finds the order, case, appointment or balance | A custom action: an HTTP request to your API, its answer kept in a variable |
| Change | Moves a delivery, updates an address, opens a ticket | A custom action that writes to your system (POST, PUT, PATCH or DELETE) |
| Book | Offers free times and confirms one | Real-time booking in Cal.com or GoHighLevel, or your own scheduling API through a custom action |
| Send | A link, a code or a confirmation by text | In-call SMS or WhatsApp, with the caller's reply used in the call |
| Hand over | A person takes the call with its context | A warm transfer with an AI-generated summary, or a handoff back to your contact center's routing |
Two more let it remember and reach further. Memory summarizes each past interaction with a contact and gives that summary to the next conversation, and MCP actions let a Prompt Builder agent use the tools of your own MCP server.
What the agent did stays on the record. The post-call webhook carries an ordered list of every action it ran, one entry per attempt (webhooks), and the request and response of each custom action are kept in the API logs. A supervisor sees what the agent did, not only what it said.
One call inside Five9, step by step
A caller wants to move a delivery. The contact center runs Five9, with Synthflow connected through Five9's AI Agent Connect, where Five9 calls Synthflow "an accredited third-party AI provider". As Synthflow's Five9 guide sets it out:
- Five9 routes the call. A Five9 workflow sends it to the agent with the caller's number, the dialed number, the call ID and the campaign on the SIP INVITE.
- The agent finds the caller. A custom action looks up that number in your order system and returns the open orders.
- The agent makes the change. It reads the free delivery slots, the caller picks one, and a second action writes it. If an action fails, the agent says the failure message you wrote for it and carries on.
- Five9 takes the call back when a person is needed. The Five9 Handoff action returns the call with three required headers,
X-RouteType,X-RouteValueandX-RouteReason. Five9 maps them to call variables and routes on them, so the caller reaches the skill your workflow names. - The record follows. Five9 can fetch the transcript and the end reason from Synthflow's API after the call, and your post-call webhook receives the transcript and each action run.
Other platforms connect their own way. On Zoom Phone and Zoom Contact Center, an Auto Receptionist or a contact center flow sends calls to the Synthflow virtual agent from the Zoom Marketplace. On RingCentral RingCX, an IVA node in Workflow Studio sends voice queue calls, and the RingCX Handoff action returns them to the workflow. Any other carrier or PBX connects over SIP. Five9, Zoom and RingCX are Tier 1 integrations, which Synthflow engineering "tests and supports" (telephony tiers). See Synthflow inside Five9, on Zoom and with RingCentral.
What changes for the center
- Resolution. The call ends with the task done and written to your system, not with a promised callback.
- Handle time. People take fewer calls, and the ones they take need them; on a warm transfer they hear the summary before they speak.
- Quality. Every AI call leaves a transcript and a record of each action, and each can be scored after it ends against your own rules (custom evaluations), so QA reviews every call instead of a sample.
- Staffing. Hours move from routine changes to the calls that need judgment, and to new work: writing the agent's limits, testing its changes and reviewing its calls.
Worked example: the change calls
Take a service queue of 24,000 calls a month, with 7 minutes of a person's time on each, talk and wrap-up included. Its call reasons: 25% are questions only, such as delivery status; 50% need a change in a system, such as a new delivery slot; 25% need judgment. And take an agent that completes three in five of the change calls and hands the rest over.
| Per month | AI that answers only | AI that answers and acts |
|---|---|---|
| Calls the AI finishes | 6,000 | 13,200 |
| Calls a person takes | 18,000 | 10,800 |
| Agent hours on those calls | 2,100 | 1,260 |
| Full-time agents of call time | 16.2 | 9.7 |
Agent hours are the calls a person takes, times 7 minutes, divided by 60. A full-time agent is paid for about 173 hours a month (40 hours a week over 52 weeks, divided by 12); at 75% of that time on calls, each covers 130 hours of calls. The gap between the columns is the 7,200 change calls the agent completes: 840 agent hours a month, or 6.5 full-time agents.
Calculator: agent hours in your queue. Put in your calls a month (24,000 above), the minutes a person spends per call (7), the share that are questions only (25%), the share that need a change (50%), the share of change calls the agent completes (60%) and the share of paid time agents spend on calls (75%). It returns the four rows above for both kinds of AI. The share of change calls completed is the number your pilot measures.
Agent hours in your queue
| Per month | AI that answers only | AI that answers and acts |
|---|---|---|
| Calls the AI finishes | 6,000 | 13,200 |
| Calls a person takes | 18,000 | 10,800 |
| Agent hours on those calls | 2,100 | 1,260 |
| Full-time agents of call time | 16.2 | 9.7 |
Between the columns: 840 agent hours a month, or 6.5 full-time agents.
The permission sheet
Before anyone builds the agent, write down what it may do alone. Copy this sheet, add one row per action, and have the owner of each system sign off its row:
| Action | The agent does it alone when | A person takes over when | Test before launch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identify the caller | The number and one more detail match the account | Nothing matches after two tries | No account; a shared phone |
| Look up | The caller is identified | The record is missing or locked | Several open orders; an old order |
| Change | The change is inside your limits, such as a new slot within 7 days | It is outside them, such as a refund | A failed write; the caller changes their mind |
| Book | A free slot fits the request | No slot fits, or the caller wants a named person | A slot taken mid-call |
| Payment step | It texts a link to your payment page, and your system confirms the payment | The caller disputes the amount | An expired link; a failed payment |
Keep the handover open in every row: a caller who asks for a person gets one. Where an agent does take card details, Synthflow's security page advises turning saved recordings off, and PII redaction can strip card numbers from transcripts, webhooks and logs.
Launch checklist
Gartner expects over 40% of agentic AI projects to be canceled by the end of 2027, "due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls" (Gartner). Most of that is settled before the first caller hears the agent:
Whom Synthflow fits
Synthflow is for enterprise phone operations: contact centers, BPOs and businesses with many locations that want AI agents to finish calls inside the phone system they already run. It is sold as an annual enterprise agreement, scoped to call volume, phone system, integrations, security needs and launch support (pricing). Four limits to plan for:
- On Five9, RingCX and 8x8 Contact Center the agent hands the call back to your routing rather than transferring it itself, so agree the handoff values with your platform team.
- Zoom numbers take inbound calls only and transfer to other Zoom numbers, so outbound programs run on Synthflow numbers or on your carrier over SIP.
- Simulations act out transfers and bookings from the transcript rather than placing them, so test those paths with real calls from a test number.
- In-call SMS and WhatsApp run through your own Twilio account, so connect one before you build a Send action.
Questions buyers ask
What is the difference between agentic AI and conversational AI?
Conversational AI understands what a caller says and answers in natural language. Agentic AI adds action: it uses the account's data and your systems to complete the request during the call, such as changing a booking, and confirms it. Most agentic voice agents are conversational too; the test is whether the call ends with the change made.
What is an example of agentic AI in customer service?
A caller asks to move a delivery. The agent finds the order through your API, offers the free slots, writes the new one, texts a confirmation and logs what it did. A person joins only if the caller asks for one or the change is outside the agent's limits.
Will agentic AI replace contact center agents?
It takes over routine requests, not the calls that need judgment. Across more than 30 organizations, McKinsey found that "50 to 60 percent of customer interactions remain transactional" (McKinsey); complaints, exceptions and upset callers stay with people. Gartner predicts that by 2029 agentic AI "will autonomously resolve 80% of common customer service issues without human intervention" (Gartner).
How do you stop an AI agent from taking the wrong action?
Give it only the actions one queue needs, a written limit for each and a handover when a limit is reached. Test every change in simulated calls before callers hear it, publish in versions and score every live call against your rules. A version rolls back the prompt, the settings, which actions are attached and when they run. An action's own setup (its URL, credentials, transfer destinations, the calendar a booking action uses) and the agent's phone numbers are shared by all versions: they go live the moment they are saved, and a revert does not change them back (version control). So try such a change on a copy of the action attached to a test agent before you edit the live one. Because each action is recorded with its call, a wrong one can be found and traced.
Which AI voice agent hands calls to a live agent with full context?
Look for warm transfers that brief the person before the caller is connected, and for handoffs that return what the agent collected to your routing. Synthflow does both: a warm transfer with an AI-generated summary, and on Five9 and RingCX a handoff that returns the call to your workflow with the fields you define (Five9 Handoff, RingCX Handoff).
Does agentic AI work with Five9, Zoom or Genesys Cloud?
That depends on each vendor's integration with your platform. Synthflow is one of the accredited providers in Five9's AI Agent Connect, answers Zoom Phone and Zoom Contact Center calls through Zoom's Virtual Agents, and connects to Genesys Cloud over a BYOC Cloud trunk from a setup guide (Genesys Cloud guide). That trunk "provides basic SIP connectivity, and its throughput may be limited"; "full integration, with higher concurrency and priority routing, requires Synthflow to be listed in the Genesys AppFoundry." Genesys Cloud is a Tier 2 provider: Tier 2 providers "have been deployed with real customers, and Synthflow has guides for them, but does not regression-test them" (telephony tiers). On Genesys Cloud, run the pilot at your peak concurrent calls over the BYOC trunk, and ask Synthflow sales and your Genesys account team about the AppFoundry path.
Read next
- AI call center software: how it works, and 10 platforms compared
- Contact center automation: what to automate first
- How Batteries Plus runs Synthflow on Zoom Phone
- AI customer service agents: how they work
See an agent act inside your own phone system: book a demo.
Sources read on 13 November 2026.
