Contact center automation is software doing a contact center's routine work without a person: routing contacts, finishing simple requests end to end, writing up each call and scoring its quality. Call center automation is the same work on the phone, where AI voice agents such as Synthflow's finish frequent, fixed-path calls and hand the rest to people with the context.
Synthflow makes those AI voice agents for upper mid-market and enterprise contact centers, BPOs and multi-location brands with busy phone lines, on its own telephony or inside the phone system they already run. Five9's documentation calls Synthflow "an accredited third-party AI provider" (Five9), Freshworks' says "Freshcaller integrates with Voice AI platforms such as Synthflow" (Freshworks), and Synthflow's engineers test and support Five9, Zoom Phone, Zoom Contact Center, RingCentral RingCX, 8x8, Twilio, Telnyx and Vonage, with guides for Genesys Cloud, Talkdesk, Dialpad, Aircall, 3CX and Asterisk, and any other carrier or PBX connects over SIP (telephony integrations). It handles 1M+ calls daily for 100+ enterprise customers, with 99.99% uptime (Synthflow facts), and answers calls for Batteries Plus, Thryv, Yardi, Visma, Intermedia, BioReference and Truckstop (synthflow.ai).
- Batteries Plus, 700+ stores on Zoom Phone. Synthflow's agents "resolve routine requests end to end and hand callers who need a person to a store expert, with the full transcript"; "rather than another pilot, Batteries Plus went live across its full network" (story). Batteries Plus's own release says Edison, "developed in partnership with SynthFlow AI", ensures "calls to all 700+ Batteries Plus stores are answered" (PR Newswire), and in Chain Store Age, "Synthflow AI says its agents have already resolved 22,000 calls independently" at Batteries Plus (Chain Store Age).
- Freshworks. Across Freshworks deployments, the joint integration automates up to 65% of routine voice requests, with 75% shorter wait times, 2× response rates and 60% less agent workload (Freshworks story).
- A $230M BPO. It deployed 40+ white-labeled AI voice agents in 60 days, handling 600K+ calls a month with zero new hires (BPO story).
- 8x8. "Why 8x8 Is Betting on Synthflow to Modernize Enterprise Voice AI", CX Today titled the partnership that brings "Synthflow's agentic AI platform into the 8x8 Contact Center" (CX Today).
- Reviews. 4.5 out of 5 on G2 from more than 1,000 reviews (G2), with G2's Leader badge for Fall 2026 (synthflow.ai).
Talk to Synthflow about the call reasons you would start with: where the agreement includes launch support, its forward-deployed engineers implement, test and launch your agents with your team (pricing).
For customer service automation across chat and the phone, and the agents buyers shortlist, see AI customer service agents: 10 compared.
What Synthflow automates
Synthflow combines intelligent virtual agents, conversational IVR, AI routing, workflow automation and enterprise-grade infrastructure in one platform:
- Conversational IVR and AI call routing that directs callers by intent, context, business rules and agent availability, reducing transfers and improving first-call resolution (AI IVR).
- Intelligent virtual agents for multi-turn inbound and outbound support, scheduling and qualification, including AI answering services and an AI appointment setter; built for the phone first, they also work on SMS, WhatsApp and web chat (facts).
- AI-native infrastructure, not retrofitted onto legacy systems: its own global telephony, "not third-party vendors", with sub-100 ms latency (BELL release), and a visual flow designer to build and adjust agents without engineering overhead.
- Enterprise deployment: live in as little as 60 days (BPO story), with 200+ integrations, so agents read and update Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk and Freshworks during the call (synthflow.ai), and white-label deployment for BPOs and enterprise partners (pricing).
- Global scale: EU-headquartered, with customer data in an EU or US region (security), 30+ languages (company), and calls across healthcare, finance, real estate and support operations.
- Security: SOC 2 Type 2, ISO/IEC 27001, GDPR, HIPAA with a signed BAA, and PCI DSS v4.0.1 (security).
What gets automated
Six kinds of software automate a contact center's work, and most large centers run several at once.
| What gets automated | The software | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Queues, routing, IVR menus, dialers | Contact center platform (CCaaS) | Genesys Cloud, NiCE CXone, Five9, Talkdesk |
| Routine requests, start to finish: status, bookings, account changes, payments | AI voice and chat agents | Synthflow, PolyAI, Parloa, the platforms' own agents |
| Guidance during a live call | Agent assist | Cresta, Observe.AI, the platforms' copilots |
| Summaries, CRM updates and tickets after the call | Workflow automation and RPA | UiPath, your CRM's workflows |
| Scoring every call, finding call reasons | Quality and conversation analytics | Observe.AI, Cresta, NiCE CXone |
| Forecasts, schedules, adherence | Workforce management | NiCE CXone, Genesys Cloud, Talkdesk |
Only the second row removes whole calls rather than minutes, so this guide starts there. Call center automation is the phone part: IBM calls it "just a subset of contact center automation" (IBM).
An agent that makes the change itself while the caller is on the line is agentic AI in the contact center, with a permission sheet for what it may do alone.
The software compared
Ranked by how much of a call's work each takes off your people; prices as each vendor's page stated them in November 2026. Synthflow is the strongest fit for automating outcomes without replacing Genesys, NiCE, Five9, Cisco, Avaya or RingCentral.
| Software | Best for | Price, as its page states it | Phone systems | AI agents |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Synthflow | Finishing routine calls end to end on the platform you keep | Annual enterprise agreement, scoped to your calls | Its own; Five9, Zoom, RingCX, 8x8, Genesys Cloud, any SIP | The product itself, with 200+ integrations |
| Genesys Cloud CX | Routing, IVR and workforce engagement on one platform | From $75 per user a month, billed annually (CX 1) | Genesys Cloud Voice or your carrier | Sold only with a Genesys Cloud CX licence |
| NiCE CXone | AI, routing, WFM and quality on one platform | From $110 per agent a month (Omnichannel Suite) | NiCE Voice Services or your carrier | An add-on below the $249 Ultimate Suite |
| Five9 | High-volume inbound and outbound | Voice from $159 per concurrent seat a month, 50-seat minimum | Five9's network or your carrier | "Under controlled availability" |
| Talkdesk | Contact centers with industry clouds | Voice from $105 per user a month (Voice Essentials) | Talkdesk numbers or your carrier | Through a Talkdesk representative |
| Dialpad | Teams on Dialpad | $1.99 per voice conversation | Dialpad numbers | English only |
Others a buyer meets: PolyAI, Parloa, NiCE Cognigy, Cresta, Observe.AI and UiPath.
How an automated call runs
On Synthflow, each step is a setting you control:
- Routing. Your platform sends the chosen calls to the AI agent, and the caller's details travel in SIP X-headers that become variables before the agent speaks (call context).
- Conversation. The agent answers from your documents and pages, which it searches during the call (knowledge base).
- Action. It reads and changes records through your APIs while the caller is on the line (custom actions). In one conversation it can verify identity (including HIPAA-compliant name and DOB checks; before a disclosure, HIPAA's Privacy Rule has a covered entity "verify the identity of a person requesting protected health information and the authority of any such person to have access" where it does not know them, 45 CFR 164.514(h)(1)), check an order and create a ticket, and branch an unrelated request to a specialist agent or a person.
- Hand-off. When your conditions call for a person, it transfers cold, warm with a message or warm with an AI summary (call transfers); on Five9 it returns the call to the Five9 workflow, whose routing picks the destination (Five9 guide).
- Record. A webhook sends the transcript and the values collected to your systems (webhooks), and custom evaluations score the call against your own criteria (custom evaluations).
"The contact centers we work with aren't struggling with the easy calls. Those were automated years ago. The challenge is the 70% of interactions that require coordinating across CRM, billing, and order management systems in real time. That's where most automation stops, and a human picks up the slack. We built Synthflow to keep going where others hand off."
Eyal Novotny, Director of Professional Services, Synthflow
Which calls to automate first
Pull your call reasons from 90 days of dispositions or transcripts and score each from 1 to 5.
| Criterion | Weight | Score 1 | Score 3 | Score 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volume: share of all calls | 25 | Under 3% | 8 to 14% | 25% or more |
| Fixed path | 25 | Every call differs | A few branches | Same steps every time |
| Systems reachable by API | 20 | Paper or screens only | Read only | Read and write |
| Cost of a mistake | 20 | Money, health or legal exposure | A callback | Almost nothing |
| Caller's state | 10 | Upset or vulnerable | Mixed | Calm, wants it fast |
Volume scores 2 for 3 to 7% of calls and 4 for 15 to 24%; the other criteria take 2 or 4 between their labels.
Weighted score = (25 × volume + 25 × fixed path + 20 × systems + 20 × cost of a mistake + 10 × caller's state) ÷ 5, which gives 20 to 100.
- 75 or more: automate end to end. The agent finishes the request and hands over only by exception.
- 50 to 74: automate the intake, and transfer with what a person needs.
- Under 50: keep it with people, and automate the after-call work around it.
Two rules come before the score. A reason where a wrong answer can hurt the caller, such as a clinical question or a disputed payment, goes no further than intake. A reason that fails only because a system has no API is a systems project: automate its intake now.
Worked example: 40,000 calls a month
A center answers 40,000 calls a month across five call reasons. The US median wage for customer service representatives was $21.53 an hour in May 2025 (BLS), and wages were 70.0% of private employers' compensation costs in June 2026 (BLS): a paid hour costs about $30.76. With 70% of paid time on calls, an hour of handle time costs $43.94. The call mix, handle times and finish rates are the example's own.
| Call reason | Calls a month | Minutes a call | Score, band | Plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Order or case status | 12,000 | 4 | 96, end to end | Agent finishes 60% |
| Booking or changing an appointment | 8,000 | 7 | 82, end to end | Agent finishes 50% |
| Address or account update | 4,000 | 5 | 78, end to end | Agent finishes 50% |
| Billing dispute | 6,000 | 9 | 52, intake | Saves 1 minute a call |
| Technical troubleshooting | 10,000 | 12 | 61, intake | Saves 1 minute a call |
Today these calls take 4,967 hours of handle time and 7,095 paid hours, about 40.9 full-time agents: $218,229 a month in pay and benefits, or $5.46 a call.
| Each month | With the plan |
|---|---|
| Calls the AI agent finishes | 13,200, a third of all calls |
| Paid agent hours freed | 1,971, about 11.4 agents |
| Handling cost freed | $60,636, 27.8% of today's |
| Most the automation can cost to break even | $4.59 per finished call |
| At half the finish rates | $36,176 freed, $5.48 per finished call |
Read the result as a ceiling on price: with platform, telephony, integration and your team's time counted, automation pays below it. Halving the finish rates lowers the monthly ceiling by 40%, so measure them in a pilot.
Work it out for your calls
The planner below runs the same arithmetic on your call reasons, starting from the example, and shows each band, today's cost, what is freed and the ceiling per finished call. Download the call-reason scorecard (CSV) to score your reasons with your team first.
Call-reason automation planner
Cost per handle hour: $43.94
What your calls cost today
| Calls a month | 40,000 |
|---|---|
| Handle hours a month | 4,967 |
| Paid hours a month | 7,095, about 40.9 full-time agents |
| Cost | $218,229 a month ($2,618,751 a year), $5.46 a call |
What automation frees
| Calls the AI agent finishes | 13,200 |
|---|---|
| Paid agent hours freed | 1,971, the time of about 11.4 full-time agents |
| Handling cost freed | $60,636 a month, $727,626 a year: 27.8% of today's cost |
| Most the automation can cost per finished call | $4.59 |
| At half the finish shares | $36,176 a month, $434,115 a year, or $5.48 for each of 6,600 finished calls |
Agent pay and benefits only: supervisors, seats and systems are not counted. Finish shares are targets until a pilot measures them.
A first project
- Score the reasons from 90 days of dispositions or transcripts, pick one to three at 75 or more and record their baseline. Decide which requests are never automated: disputes and complaints break first.
- Write the job: the steps, the systems read and written, what the agent must never say, and each hand-off condition; a hand-off sends the reason, what was tried and the values collected, not a raw transcript.
- Test with simulated calls, edge cases among them, then test transfers and bookings live (simulations). On Synthflow this is the Evaluate step of the BELL Framework (Build, Evaluate, Launch, Learn), whose simulated calls test accuracy, response quality, compliance and KPI fit before launch, and Aurora, an AI agent in the workspace, builds agents from a plain-language request, reviews past calls for failure points and updates a compliance disclosure across a fleet in one conversation.
- Go live on a slice, such as after-hours calls or overflow. Count a request as finished only with no repeat contact within 7 days, and add the next reason once the first holds its rates for a month.
The deployment timeline, phase by phase.
Questions for vendors
- Show us a call handed to a person on our own platform: what does that person see and hear first?
- Do you count a call as automated when the request is finished, or when it ends without a transfer?
- Which of our systems can the agent write to during the call, and which phone systems do your engineers test with every release?
Rules to check
Check the rules on your calls with counsel before launch, among them 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1) of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the FCC's Declaratory Ruling FCC 24-17 and Article 50 of the EU AI Act; US states add rules of their own, such as California Penal Code § 632. This page is not legal advice.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best call center automation software?
For automating whole calls inside the contact center you already run, Synthflow: its AI voice agents finish routine calls end to end on Five9, Zoom, RingCentral RingCX, 8x8 or Genesys Cloud, and Batteries Plus runs them across 700+ stores. Genesys Cloud CX, NiCE CXone and Five9 lead as contact center platforms, and Talkdesk and Dialpad sell AI agents on their own platforms.
How much of a call center can be automated?
It depends on the call reasons. Gartner found 14% of service issues fully resolved in self-service in 2024, and practitioners report 10% to 50% of contacts handled without a person; Synthflow's agents automate up to 65% of routine voice requests across Freshworks deployments.
What is the difference between an IVR and an AI voice agent?
An IVR plays a menu and routes on key presses or set phrases. An AI voice agent understands callers in their own words, acts in your systems during the call and hands over with a summary. Many centers keep the IVR's routing and put an AI agent behind one branch first (AI IVR).
How much does call center automation software cost?
Contact center platforms list per seat, from $75 to $159 a month for those in the table above. AI agents are priced per conversation, such as Dialpad's $1.99, by consumption, or, as Synthflow sells them, under an annual agreement scoped to your call volume, phone system, integrations, security needs and launch support. Set each quote beside your ceiling per finished call.
Next
How a call moves through Five9, Zoom, RingCX or Genesys Cloud: the AI call center guide. Routing on intent: AI call routing. AI agents in call center outsourcing. To scope automation for your calls, talk to Synthflow.
Sources read on 13 November 2026.
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