New AssemblyAI-TTS-1: Text-to-speech for voice agents. Learn more
Solutions

Voice agents for front office

Replace hold music with instant answers. AI voice agents handle appointment scheduling, caller routing, intake forms, and FAQs — so your front desk team focuses on the patients, clients, and customers who walk through the door.

Front desk agent

4 calls handled
MJ

Maria Jensen

Reschedule cleaning — Tue 2pm

Solved
DK

David Kim

Insurance verification question

Solved
RP

Rachel Park

New patient intake — Dr. Patel

Booked
TW

Tom Walsh

Confirm Fri appointment + directions

Solved
Metaview
Dovetail
Granola
Apollo.io
Ashby
Siro
Calabrio
Cluely
Genio
Commure
Retell
CallRail
LiveKit
EliseAI
ClickUp
HeyGen
Metaview
Dovetail
Granola
Apollo.io
Ashby
Siro
Calabrio
Cluely
Genio
Commure
Retell
CallRail
LiveKit
EliseAI
ClickUp
HeyGen
Metaview
Dovetail
Granola
Apollo.io
Ashby
Siro
Calabrio
Cluely
Genio
Commure
Retell
CallRail
LiveKit
EliseAI
ClickUp
HeyGen
Metaview
Dovetail
Granola
Apollo.io
Ashby
Siro
Calabrio
Cluely
Genio
Commure
Retell
CallRail
LiveKit
EliseAI
ClickUp
HeyGen
The problem

Your front desk is a bottleneck, not a welcome mat

The average medical or professional office misses 30% of inbound calls. Patients and clients hit voicemail, hang up, and book with the competitor. Staff juggle ringing phones, walk-ins, and paperwork — leading to scheduling errors, long hold times, and burned-out receptionists. Every unanswered call is a missed appointment, missed revenue, and a worse first impression. AssemblyAI gives every office an always-on AI front desk.

Built for the busiest front desks

Latency ~90 ms

Time to first audio from the Text-to-Speech API — callers never wait on dead air.

Entity accuracy 21%

Lower entity error rate than the next-best streaming model.

Coverage 24/7

Always-on for nights, weekends, holidays, and after-hours overflow.

Concurrency Unlimited

Concurrent Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime streams — no busy signals, no hold queues.

Two ways to build

Pick the setup that fits your front office stack

Run the full AssemblyAI voice stack, or drop best-in-class streaming STT into your existing PBX or IVR.

Recommended

Full AssemblyAI voice stack

Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime listens, LLM Gateway reasons, and the Text-to-Speech API speaks — a front-desk agent that schedules, routes, and answers on one API key.

Best for

  • Appointment scheduling, intake, FAQs, caller routing
  • Tool calls for EHR / practice management write-back
  • A natural voice that gets names and numbers right on read-back
  • 4,000+ voices in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese
$0.45/hr — STT, plus Text-to-Speech at $15 per 1M characters
Get started for free

Free tier available · No credit card required

Bring Your Own Stack

Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime STT API

Drop best-in-class speech recognition into your existing PBX or IVR stack. Bring your own LLM and TTS for full control over routing logic and voice.

Best for

  • Teams running their own LLM, TTS, and PBX/IVR
  • 307 ms median time to final transcript for real-time caller interaction
  • Accurate capture of names + dates + IDs
  • Native LiveKit, Pipecat, Vapi, and Twilio integrations
  • Unlimited concurrency for peak-hour call volume
$0.45/hr — transcription only, unlimited streams
View integration docs

No concurrency caps · Autoscaling included

Caller speaks → Agent understands → Books, routes, or resolves

Caller reaches the voice agent instantly

No hold queue, no phone tree. The agent greets by name when caller ID matches your records, and asks how it can help in a natural voice from the Text-to-Speech API, with about 90 ms time to first audio.

Transcribed with name and date accuracy

Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime nails proper nouns, insurance IDs, phone numbers, and appointment times — the lowest entity error rate among benchmarked streaming models (14.41% vs 18.19% for the next best). No more callbacks to verify what the caller said.

Agent takes action via tool calling

Books or reschedules appointments, routes to the right department, verifies insurance, or collects new patient intake — all mid-conversation through JSON Schema function calls.

Confirms and follows up automatically

Reads back the appointment details, sends an SMS confirmation, and pushes the structured record to the EHR, practice management system, or CRM — without staff lifting a finger.

support_agent

Front desk pipeline

Caller reaches the voice agent instantly

↓

Transcribe with name + date accuracy

↓

Take action via tool calling

↓

Confirm + follow up automatically

Quickstart

Build a front desk voice agent in minutes

LiveKit + Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime — multi-location routing

# LiveKit + AssemblyAI Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime: multi-location routing
from livekit.agents import Agent, AgentSession, TurnHandlingOptions
from livekit.plugins import assemblyai, cartesia, openai, silero
from livekit.plugins.turn_detector.multilingual import MultilingualModel

class FrontDeskAgent(Agent):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__(
            instructions=(
                "You are a front desk receptionist for a multi-location dental "
                "group. Identify which office the caller needs. Check availability "
                "across all locations. Book appointments, collect insurance details, "
                "and route complex billing questions to the office manager."
            ),
        )

async def entrypoint(ctx):
    session = AgentSession(
        stt=assemblyai.STT(
            model="universal-3-6-pro",
            keyterms_prompt=["Dr. Patel", "panoramic x-ray", "deep cleaning",
                             "Lakewood office", "Downtown office"],
        ),
        llm=openai.LLM(model="gpt-4o"),
        tts=cartesia.TTS(),
        vad=silero.VAD.load(activation_threshold=0.3),
        turn_handling=TurnHandlingOptions(
            turn_detection=MultilingualModel(),
            endpointing={"min_delay": 0.5, "max_delay": 3.0},
        ),
    )
    await session.start(room=ctx.room, agent=FrontDeskAgent())

Want AssemblyAI on the speaking side too? The Text-to-Speech API has reference implementations for LiveKit and Pipecat.

Scheduling-aware accuracy

Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime captures dates, times, provider names, and insurance IDs with the lowest entity error rate among benchmarked streaming models (14.41% vs 18.19% for the next best) — no more "was that the 13th or the 30th?" callbacks. Keyterm prompting boosts recognition of your provider list and procedure vocabulary.

Mid-call tool calling

Book appointments, check provider availability, verify insurance, and route calls — all through JSON Schema function calls that execute mid-conversation without dropping the caller. Native integrations with LiveKit, Pipecat, Twilio, and standard WebSocket clients.

Unlimited concurrent calls

Universal-3.6 Pro Realtime has unlimited concurrency at $0.45/hr per stream — no busy signals, no hold queues. Auto-scales for Monday morning rushes, lunch-hour spikes, and after-hours volume so every caller gets answered on the first ring.

Frequently asked questions