AI voice agents are quickly becoming go-to automation tools for businesses across many industries – and retail is no exception. These intelligent voice AI solutions are designed to automate voice interactions, reduce missed calls, improve customer experience, reduce support costs and generate more sales. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how exactly AI voice agents can help your retail business optimize its operations and provide a quick overview of the 5 best AI voice agent providers for retailers to help you choose the right one.
What are AI voice agents?
AI voice agents are AI-based software systems designed to automate voice interactions. These are also called AI voice bots or AI phone agents, to name a few. They use automatic speech recognition (ASR), natural language processing (NLP), large language models (LLM), and speech synthesis (STT), among other technologies.
Unlike IVR systems that only recognize a handful of predefined commands and follow scripted responses, AI voice agents can understand natural speech, pick up context, and provide more human and contextually relevant responses.
On top of that, they can integrate with back-end systems (such as CRM, inventory and order management software, e-commerce platforms, payment gateways and other business tools) to retrieve real-time data and perform specific actions in these systems – often autonomously, without human intervention. Additionally, they can handle interruptions intelligently and convey more complex conversations to human salespeople without losing context.
How can a retail AI voice agent help your business?
Now, let’s get specific and see how retail businesses can actually benefit from implementing an AI voice agent:
- 24/7 customer support: Today’s consumers want instant support, no matter when they call. AI voice agents can provide support around the clock and professionally answer your most common questions: no wait time, no need for callers to rely on human representatives.
- Inventory management: When integrated with inventory management software, an AI voice agent can provide real-time stock information, helping customers find products and saving staff from having to manually check availability.
- Personalized recommendations: AI voice agents can provide personalized product recommendations based on the customer’s purchase history and product preferences, just like an in-store virtual assistant.
- Order management and tracking: AI voice agents don’t just answer FAQs and provide product information: they can also help customers place orders, track shipments, and provide delivery updates instantly, reducing the workload on support teams.
- Returns and exchanges: AI agents can also handle product return/exchange requests autonomously. They can guide customers through return and exchange processes, issue return labels, or automatically schedule pickup requests.
- Boost sales with promotions: AI voice agents don’t just answer incoming calls. Many solutions can also handle outbound calls, so you can use them to proactively notify customers about flash sales or special offers aimed at increasing sales.
- Multilingual support: Retail often serves diverse clienteles. AI voice agents can communicate with your customers in multiple languages, improving accessibility and customer experience.
- Data collection and analysis: AI voice agents can analyze customer interactions to collect valuable data on customer behavior, preferences and issues, providing retailers with actionable insights to improve their products and services.
- Cost reduction: By automating a large portion of customer inquiries, retail businesses can significantly reduce their need for a large customer service team, leading to lower operational costs.
Five Best Retail AI Voice Agent Vendors to Explore in 2025
Vocal Spin
VoiceSpin lets you create a retail AI voice agent to automate everyday customer interactions. It can handle inbound calls, answer FAQs, provide product information, and launch outbound promotional campaigns. It can also integrate with your back-end systems to perform actions like order tracking, inventory checks, payment processing, returns, and more. Plus, it can scale instantly during busy seasons to handle thousands of calls at a time. But what is special about Vocal spin is that it is not just an AI voice agent tool, but a complete contact center platform with omnichannel integration and AI voice analytics.
Main features:
- Out-of-the-box and custom integrations with back-end systems
- Support for over 100 languages and dialects
- Built-in AI speech analytics with custom metrics
- Scalability to handle high call volumes
Telling AI
Retell AI offers a voice AI platform that allows you to create AI voice agents for retail and consumer goods. You can use it to automate customer support, phone orders, order management, returns, and proactive awareness campaigns, all without human intervention. The solution is highly scalable and can easily handle high call volumes during seasonal peaks without compromising call quality. Additionally, Retell AI offers a post-call analysis module, allowing you to gain valuable insights from each call and track the performance of your voice agent.
Main features:
- Support for over 30 languages
- Post-call analytics with call summaries
- Integrations with telephony providers and third-party applications
- Scalability for handling high volume calls
PolyAI
PolyAI is a conversational AI platform designed for enterprise customer service automation. With PolyAI, you can create AI voice agents that can answer FAQs, check inventory, track orders, reschedule deliveries, process payments, manage returns, and more. According to PolyAI, its AI voice agent can resolve more than 50% of your customer service requests. And with customizable reports, you can track personalized metrics that matter to your business. On the other hand, however, PolyAI is specifically designed to automate inbound call handling and might not be suitable for outbound call automation.
Main features:
- Support for over 45 languages
- Real-time analytics with a customizable dashboard
- Out-of-the-box and custom integrations
- Scalability to handle enterprise-wide conversation volumes
Royal
Regal lets you create AI voice agents for retail that can automate inbound support calls and outbound proactive engagement. It is designed specifically for enterprise customers, typically those that work with 75 or more agents or handle more than 150,000 calls each month. With its no-code voice agent builder, you can configure and deploy AI voice agents without deep technical expertise. Regal allows you to select a voice from supported TTS (Text-to-Speech) providers or clone your own voice. And with native A/B testing tools, you can easily fine-tune your AI agent to optimize its performance.
Main features:
- No-code AI voice agent generator
- Support for over 30 languages
- Real-time and after-call analytics and reporting
- Integrations with third-party tools and APIs
Yellow AI
Yellow AI lets you create enterprise-ready AI voice agents to automate inbound customer service calls and outbound call campaigns – and with pre-built templates, you don’t need to start from scratch. The agent can handle requests related to product availability, order processing and tracking, order cancellation handling, etc., while AI Copilot helps you test, debug, and improve your AI agent in real-time before it goes live. With Yellow AI, you can also integrate digital communication channels and provide omnichannel support.
Main features:
- Pre-built AI agent templates
- Support for over 100 languages
- Integrations with telephony providers and third-party applications
- Advanced reporting and analytics features
Conclusion
AI voice agents truly deliver next-generation automation capabilities, helping retail businesses better support their customers and sell more while reducing the number of administrative tasks for human salespeople and reducing operational costs. Human interactions, instant multilingual support available 24/7, and the ability to handle multiple calls simultaneously make them excellent solutions for retailers with high call volumes. If you are ready to deploy a AI voice agent for retail To automate your customer support and proactive outreach, be sure to explore the AI voice agent providers listed above in more detail.