Real-time engagement platform Agora has unveiled a new suite of Conversational AI Agent solutions for Customer Service and Sales & Marketing, designed to help enterprises deploy voice AI at scale.
The launch signals a broader shift in how businesses approach customer interaction automation. As conversational AI moves from experimentation to production environments, companies are looking for infrastructure that can support real-time voice conversations without latency or reliability issues.
This article explores how Agora’s new platform aims to remove long-standing barriers to scalable voice AI and what the move means for marketing, sales, and customer experience teams.
Short on time?
Here’s a table of contents for quick access:
- Why conversational AI agents are reaching a tipping point
- How Agora’s conversational AI platform works
- Where voice AI agents are already delivering results
- What marketers and customer experience leaders should know
Patrecia Meliana
Why conversational AI agents are reaching a tipping point
Conversational AI has long promised to automate customer interactions, but real-world deployments have often struggled with infrastructure limitations.
According to Gartner, 70% of customer interactions could be automated by conversational AI agents by 2027, while by 2028 AI agents are expected to outnumber human sellers by 10 to 1.
Despite this potential, many companies have faced technical friction when attempting to deploy voice AI in production environments. Legacy systems often introduce:
- Long wait times in customer support workflows
- Rigid call routing and scripted interactions
- Inefficient outbound engagement systems
These limitations create operational strain while degrading customer experience.
In markets like Singapore, adoption is already accelerating. Industry research shows 62.5% of large businesses in the country are using AI technologies, particularly in marketing analytics, sales automation, and customer engagement.
AI is also becoming common in customer service workflows. Roughly 30% of customer service cases in Singapore are already handled by AI, with that number expected to rise to 41% by 2027 as organizations automate routine interactions.
The shift is pushing enterprises to invest in conversational platforms that can deliver natural, real-time voice interactions across digital channels and phone systems.
How Agora’s conversational AI platform works
Agora’s new conversational AI platform is built to address one of the biggest challenges in voice AI deployment: latency and orchestration complexity.
The company combines three core components into a unified stack:
- Agent studio
A visual no-code environment where enterprises can build, test, and deploy voice AI agents. This allows teams to design conversational workflows without heavy engineering resources.
- Conversational AI engine
The orchestration layer integrates:
- Automatic speech recognition (ASR)
- Large language models (LLMs)
- Text-to-speech (TTS)
Together, these technologies enable real-time conversational workflows that feel natural to users.
- SDRTN® real-time network
Agora’s global software-defined real-time network (SDRTN®) serves as the underlying infrastructure, designed to maintain ultra-low latency and high reliability across regions.
This infrastructure helps ensure:
- Natural conversational flow with sub-second response times
- Reliable voice communication even on congested networks
- Improved accuracy in noisy environments using AI noise suppression and voice locking
According to Founder and CEO Tony Zhao, delivering voice AI at scale requires infrastructure purpose-built for real-time interactions. The goal is to allow enterprises to deploy conversational agents globally without sacrificing customer experience quality.
Where voice AI agents are already delivering results
Agora’s conversational AI agents target two high-impact enterprise use cases: customer service automation and outbound sales engagement.
AI customer service agents
Customer service teams often face rising interaction volumes while being expected to maintain high service quality.
Agora’s AI agents automate routine inquiries such as:
- Appointment reminders
- Shipping updates
- Billing questions
- Technical troubleshooting
Key benefits include:
- 24/7 availability for common inquiries
- Natural dialogue enabled by interruption-aware voice technology
- Operational efficiency through automation and seamless escalation to human agents when necessary
This allows contact center staff to focus on complex issues that require human judgment.
AI sales and marketing agents
Outbound engagement workflows often rely on rigid dialers and scripted calls that feel impersonal. Agora’s AI agents aim to modernize these workflows by enabling real-time conversational outreach.
Common use cases include:
- Debt collection and payment processing
- Outbound lead qualification
- Interactive surveys
- Real-time event polls
These agents can dynamically adapt messaging during conversations and qualify prospects automatically.
For example, market research company FasesBI reported achieving a 10% conversion rate when using Agora’s voice AI agents to invite participants to surveys. The agents handle the initial outreach and explain incentives, allowing the organization to scale data collection without increasing headcount.
What marketers and customer experience leaders should know
The launch highlights several broader trends that marketing and CX teams should pay attention to.
1. Voice AI is moving from pilot projects to production infrastructure
Earlier conversational bots focused primarily on chat. Voice agents introduce new complexity, which means infrastructure like real-time networks and orchestration layers are becoming critical components.
2. Conversational automation is expanding beyond support
Sales, research, and marketing outreach are increasingly automated using AI agents that can handle real-time conversations.
This changes how brands scale customer interactions.
3. AI agents will reshape outbound marketing workflows
Outbound calls, surveys, and lead qualification processes can now run continuously without manual dialing or rigid scripts.
Marketers will need to rethink how they design voice-first engagement strategies.
4. Real-time AI infrastructure will become a competitive advantage
As more companies deploy conversational AI, the difference between a frustrating bot and a helpful assistant will come down to performance, latency, and conversational quality.
Platforms that deliver natural conversations at scale will have an edge.
Conversational AI has long been framed as the future of customer interaction. Agora’s latest platform launch reflects a broader industry shift: the focus is now on deploying AI agents in real production environments, not just experimenting with them.
For marketing, sales, and customer experience teams, voice AI agents could unlock new ways to scale engagement, automate outreach, and handle growing interaction volumes without expanding headcount.
As adoption accelerates, the real question will not be whether companies use conversational AI, but how well their infrastructure supports it.
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