Setting up an AI voice agent to handle your business calls actually costs about five euro a month

Your business missed a call this week.

It went to voicemail. The person didn't leave a message. You'll never know who it was.

The frustrating part is that this is a solved problem. An AI voice agent can answer that call, ask what the person needs, and book a discovery call before you've finished your current meeting. The technology exists. The cost is not what you think.

I set one up using 11Labs. The free tier gives you 15 minutes of conversation time a month, which is enough to test whether this works for your business. To use it commercially, you move to the Starter plan at $5 a month. That's where the commercial licence kicks in.

You go to 11Labs, create an account, and open the Agents section. There are templates for most business types. Pick the closest one. Inside there's a workflow builder where you write the agent's instructions. Tell it what your business does, what a good enquiry looks like, and what you want it to do when one comes in. Ten minutes on those instructions makes a real difference to the quality of every conversation.

Then you choose a voice.

To put the agent on an actual phone number, you need Twilio. It's a separate service that handles the telephony side. An Irish number costs about $1 a month, plus a small charge per minute. You add your Twilio credentials inside 11Labs, assign the agent to the number, and they connect automatically. No code required.

If you'd rather use WhatsApp, 11Labs supports that too, through your WhatsApp Business account. Meta needs to verify your business first, so that path has a few more steps, but it's well documented and worth doing if your clients already use WhatsApp.

The full setup takes an afternoon.

Call your own number first to test it. You'll know immediately if the instructions need tightening.