In this episode, Marc Bernstein sits down with Will Bodewes, CEO of Phonely. This one's about architecture, not aspiration. Will breaks down the anatomy of a voice agent, from speech generation and LLM orchestration to real-time prompting and user control. You'll hear why hallucinations aren't what you think, how “agent guidelines” shape human-like behavior, and why flow-based design is the new gold standard for AI in the contact center.

Plus, how Phonely customers go live in 30 days, what really drives conversion, and why the future of AI isn’t about doing everything—it’s about doing the right things, repeatedly, without fail.

Whether you're building an AI roadmap or just tired of buzzwords, this one’s for you.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction

01:03 Setting Up LLMs

05:10 Prompts & Giving Users Control

06:47 Setting Up On Phonely

09:50 Agent Guidelines

14:02 First Day, Month, and Year Using Phonely

18:40 AI Agent Use Cases & Limitations

24:13 Customers' Comfort & Learnings

32:10 AI in 3 Years