How Phonely builds authentic voice AI agents with Twilio

Challenge

Phonely came to Twilio to create a reliable, low-latency foundation for real-time, human-like voice AI. By leveraging Twilio’s infrastructure, they aim to make natural, always-on AI conversations easy to deploy for businesses of all sizes.

Solution

Using Twilio’s programmable voice, Phonely builds AI voice agents that deliver human-like conversations with ultra-low latency and near-perfect accuracy. Their no-code platform enables anyone to deploy, integrate, and scale voice AI quickly, effectively, and with purpose.

Every business knows the sound of missed opportunity. The phone that rings without an answer, the customer who never calls back, the appointment that slips away. The silence can add up to missed revenue or even threaten the future of the company.

Phonely was founded to help businesses turn those missed opportunities into moments of customer connection.

But first, the promising Y Combinator startup needed to fix a few problems. High churn, repetitive work, and staffing shortages make it nearly impossible for businesses to keep up with every call. Meanwhile, traditional automation tools—with their rigid scripts and robotic voices—make potential customers cringe quicker than a kid who mistakenly called their teacher “Mom” during class.

And the small business owners that could benefit the most from an AI agent can’t even afford to hire coders or learn to DIY Voice AI on their own dime.

Phonely chose the best option for developing a breakthrough solution: Partner up. 

Making convincing, cringe-free voice agents accessible to everyone takes more than great AI models; it takes trusted communications infrastructure built for scale. That’s why Phonely turned to Twilio.

Together, they’re redefining what’s possible with voice AI: low-latency, ultra-accurate conversations that don’t just direct calls, they build relationships.

Making robots that talk like people

The idea for Phonely started in a small Wisconsin town far from Silicon Valley.

Founder and CEO Will Bodewes recalls it was his father’s experience running a veterinary clinic that sparked Phonely’s initial flame. “He always had the problem of not being able to staff his clinic,” Bodewes says. “There just weren’t enough people around to answer the phone.”

The challenge of staffing and answering phones reliably isn’t unique to one clinic, one town, or even one industry. It’s a global issue. Small businesses lose customers when calls go unanswered, and large contact centers experience 80–100% annual turnover. Meanwhile, customers expect instant service 24/7.

As Bodewes pursued his PhD in AI, he began exploring how machine learning could automate some of the most repetitive tasks and give people more of their of their precious time back. What emerged from this path was a vision for a new kind of voice AI that could talk, reason, and respond naturally and could be built by any customer.

To achieve this lofty goal, Phonely needed ultra-low latency, global reliability, and real-time voice streaming. In other words, they needed the communications infrastructure that only Twilio could provide.

Finding friends in low-latency places

Building voice AI that can talk like a human is one challenge. Making it sound like one consistently across millions of calls is another entirely.

For Phonely, the key was finding a partner that could deliver reliable real-time voice performance with near-zero latency. Twilio’s programmable communications platform provided exactly that foundation.

Phonely built its system on Twilio’s Programmable Voice, SIP trunking, and Programmable Messaging APIs, allowing AI agents to handle phone calls, SMS conversations, and integrations all within one ecosystem. 

"Choosing a provider that we could trust and we knew had fought through the battles of getting everything up and running reliably and compliantly was super important for us," says Bodewes.

Twilio also made integration simple into their system simple. Getting started with twilio is a few API calls away, and with their comprehensive product suite, they have everything you need to build your stack on top of them. When it’s time to process payments securely, TwilioPay makes compliance effortless.

With Twilio’s infrastructure handling communications, Phonely’s team could focus on what they do best—perfecting the art of the conversation.

Enterprise-grade reliability, startup-level speed

What’s the sound of capturing every opportunity? Something like this:

Customers across industries—from healthcare providers booking thousands of daily appointments to insurance agencies qualifying inbound leads—are using Phonely to keep operations running smoothly, day and night.

Here’s what that looks like in numbers:

• 99.2% voice recognition accuracy

• 70% reduction in latency and response time

• Phonely outperforms 80% of call center agents across millions of calls

Phonely’s voice agents are so human-like that most callers can’t tell they’re speaking to AI. That realism comes from a combination of cutting-edge language models, real-time inference, and an intense QA process.

Teams continuously test, train, and optimize their agents based on live calls. Customers provide feedback through the platform, and QA specialists listen to and analyze every interaction before scaling deployments.

“If we know our customer’s metrics, the goal is to A/B test until we outperform their best human agent,” says Bodewes.

Behind every seamless call is Twilio’s voice infrastructure—keeping connections stable, compliant, and crystal clear. The partnership enables Phonely to deliver enterprise-grade reliability with startup-level speed.

For Phonely’s customers, that means real results: shorter wait times, higher conversion rates, and satisfied callers.

Making voice AI accessible to all

Phonely’s impact extends far beyond efficiency. By taking on repetitive, high-churn tasks, the company’s AI agents free up people to do more creative and meaningful work.

“Call center churn rates can reach 100% a year,” says Bodewes. “These are repetitive jobs that burn people out. Our hope is that AI will help people move into roles that are more fulfilling, more dynamic, and more exciting.”

That philosophy drives Phonely’s design ethos, which is that anyone—from a solo business owner to a global enterprise—can build and customize voice agents without coding or prompt engineering.

“We believe businesses shouldn’t have to learn how to code, prompt engineer, run simulation tests, or build integrations,” Bodewes explains. “That’s our responsibility. All they need to know is that when they come to us, their phones will be answered in the way they want. We should be the one-stop AI agent shop.”

For many customers, Phonely is the first time AI feels accessible, not intimidating. It’s technology that truly feels like magic. But there are no tricks. Just a really smart, accessible, human-sounding voice AI.

“You don’t need to be a developer to build a voice agent. If we have one hill we’re standing on, that’s it,” Bodewes says.

Phonely flips the script for real-time voice AI

The partnership between Phonely and Twilio proves that voice AI doesn’t have to equate to impersonal service. It can actually make conversations feel more human than ever.

With Twilio’s communications platform powering every call, Phonely built a system where anyone can create voice agents that listen, think, and respond like real people. Whether it’s scheduling an appointment, answering a complex question, or closing a sale, Phonely’s AI agents deliver warmth and precision at scale.

"Most of our lives we just take from the world. Building Phonely is my way of putting something back to the world,” Bodewes says. 

From a small-town vet clinic to the global enterprise, Phonely brings authenticity to voice AI, at scale.