Updated September 5, 2026 · by the MOST team
| Answering calls (inbound) | Placing calls (outbound) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The agent picks up your business line | The agent dials out to people |
| Regulation | Light — it’s your own phone | Heavy — robocall/consent rules, disclosure, do-not-call |
| Risk | Low | High if you skip consent |
| Best first move | Have AI answer + text back missed calls | Only call people who opted in; disclose it’s an assistant |
For almost every small business, the high-value, low-risk move is answering — never miss a call again — plus texting back the ones you can't take. Outbound AI dialing is powerful but a compliance project; start with inbound.
The agent needs a real phone number wired for voice. Carrier platforms (Telnyx, Twilio) sell them; all-in-one platforms provision one for you.
A voice agent needs speech-to-text, an LLM, and text-to-speech stitched together with low latency so it can listen and speak naturally on a live call. This is the hard part to build yourself.
Inbound: point the number’s incoming-call webhook at the agent so it answers. Outbound: give the agent a place-call tool it can invoke with a number and a goal.
Outbound AI calling is more regulated than answering. Robocall and consent rules apply, disclosure is often required, and honoring do-not-call is mandatory. Answering your own inbound calls carries far less regulatory weight than dialing out.
Give the agent a way to transfer to a human and a graceful fallback if it can’t understand the caller. A voice agent that traps callers in a loop is worse than voicemail.
If you're building an agent and want to own the voice stack, wire a telephony API. If you want an AI answering your business phone this week — and texting back the calls it can't take — MOST is the best option: the number, the voice agent, and the texting follow-up come together for $49/month, no runtime to build and no carrier plumbing.
MOST answers your business line with an AI voice agent and texts back every missed call — the number, the voice, and the follow-up in one, live in as fast as 24 hours.
Give it a voice-capable phone number, a real-time voice runtime (speech-to-text + LLM + text-to-speech at low latency), and a tool to place or answer calls. Developers build this on a telephony API like Telnyx or Twilio; no-code users use a platform such as MOST that answers their business line with a built-in voice agent — no runtime to assemble.
No. A language model has no voice or telephony. It’s connected to a voice runtime and a calling tool: the model decides what to say, speech synthesis turns it into audio, and the telephony layer carries the call. The model never dials — your voice + telephony stack does.
With rules. Outbound AI voice calling is subject to robocall and consent regulations (and disclosure requirements in many places); you must have a lawful basis to call and honor opt-outs and do-not-call lists. Answering your own inbound calls with an AI is far less regulated — you’re picking up your own phone, not dialing strangers.
An AI business line. MOST answers your business number with a built-in voice agent and also texts back missed calls and follows up by SMS — the number, the voice runtime, and the compliance are handled, so there’s nothing to build.
No — one business number can do both voice and SMS. Texting requires A2P 10DLC registration; voice does not. A platform that does both gives your agent one number that answers calls and sends texts.