When you walk into a favorite store, a great sales associate doesn’t need a database to know how to help you. They read your body language, your expression, your presence, and adjust their approach before you even speak. That moment, when someone understands you without needing your history, is what empathy looks like.
For too long, the voice channel has been missing that moment.
Over the past decade, contact centers have invested heavily in automation and AI. We’ve made CX faster, more measurable, more scalable. But faster isn’t always better, and in our race toward efficiency, empathy has fallen by the wayside.
That’s why I’m so excited to announce the launch of VoxEQ’s voice-based Customer Experience (CX) suite, a breakthrough that uses voice bio-signals to uncover real-time caller understanding, helping inbound call centers lead with empathy, relevance, and trust from the very first hello.
We’ve built this suite to do something that hasn’t been possible before: to make empathetic, personalization for all inbound callers, regardless of whether it’s their first time calling in.
The CX suite introduces two integrated solutions designed to put the customer back to the forefront of every voice interaction.
Persona equips live agents and routing systems with instant demographic context derived from the caller’s voice. This enables organizations to dynamically route callers to the best-fit agent or script and for agents to adapt greetings, adjust communication styles, and personalize offers as soon as the conversation begins. The result is faster rapport, higher trust, and more fluid interactions that feel personal rather than procedural. Persona is especially powerful for inbound centers that handle large volumes of first-time or anonymous callers, giving agents and systems meaningful context before any data is exchanged.
Prompt extends this same caller understanding to automated systems. Traditional voice AI often depends on fixed scripts and uniform tones. Prompt enables dynamic adaptation, guiding automated systems to refine phrasing, pacing, and responses based on each caller’s vocal bio-signals. This creates automated conversations between people and voice AI that feel natural, contextually relevant, and emotionally in tune.
The use cases are wide-ranging and immediate. In sales and service environments, Persona helps route callers to human agents whose strengths match the caller’s profile, creating faster trust and higher conversion rates. In industries like travel or healthcare, the system can help tailor offers or support approaches based on demographic context, creating more comfort and connection in sensitive situations. And for virtual agents, Prompt makes it possible to modulate voice and language in real time, transforming what used to be a robotic exchange into something that feels genuinely personal.
In our announcement, we invited Cliff Martin, Executive Director of CX Transformation at TTEC Digital, to join us because he brings such a valuable perspective on the empathy gap and why it exists today. One of my favorite quotes from him is this:
“Personalization has become mechanical. It’s based on what people did, not who they are or how they’re feeling in the moment. VoxEQ brings the human layer back by listening to the voice, not just the words. That’s what makes empathy scalable.”
That really captures why we built this. We wanted to bring back the human layer that technology often leaves out, and to do it in a way that works for both agents and voice AI systems. When you can route a caller more intuitively, or adapt a response more thoughtfully, every interaction gets a little closer to feeling human again.
That’s the future we’re building toward: technology that not only responds intelligently, but also helps cultivate the waning human connection we have with our customers.
Because empathy isn’t just a feeling. It’s an action. And it starts with listening differently.
If you’d like to see how this works in practice, I’d love for you to watch our full conversation. Cliff, Karlee, our Head of GTM, and I talked about the empathy gap, how brands can operationalize understanding, and what this shift means for the future of CX.
Watch the full conversation here.