The voice AI RFP checklist: 30 questions to ask before you sign

Every voice AI vendor demo sounds impressive. A curated script, a friendly voice, a smooth handoff. The differences that matter show up later: on your actual customer calls, in a support ticket at 2am, and in the contract clause nobody read closely. This checklist is built to surface those differences before you sign, not after.

Use it as a scoring sheet across every vendor you evaluate, including us. A vendor that answers all 30 questions specifically is more trustworthy than one that answers all 30 questions impressively.

Accuracy and language questions

1. Can I test on 20 real calls from my own customer base, not a curated demo?
2. What is the transcription accuracy on accented or regional speech, with evidence, not a headline number?
3. Which languages are production-grade versus beta?
4. Does it handle code-switching, for example Hindi-English or Tamil-English, mid-sentence?
5. What happens when the agent does not understand a caller, does it guess or does it ask again?

A vendor that answers with a benchmark score and no offer to test on your own calls is showing you their best case, not your case. For the full reasoning on why this matters, see latency versus accuracy in voice AI.

Latency and reliability questions

6. What is the end-to-end response latency, measured from where, on what infrastructure?
7. Is there local or regional hosting for my market, or does every call route through a distant data centre?
8. What is uptime over the last 12 months, with the incident history, not just a promised SLA?
9. What happens during a provider outage, does the call drop or fail over?
10. How does the agent handle interruptions and talking over it?

Ask for the incident history specifically. A vendor with a clean promise and no history to show is untested at your scale. See how fast an AI voice agent should respond for the benchmark to hold vendors to.

Integration and data questions

11. Which CRMs and calendars have a native integration versus a custom build?
12. What is the typical time to go live with my specific stack?
13. Can I export my call data and transcripts at any time, in a usable format?
14. Where is my data stored, and does it leave the country?
15. What happens to my data and configuration if I cancel?

Question 15 catches more vendor lock-in than any other. A platform that cannot describe your data exit path clearly does not want you to leave easily.

Security and compliance questions

16. What certifications does the platform hold, and can I see the actual certificate, not a badge on the website?
17. How is call recording consent handled in each jurisdiction I operate in?
18. Who has access to my call recordings and transcripts internally at the vendor?
19. Is there a data processing agreement available, and has legal reviewed it?
20. What is the breach notification process and timeline?

For the compliance landscape across markets, not just India, see voice AI compliance for global teams.

Pricing and contract questions

21. Is pricing per minute, per seat, or a hybrid, and what triggers each?
22. Are there setup fees, minimums, or platform fees beyond the usage rate?
23. What is the actual contract length, and what is the true cost of exiting early?
24. Does the price change at volume, and where are the breakpoints?
25. Who owns the phone numbers, me or the vendor, if I leave?

Question 25 is easy to overlook and expensive later. Losing your business number in a vendor switch is a real, avoidable cost.

Support and iteration questions

26. Who fixes the script when it is not converting, me or the vendor, and at what cost?
27. What does onboarding actually include beyond the sales call?
28. How often can I change the script, and does that require a ticket or is it self-serve?
29. What is the average response time on a support ticket, with evidence?
30. Can I speak to a reference customer in my industry, not a curated case study?

How to run the evaluation

Score every vendor against all 30 questions on the same sheet, not from memory after separate calls. Weight accuracy, data ownership, and support responsiveness above price and feature lists; those three predict whether the deployment survives contact with your real customers. Then run a paid pilot before a full contract, using the framework in running a 30-day voice AI pilot.

Frequently asked questions

How many vendors should I evaluate?

Three is usually enough to see real variation without drowning in demos. More than five and the evaluation itself becomes a project that never closes.

Should price or accuracy carry more weight?

Accuracy, by a wide margin. A cheap agent that mishears customers costs more in lost bookings and damaged trust than the price difference ever saves.

What is the biggest red flag in a vendor answer?

Vague specificity: a benchmark number with no offer to test on your own calls, or a security answer that names a framework with no certificate to show.

Is a formal RFP necessary for a small deployment?

Not a full document, but running through this checklist, even informally on a call, catches the same issues a formal RFP would.

Happy to answer all 30 on a call. Book time on the AI voice agent demo, or run the numbers first with the ROI calculator.