AI outbound calling that reaches every lead in seconds
Most AI calling tools start from an empty contact list. This one starts from the leads you already routed — it dials the moment a lead is delivered, qualifies on the phone under your calling rules, and transfers a live prospect to a human closer on a tracked number.
- First dial
- Seconds after delivery
- Calling hours
- 8am–9pm lead's local time
- Qualified calls
- Transferred to a human
- Billing
- Per minute, from credits
On the call
What the AI voice agent does once someone picks up
The agent runs a scripted job, not an open-ended conversation. It knows which lead it is calling, what that lead asked about, and what it is allowed to do with the answers.
The vocabulary in this category has not settled. An AI phone agent, an AI sales agent, an AI appointment setter and an AI dialer are mechanically the same thing — an automated voice placing an outbound call. What separates one from another is the job the call is doing, and how much the system behind it already knows about the person on the other end.
This one does two jobs. AI lead qualification on a lead that has just been routed and sold, and AI lead follow up on one that has since gone quiet. Both start from a record that already carries the source, the campaign and the buyer, which is why the agent can open by referring to what the person actually enquired about instead of reading a script at a stranger.
- 1
Identifies itself as AI
The opening line states that the caller is an AI assistant and references the inquiry the lead submitted. This is the first thing it says, before any question — it is written into the agent instructions, not left to the model to decide.
- 2
Confirms the inquiry is real
It checks that it is speaking to the right person and that they did submit the inquiry. Wrong number, no recollection, or "I never filled that in" ends the call politely instead of pushing on.
- 3
Asks the qualifying questions
A short set of questions drawn from the vertical the lead came in on. The answers come back as structured fields on the call record, not as a transcript somebody has to read.
- 4
Transfers, or closes out
A qualified, interested lead is handed to a live specialist while still on the phone. Anyone else is dispositioned and, where they asked for it, suppressed from further calls.
- 5
Leaves a voicemail that says it is AI
On voicemail the message identifies itself the same way and asks for a call back. The first dial of the high-intent cadence deliberately leaves none — see the double-tap below.
- 6
Writes the outcome back to the lead
Disposition, recording, structured answers and transfer result attach to the lead and to the buyer who bought it, so the call is visible from the same record as the lead.
Speed to lead
Why the first dial has to happen in seconds, not minutes
A lead is at its most reachable in the moments right after the form is submitted, while the person is still in front of the thing that made them enquire. Every minute after that, the odds fall — they move on, and by the time a human dialler works down to them, three other advertisers have already called.
The dialer is not a batch job that runs on a schedule. A contact is created the instant a lead is delivered to a buyer whose contract has AI dialing turned on, and the first attempt goes out immediately. There is no queue to drain and no rep who has to be free.
The default high-intent cadence then does something a human dialler cannot: a second call about seventy-five seconds after the first, deliberately with no voicemail on the first attempt, because a completed voicemail cancels the repeated-call behaviour that lets a second ring through a silenced phone. After that it backs off — a same-day follow-up, the next morning, then spaced attempts out to two weeks, six attempts in total.
Speed-to-lead research is widely cited in this category and we do not restate other people's numbers here. {{PLACEHOLDER: citable speed-to-lead study — source, year and the specific finding — if the owner wants a statistic in this section}}
Qualification
Qualifying — and disqualifying — before a human spends a minute
The point of the call is not to book everybody. It is to find out, cheaply, which leads are worth a closer's time and to remove the ones that are not.
Structured answers, not transcripts
Qualifying questions are configured per vertical, and the answers land as fields on the call record. A closer picking up a transfer sees what the lead said, not a wall of speech-to-text.
Disqualification is a real outcome
Not interested, wrong person, already covered, outside the buying criteria — each ends the call and dispositions the lead. Nothing is transferred just to keep the transfer rate up.
Dispositions drive what happens next
No answer retries. Busy retries sooner. Voicemail leaves a message and retries. A dead number and a do-not-call request both remove the contact from the cadence outright.
Follow-up on leads that went quiet
A separate call-assist cadence picks up sold leads whose last disposition was non-terminal after a configured number of days, and re-dials them under the same rules and the same caps.
Attempts are capped
A per-day attempt cap applies on top of the cadence — three a day by default — and each attempt has its own permitted window and days of the week.
Priority follows lead quality
Where a quality score exists on the lead, it is snapshotted onto the dialer contact and used to order the queue, so the better leads are dialled first when volume spikes.
Handoff
Handing a live prospect to a human closer
When the agent decides a lead qualifies, it tells the prospect it is connecting them to a specialist and asks the platform for a transfer number. It does not hold its own list of destinations — it asks, and the platform answers with the buyer's tracking number for that call.
That detail is what closes the loop. The transfer lands on a tracked number, so the human leg of the call is a tracked call like any other: it gets a recording, a duration, a disposition and the same attribution the original lead carried. The keyword that produced the lead is still attached to the conversation a closer is actually having.
Transfers run as a conference, a blind transfer or over SIP, depending on how the buyer takes calls. If no transfer number is configured for the call, the agent is told so and closes out cleanly rather than promising a connection that cannot happen.
- The agent asks for a transfer destination mid-call; it never stores one.
- Transfers go to the buyer's tracking number, so the human leg is tracked and attributed.
- Conference, blind and SIP transfer modes are all supported.
- A call with no configured destination is closed out, not left hanging.
One loop, not three products
Route the lead, insert the number, dial it, attribute the call
Call tracking vendors insert numbers but do not route leads. Voice-agent vendors dial but start from an empty contact list. Lead distribution platforms route but do not dial. Lead Router runs all four steps on one record, so the call an agent places carries the same attribution as the lead that produced it — and the outcome lands back on the source that sent it.
Route
A lead arrives and the routing engine picks the buyers and the price.
Insert
The landing page shows a number held for that visitor, carrying their click.
Dial
An AI voice agent calls the routed lead, qualifies, and transfers a live prospect.
Attribute
The call, its recording and its outcome report back to the keyword that started it.
Compliance
TCPA, consent, disclosure, recording and opt-out
Outbound calling is the part of this category where the rules are not optional. Every attempt runs a pre-dial checklist, and a check that fails stops the call — it does not warn and dial anyway.
Consent is required before the first dial
A contact is only created for a lead carrying TCPA consent. A lead without it is never queued, so there is no state in which an unconsented number is waiting in a dialer.
Calling hours in the lead's own timezone
Attempts are confined to 8:00am–9:00pm local to the lead, resolved from the lead's own state rather than your office clock. A cadence can narrow that window further; it cannot widen it.
DNC and opt-out suppression
Every attempt is checked against the suppression list for do-not-call and prior opt-out entries. A match stops the call and the contact is removed from the cadence.
AI disclosure in the first sentence
The agent must identify itself as an AI assistant at the start of every call, and the voicemail message does the same. It is part of the agent instructions, not a setting somebody can quietly turn off.
Opt-out is honoured immediately
If the person asks to stop being called or to be removed, the agent apologises, confirms the removal and records the request — and it is instructed not to argue the point or try to keep them on the line.
Recordings are kept with the call
Each completed call stores its recording against the call record, alongside the transcript-derived outcome, so a disputed call can be reviewed rather than argued about.
Dead numbers leave the list
Numbers that come back dead are suppressed and the contact is removed, so a disconnected line is not redialled for the rest of a cadence.
Per-day attempt caps
A daily attempt cap sits above the cadence, defaulting to three, which keeps day-one contact inside the stricter state limits some jurisdictions impose.
None of this is legal advice, and the platform controls are not a substitute for your own compliance review. Consent capture, certificates and evidence are covered separately under compliance.
Cost
What it costs to run against a staffed dialing floor
A staffed dialing floor costs the same whether leads arrive or not. Seats are paid by the hour, coverage has to be scheduled against a lead flow that does not respect a shift pattern, and the cost of answering the eleventh follow-up attempt is identical to the cost of answering the first.
AI dialing is billed by talk time. Minutes are drawn from your credit balance as calls complete, with no per-seat licence and nothing to pay when the phones are quiet. A lead that never answers costs a few seconds of ring time; a lead that talks for four minutes costs four minutes.
The comparison that matters is not price per minute against wage per hour — it is what happens to the leads a staffed floor never reaches. Attempts five and six on a two-week cadence are the ones that get skipped when a team is busy, and those are exactly the attempts that cost nothing extra to make here.
Current rate: {{PLACEHOLDER: AI dialer per-minute credit rate — take the live figure from /pricing rather than restating it here}}. Concurrency and per-minute rate limits apply per account.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
What buyers evaluating AI outbound calling ask before they run it against real leads.
What is AI outbound calling?
AI outbound calling is software that places outbound phone calls using an AI voice agent instead of a person. The agent dials a contact, speaks with whoever answers, works through a scripted set of qualifying questions, records the outcome, and either transfers the call to a human or ends it. In Lead Router the calls are placed against leads that have already been routed to a buyer, so the agent knows which lead it is calling and what that lead enquired about.
How is this different from a general AI voice agent product?
General AI voice agent tools give you an agent and expect you to supply a contact list, a dialing policy and a compliance process. Here the agent sits on top of lead routing that already exists: the contact is created when a lead is delivered to a buyer whose contract enables dialing, the calling rules come from the cadence attached to that contract, and a qualified transfer goes to that buyer's tracking number so the call stays attributed to the source that produced the lead.
How fast does the first call go out?
The contact is created as soon as the lead is delivered, and the default high-intent cadence places its first attempt immediately, with a second attempt about seventy-five seconds later that deliberately leaves no voicemail. A configurable delay is available if you want a short pause before the first dial.
Does the agent tell people it is AI?
Yes. The agent instructions require it to identify itself as an AI assistant at the very start of the call, before asking anything, and the voicemail message does the same. It is part of the generated agent prompt rather than an optional setting.
What happens when someone asks to stop being called?
The agent apologises, confirms the person will be removed and records the opt-out, and it is explicitly instructed not to try to persuade them to stay on the line. The number is suppressed, so subsequent attempts on that contact stop and later cadences check the same suppression list before dialing.
How are TCPA calling hours enforced?
Every attempt runs a pre-dial checklist before the call is placed. It requires TCPA consent on the lead, confirms the current time falls inside 8:00am to 9:00pm in the lead's own timezone resolved from their state, checks do-not-call and dead-number suppression, and applies the daily attempt cap and the cadence's own window. A failed check defers or cancels the attempt rather than dialing.
Can the AI agent transfer a call to a human?
Yes. When the agent judges the lead qualified it requests a transfer number mid-call and is given the buyer's tracking number for that call, then connects the prospect by conference, blind transfer or SIP depending on how the buyer takes calls. Because the destination is a tracking number, the human leg is recorded and attributed like any other tracked call.
How is AI outbound calling billed?
By the minute, drawn from your credit balance as calls complete, with no per-seat licence. Per-account concurrency and per-minute rate limits apply so a burst of leads cannot run up unbounded spend. The current per-minute rate is shown on the pricing page.
Start calling routed leads
Put an AI voice agent on the leads you already route
Turn AI dialing on for a single contract, point it at one cadence, and watch the first calls land against leads that were delivered seconds earlier.
Every feature is part of the plan. Usage is billed in credits.