Revolutionizing Enterprise Voice with AI: How AVOXI Is Transforming Customer Engagement Through Trust, Automation, and Cloud-Native Communications

Barbara Dondiego, Chief Executive Officer of AVOXI, in conversation with Lynda Stadtmueller, Associate Partner & Program Leader of Cloud, Frost & Sullivan

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The Transformation from Traditional Voice to Intelligent Communications

Lynda Stadtmueller: Barbara, thank you for spending time with us today. I would love to start with the evolution of the voice industry. It is probably not an industry many people describe as exciting, yet you have helped transform both AVOXI and, in many ways, the broader enterprise voice ecosystem. What drove that transformation?

Barbara Dondiego: When I started my career more than twenty years ago, people were already saying voice was dead. That is one of the reasons I originally focused on data services: fiber, internet, MPLS, data centers, and core infrastructure. So I always find it a little funny that I now run a voice company.

My background is in infrastructure, and what struck me early on was how manual everything was. From service delivery to CX, very little was automated. At the same time, I was watching the software industry modernize rapidly, and I kept thinking there had to be a better way to deliver these services.

As cloud adoption accelerated, that opportunity became real. At AVOXI, we have taken what was historically physical voice infrastructure and transformed it into a cloud-based application. Once voice becomes software, you can automate service delivery, simplify management, and create a much better CX. That has really been the foundation of our journey.

Today, three megatrends continue shaping our business.

• The first megatrend is the migration of enterprise applications to the cloud. Organizations have moved their business applications, contact centers, phone systems, and operational platforms into cloud environments. Voice is simply the next critical service making that transition, allowing businesses to manage it alongside every other application.
• The second megatrend is carrier consolidation. Many of our customers have accumulated several telecom providers over the years. One customer told us they were working with 90 carriers globally before they began working with AVOXI. Consolidating those fragmented environments onto a single platform dramatically simplifies operations.
• The third, of course, is artificial intelligence. AI is transforming contact centers and CX, creating entirely new opportunities for voice to become more intelligent, adaptive, and valuable.

Those three trends, cloud migration, carrier consolidation, and AI, have guided the direction of our business and continue shaping where we are headed.

Trust, Compliance, and AI: The New Enterprise Voice Imperatives

Lynda Stadtmueller: Those megatrends reflect both the technology shifts you have embraced and the evolving needs of the enterprise voice landscape. Against that backdrop, what do you see as the biggest challenges facing the industry today?

Barbara Dondiego: One of the biggest challenges is something many people do not immediately think about: getting customers to trust the voice channel itself. Even when customers ask a business to call them, getting them to actually answer the phone has become increasingly difficult. People simply do not know whether the person calling is legitimate.

Another challenge is the regulatory environment. We operate in more than 160 countries, and every market has different rules around telecommunications and compliance. Managing that complexity is essential for global enterprises.

The third challenge is ensuring that the underlying infrastructure is secure and resilient enough to support AI. As organizations increasingly layer AI onto customer interactions, the quality and stability of the voice infrastructure become even more important.

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Trust as a Competitive Advantage in Enterprise Voice

Lynda Stadtmueller: I am fascinated by the concept of “Voice Trust”, because you are no longer talking about simply moving voice traffic from one place to another. You are solving a much bigger customer challenge: helping businesses connect with the people they are trying to reach. This is not about making sure the technology works; it is about ensuring customers have the confidence to answer the call. Tell us more about that.

Barbara Dondiego: Exactly. We have been working on this challenge for several years. It started with our product that we call TrueLocal, which allows businesses to present local phone numbers wherever they are calling in the world. Even more importantly, they can call that number back and immediately reach the business that contacted them. That alone significantly improved answer rates for many of our customers. From there, we expanded the concept.

We introduced Reputation Management to help ensure customers’ phone numbers are not flagged as spam. Then we developed Intelligent Caller ID, which uses AI to determine, in real time, which number is most likely to be trusted and answered by the customer receiving the call. The final element is Branded Caller ID, where calls are independently verified so customers know the caller is genuinely who they claim to be and can even see the reason for the call before answering.

Together, these capabilities form what we call Trusted Outbound. Ultimately, this is about helping our customers build confidence with their own customers and making every interaction more successful.

Leveraging AI for Transformational Growth

Lynda Stadtmueller: You have mentioned AI several times already, and these days it is impossible to have a technology conversation without it. I can see that your approach is very targeted to meet the real needs of organizations running contact centers, reaching out to customers, or engaging other stakeholders. That really changes the dynamics of the industry. How is AI changing both the way AVOXI operates and the way you serve customers?

Barbara Dondiego: We have always taken a very modern approach at AVOXI. Long before AI became part of every business conversation, our philosophy was simple:

Let’s automate everything boring.

If we can automate repetitive, manual work, then our people can spend their time solving complex customer problems instead. That philosophy has guided us for the last eight years, and AI has simply accelerated what we were already doing.

Internally, we also use AI to help our support teams diagnose customer issues more quickly. Rather than manually investigating every incident, AI identifies the most likely causes and can even recommend or automatically execute the appropriate resolution.

Another important application is anomaly detection. We continuously monitor high-volume enterprise phone numbers, comparing expected traffic patterns and call quality against actual performance. If our models detect something unusual, we investigate and often resolve the issue before the customer even realizes there is a problem.

Lynda Stadtmueller: I love the philosophy of “automate everything boring.” It is a great starting point for embracing automation, and what really stands out is how you have built on that foundation by applying AI to make those processes even more intelligent.

Barbara Dondiego: Yes, that’s right. People sometimes ask whether employees are worried about automation. They’re not when it gives them time back to do more of what they find interesting and is a greater contribution to the business and their career development. We automate the repetitive work that nobody enjoys; the manual processes where mistakes happen and where people are not creating much value. Once those tasks disappear, our teams can spend their energy thinking creatively, solving customer problems, and delivering experiences that genuinely differentiate us. That has been one of the biggest reasons AVOXI has been able to successfully support large enterprises around the world.

Leading Through Ownership and Transparency

Lynda Stadtmueller: You have clearly played a pivotal role in driving AVOXI’s evolution in what many would consider a very traditional industry. Tell us about your leadership style. How have you built a culture where innovation does not just get talked about, but happens across the organization? Everyone talks about innovation, but it cannot be legislated; you are clearly doing something to enable it. What is it?

Barbara Dondiego: We always say that good ideas come from everywhere. One of the things we try very hard to do is give people the freedom to improve the business. If someone sees a better way of doing something or believes they can solve a customer problem differently, we want them to take ownership of that idea. But freedom alone is not enough. People also need context. That is why we are very transparent about how the business operates, what matters most to our customers, and how we measure success.

One of the ways we do that is through a weekly, 45-minute company-wide meeting. We have people from different departments presenting, leaders sharing business news, customers talking about their experiences, and discussions about industry developments. The goal is to ensure everyone understands the same priorities. Once people have that shared understanding, they are much better equipped to make good decisions.

That shared understanding also lays the foundation for AVOXI initiatives like Innovation Week, where employees from across the business come together to identify customer challenges and develop practical solutions. It is one of the ways we turn a culture of innovation into repeatable business outcomes.

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Creating a Repeatable Growth Engine for Innovation

Lynda Stadtmueller: Let us talk about Innovation Week. It is a fascinating approach because it turns innovation into something structured, collaborative, and customer focused. How did the idea come about?

Barbara Dondiego: Innovation Week has become one of the most important parts of AVOXI’s culture. It is much more than an innovation exercise. It is how we teach every employee to think like a business leader, solve customer problems, and turn ideas into real products.

We bring together around forty people from across the company: software developers, operations, finance, sales, marketing, and other teams, and ask a simple question:

What customer problems should we solve?

From there, the teams identify several opportunities and spend an intensive week developing real solutions. They are not just building software. They also have to develop the complete business case.

Who would buy it? What customer problem does it solve? How are competitors addressing it today? What is the commercial opportunity?

At the end of the week, every team presents a working concept along with the business plan behind it. The process helps people think beyond their own roles. It teaches them how to solve customer problems, evaluate business opportunities, work across functions, and apply new technologies in practical ways. It also breaks down organizational silos because people collaborate with colleagues they may never normally work alongside.

The results have been remarkable. Today, roughly 90% of Innovation Week projects make their way into production, and several have resulted in patents held by technical and non-technical employees across different functions, demonstrating how the program transforms ideas into tangible business outcomes. More importantly, it helps employees understand how innovation creates value.

Customer Success as the Catalyst for Innovation

Lynda Stadtmueller: Listening to you, it sounds like everything comes back to the customer. Your weekly meetings, Innovation Week, even the way people think about business opportunities, all begin with understanding customer challenges. Tell us more about that.

Barbara Dondiego: Customer success is at the center of everything we do. Every day, our leadership team starts by asking a simple question: How are we going to make our customers successful? That focus shapes our decisions, our priorities, and ultimately the way we innovate.

We spend a tremendous amount of time talking with customers. And that extends beyond our      sales teams to people from across the company. We want to understand what is keeping customers awake at night, what excites them, what challenges they are facing, and where they are struggling. Those conversations become new features, new capabilities, and sometimes entirely new products. It also gives employees a much broader understanding of the business.

It really gets people out of their own space and encourages them to ask, “What can I do to help this customer be more successful?” That is a really energizing mindset for the whole company.

Lynda Stadtmueller: And it completely changes the role voice plays. Instead of simply providing a utility, you are uncovering problems customers did not realize could be solved differently.

Barbara Dondiego: That is right. Many customers assume voice has to be slow or frustrating. I reject that. I believe you can deliver exceptional service, modern software, and a great CX all at the same time. Because we have built AVOXI as a software platform; we move much faster and operate very differently. That is often what surprises our customers the most.

Growth Opportunities Fuelled by Customer Foresight

Lynda Stadtmueller: Looking ahead, where do you see the biggest opportunities for growth, whether that is new customers, new solutions, or entirely new business models?

Barbara Dondiego: The answer is all three. We are continuing to expand across industries where we have already built strong momentum, including hospitality, retail, financial services, logistics, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Our ideal customer is a global enterprise with operations across multiple countries and a significant customer engagement organization. There is still tremendous opportunity to grow within those industries, while expanding into new ones. At the same time, we are building entirely new solutions around challenges our customers are bringing to us.

One of the biggest conversations today revolves around AI and security. Customers are asking questions like:

What happens if AI bots begin flooding our contact centers? How do we prevent deepfake voices from impersonating customers? How should organizations distinguish between human callers and AI agents?

These are becoming real operational challenges. They are shaping much of our current product roadmap as we help customers optimize customer engagement while maintaining security and trust.

We are also expanding our partner ecosystem. Historically, most of our business has been direct, but we are increasingly working alongside AI CX providers and other technology partners to help customers build more intelligent communications infrastructures.

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The Strategic Value of a Partner Ecosystem

Lynda Stadtmueller: Speaking of partnerships, integrating with leading CX and Unified Communications providers is clearly an important part of your strategy. How are you building the right partner ecosystem to support AVOXI’s next phase of growth?

Barbara Dondiego: Our philosophy has always been simple: make it easy for customers to connect voice with the rest of their business. Because we have built AVOXI on a modern, cloud-native architecture, our platform integrates with virtually any contact center, unified communications, CRM, or help desk solution in minutes.

That flexibility allows customers to orchestrate their voice environment the way they want. Whether they are routing calls across multiple platforms or enriching customer interactions with business data, voice becomes the connective layer that brings their technology ecosystem together.

Partnerships are a natural extension of that approach. Alongside our technology integrations, we work closely with referral partners, AI CX providers, and increasingly with global systems integrators. Many of these organizations prefer to let AVOXI manage the voice infrastructure while they focus on broader digital transformation initiatives. That allows customers to benefit directly from our platform while giving partners confidence they are delivering a seamless experience.

Competing Through Speed, Customer Focus, and Execution

Lynda Stadtmueller: One thing that has come through consistently in our conversation is how quickly AVOXI moves and how closely you stay connected to your customers. In such a competitive market, what do you think really enables AVOXI to stay ahead?

Barbara Dondiego: We spend a lot of time talking with customers. That is probably our biggest advantage. Within our software development organization, we measure something we call time to value. Our goal is for customers to begin using new capabilities within eight to ten weeks after development begins.

If we miss that target, we ask why. Was the project too large? Did we misunderstand the problem? Could we have delivered value sooner?

That constant focus on speed keeps us closely aligned with customer needs. We also pay attention to what competitors are doing. Sometimes they introduce interesting capabilities around very specific problems. We learn from those innovations, but our focus has always been broader. Rather than delivering isolated point solutions, we are building a complete cloud voice platform that brings everything together for customers.

The Future of Voice in Customer Engagement

Lynda Stadtmueller: Before we wrap up, I would love to hear your perspective on the future. What excites you most and if you had to make one prediction, what do you think will fundamentally transform enterprise communications over the next few years?

Barbara Dondiego: What excites me most is how AI is changing the economics of customer service.

Historically, voice interactions have been expensive because most of the cost comes from the people answering the calls. That meant organizations reserved voice for only their highest-value interactions. As AI becomes part of customer engagement, that cost changes. You will increasingly see human experts working alongside AI, or AI handling simpler interactions independently, making voice much more accessible.

Organizations will be able to choose the communication channel that best solves the customer’s problem. Sometimes that is text. Sometimes it is chat. But sometimes a seven-minute conversation solves what thirty minutes of typing never could.

I think we are moving toward what I call “speak for service.” People will increasingly interact with businesses simply by talking. Speech will be transcribed, understood, and connected directly into enterprise systems. Whether customers are speaking during a phone call, through a digital assistant, or another interface, voice will become a much more natural way of engaging with businesses.

Closing Reflection: Reimagining Enterprise Voice Through Customer-First Innovation

Enterprise voice is evolving from a traditional communications utility into an intelligent platform that strengthens customer trust, simplifies operations, and enhances every interaction. Throughout the discussion, Barbara Dondiego emphasized that meaningful innovation starts with understanding customer problems, not simply adopting new technologies.

By combining AI, cloud-native architecture, and a culture built around customer success, AVOXI is redefining how enterprises think about voice communications. As organizations embrace AI-driven customer engagement, those that focus on solving real business challenges while continuously innovating will be best positioned to deliver more trusted and valuable customer experiences.

Download this Transformational Growth Leadership Discussion with Barbara Dondiego