Only 22% of SMBs currently use AI voice agents for their business, but nearly one-third (31%) plan to invest in AI-powered voice solutions within the next 12–24 months.
A new nationwide survey from AI voice solutions company Vida reveals that small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are losing thousands of dollars a year on missed customer calls, while early adopters of AI-powered voice agents are seeing increased revenue, improved customer engagement and stronger positioning as industry leaders.
The inaugural SMB AI Voice Agent Adoption & Impact Survey, conducted by Vida, found that SMBs who consider themselves industry leaders are significantly more likely to leverage AI-powered voice agents in their operations, particularly to manage inbound sales inquiries and customer questions. Yet, adoption is still early and uneven across the SMB landscape, largely due to perceived barriers like customer preference for humans and the seeming complexity of implementation.
“SMBs are missing more than calls – they’re missing revenue,” said Lyle Pratt, CEO and Founder of Vida. “Our survey shows that AI voice agents aren’t just a tech trend, they’re a strategic advantage. Businesses using them are seeing real gains, and we expect adoption to rise quickly as more SMBs recognise the opportunity and understand the real-world use cases.”
Key Findings:
State of the Industry
- Only 22% of SMBs currently use AI voice agents for their business, but nearly one-third (31%) plan to invest in AI-powered voice solutions within the next 12–24 months.
ROI of SMBs Using AI Voice Agents
- 97% of SMBs using AI voice agents report an increase in revenue.
- 82% say these tools have improved customer engagement, helping reduce missed calls and capture more sales opportunities.
- 80% report saving five or more hours per week, freeing up time for higher-value tasks.
Clear Leader Advantage
- 69% of SMBs who classify themselves as leaders are already using AI-powered voice agents for customer support or sales, compared to just 22% of those who self-identify as competitive.
- 49% of SMBs who classify themselves as leaders have extensively adopted AI into their day-to-day operations.
The Hidden Cost of Missed Calls
- 42% of SMBs estimate losing more than $500 a month – or $6,000 a year – due to missed customer calls.
- 50% acknowledge broader business impacts from missed communications.
- The majority of SMBs (55%) receive between 10 and 100+ customer calls per day.
AI Voice Agent Use Cases
- The top applications for AI voice agents are inbound sales inquiries (31%) and answering FAQs (20%) – tasks that often go unattended but directly impact revenue.
- Surprisingly, only 7% are using them for customer support escalation, signaling untapped potential to improve service workflows.
Barriers to Adoption
- The top reasons SMBs cite for not adopting AI voice agents include the perception that customers prefer speaking to humans and concerns about the complexity of setup.
- Meanwhile, 61% of SMBs report feeling not at all confident or only somewhat confident in their ability to implement and integrate new technologies.
Despite these hurdles, most SMBs say they’re keeping pace with competitors when it comes to technology, but confidence in implementation tells another story. A majority of respondents described themselves as either “not at all confident” or only “somewhat confident” in their ability to integrate new tools like AI voice agents.
“There’s clearly a gap between perceived tech-savviness and actual readiness to adopt these tools,” added Pratt. “While SMBs recognise the value of emerging technologies, they often lack the resources or expertise to effectively put them into practice. We want to help bridge the gap with solutions that are easy to implement and deliver ROI fast.”
The SMB AI Voice Agent Adoption & Impact Survey was conducted by Vida and Survey Monkey in March 2025, polling 320 SMB owners and managers across various industries. The survey has a margin of error of ±5%, ensuring statistically reliable insights into AI adoption trends, benefits and challenges within the SMB sector.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 represents a robust cloud-based CRM solution with features such as pipeline assessment, relationship analytics, and conversational intelligence. It utilises AI-powered insights to provide actionable intelligence via predictive analytics, lead scoring, sentiment analysis, etc. Currently, Microsoft operates in 190 countries and is made up of more than 220,000 employees worldwide.
HubSpot is an inbound marketing, sales, and customer service software provider, offering robust CRM and automation solutions. Some of its products include Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Operations Hub, Content Hub, Commerce Hub, Marketing Analytics and Dashboard Software. Guided by its inbound methodology, HubSpot enables companies to prioritise innovation and customer success.
Monday.com is a project management software company, offering a cloud-based platform that enables businesses 
Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Freshworks is a global AI-powered business software provider. Its tech stack includes a scalable and comprehensive suite for IT, customer support, sales, and marketing teams, ensuring value for immediate business impact. Its product portfolio includes Customer Service Suite, Freshdesk, Freshchat, Freshcaller, Freshsuccess, and Freshservice. Freshservice for Business Teams has helped several global organisations to enhance their operational efficiency.
Talkdesk offers an innovative AI-powered customer-centric tech stack to its global partners. The company provides generative AI integrations, delivering industry-specific solutions to its customers. Talkdesk CX Cloud and Industry Experience Clouds utilise modern machine learning and language models to enhance contact centre efficiency and client satisfaction.
The company offers comprehensive cloud-based solutions, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Gaming Consoles, Microsoft Advertising, Copilot, among other things, to help organisations offer enhanced CX and ROI. Its generative-AI-powered speech and voice recognition solutions,such as Cortana and Azure Speech Services empowers developers to build intelligent applications.
IBM is a global hybrid cloud and AI-powered 
Uniphore is an enterprise-class, AI-native company that was incubated in 2008. Its enterprise-class multimodal AI and data platform unifies all elements of voice, video, text and data by leveraging Generative AI, Knowledge AI, Emotion AI and workflow automation. Some of its products include U-Self Serve, U-Assist, U-Capture, and U-Analyze. Its Q for Sale is a conversational intelligence software that guides revenue teams with AI-powered insights, offering clarity on how to effectively keep prospects engaged.
Google Cloud accelerates every organisation’s ability to digitally transform its business. Its enterprise-grade solutions leverage modern technology to solve the most criticial business problems 
8×8 offers out-of-the-box contact centre solutions, assisting all-size businesses to efficiently meet customer needs and preferences. It offers custom CRM integrations support and integrates effortlessly with third-party CRMs like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Zendesk, and more. Offering global support in all time zones & development teams in 5 continents, its patented geo-routing solution ensures consistent voice quality.
Sprinklr is a comprehensive enterprise software company for all customer-focused functions. With advanced AI, Sprinklr’s unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM) platform lets organisations offer human experiences to every customer, every time, across any modern channel.
Upland offers a comprehensive suite of contact centre and customer service solutions with products including InGenius, Panviva, Rant & Rave, and RightAnswers. InGenius enables organisations to connect their existing phone system with CRM, further enhancing agent productivity. Panviva provides compliant and omnichannel capabilities for highly regulated industries. Whereas, Rant & Rave, and RightAnswers are its AI-powered solutions, 
Zoho Social, a part of Zoho’s suite of 50+ products, is a comprehensive social media management platform for businesses and agencies. The Zoho Social dashboard includes a robust set of features, such as Publishing Calendar, Bulk Scheduler, and Approval Management to offer businesses all the essential social media publishing tools. Its monitoring tools help enterprises track and respond to relevant social conversations.
Hootsuite, headquartered in Vancouver, is a social media management platform that streamlines the process of managing multiple social media accounts. Some of its core offerings include social media content planning and publishing, audience engagement tools, analytics and social advertising. Its easy-to-integrate capabilities help marketing teams to schedule and publish social media posts efficiently.
Brandwatch enables businesses to build and scale the optimal strategy for their clients with intuitive, use-case-focused tools that are easy and quick to master. Bringing together consumer intelligence and social media management, the company helps its users react to the trends that matter, collaborate on data-driven content, shield the brand from threats and manage all the social media channels at scale.
Zoho Corporation offers innovative and tailored software to help leaders grow their business. Zoho’s 55+ products aid sales and marketing, support and collaboration, finance, and recruitment requirements. Its customer analytics capabilities come with a conversational feature, Ask Zia. It enables users to ask questions and get insights in the form of reports and widgets in real-time.
Salesforce-owned Tableau is an AI-powered analytics and business intelligence platform, offering the breadth and depth of capabilities that serve the requirements of global enterprises in a seamless, integrated experience. Marketers can utilise generative AI models, AI-powered predictions, natural language querying, and recommendationsons.
Fullstory is a behavioural data platform, helping C-suite leaders make informed decisions by injecting digital behavioural data into its analytics stack. Its patented technology uncovers the power of quality behavioural data at scale, transforming every digital visit into actionable insights. Enterprises can increase funnel conversion and identify their highest-value customers effortlessly.
Contentsquare is a cloud-based digital experience analytics platform, helping brands track billions of digital interactions, and turn those digital 
Amplitude is a product analytics platform, enabling businesses to track visitors with the help of collaborative analytics. The platform leverages the capabilities of 
Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of applications, capabilities, and services specifically designed to address day-to-day requirement for personalised customer experiences at scale. Its platform helps play an essential role in managing different digital content or assets to improve customer happiness. Its easy-to-optimise content gives users appropriate marketing streams, ensuring product awareness.
Started in 2005 in a Sweden-based small town, Norrköping, Voyado offers a customer experience cloud platform that includes a customer loyalty management system. This platform helps businesses design and implement customer loyalty programs, track customer 
TapMango provides a comprehensive, customisable, flexible and feature-rich customer loyalty program. The loyalty tools include an integrated suite of customised consumer-facing technology, easy-to-use merchant tools, and automation algorithms, all aimed at enhancing customer experience. Adaptable to any industry, TapMango’s platform helps merchants compete with larger chains, converting customer one-time purchases into profitable spending habits.
Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of applications, capabilities, and services specifically designed to address day-to-day requirements for personalised customer experiences at scale. Its innovative platform has played an essential role in managing different digital content or assets, to improve customer happiness or satisfaction. Some of its products include Adobe Gen Studio, Experience Manager Sites, Real-time CDP, and Marketo Engage.
