Artificial intelligence is gradually transforming call management. At absys, this evolution stems from a simple belief: technology should help businesses remain accessible without compromising the quality of their customer relationships.

It was with this in mind that babol, the voice assistant designed by the absys teams, was created. Its primary mission is to handle simple calls, collect information from the caller, and forward a report to the relevant company.

To develop this solution, absys chose an architecture based on several specialized French technologies. Voxygen handles the text-to-speech functionality. Its technology transforms the responses generated by babol into a clear, natural-sounding voice.

Aurélie Mathiot, Marketing & Communications Manager at absys, discusses the creation of babol, the technical choices made for the project, and the collaboration with the Voxygen teams.

Published on September 9. 2026

🎤 Portrait

Aurélie Mathiot

Marketing & Communications Manager at absys

Aurélie Mathiot has been with absys for over 17 years and has held several positions within the company. Her career path has given her a practical understanding of customer service roles, business expectations, and how the teams responsible for handling customer calls operate.

She oversees matters related to marketing, communications, absys’s visibility, and the customer experience. She also helps present babol and explain its technical aspects to businesses and their future users.

👋 Presentation

1. Can you tell us a little about absys?

absys has been helping companies manage their customer relationships since 1994. The company got its start in medical telesecretarial services. It handled calls for medical practices and managed the schedules of healthcare professionals.

Over the years, needs have changed. Businesses faced the same challenges as medical practices. Calls went unanswered. Teams were regularly interrupted. Some urgent requests didn’t reach the right person quickly enough. absys has therefore expanded its services to many industries.

Today, we support more than 700 clients across more than 80 industries. These range from tradespeople who cannot answer the phone while working at a client’s site to large corporations that must ensure 24/7 service continuity. Our work involves more than just answering the phone.

We assess inquiries, route calls, relay information, and follow the procedures defined with each client. Our mission has remained the same since the beginning: to provide the right answer at the right time.

🤖 The Babol Project 

2. What need led you to design babol?

Companies want to remain reachable without having to assign a person to every call. However, not all inquiries require the same level of attention.

Some calls require active listening, detailed knowledge of the case, or decision-making. These must remain in the hands of trained professionals. Other calls simply involve collecting a name, a phone number, and the reason for the call. So we developed a solution capable of handling these simple requests.

babol meets this need. It answers the phone, interacts with the caller, collects the necessary information, and sends a summary via email. It does not replace human teams.

It operates within a specific scope and allows companies to remain available in situations where they would previously have missed the call. It also allows our account managers to devote their time to interactions that truly require their expertise.

3. Why did you launch a deliberately simple first version?

We didn’t want to design a completely fixed product before testing it in real-world scenarios. We had a vision for the project, but we knew that users would provide us with insights we couldn’t anticipate on our own. So we decided to start with a clear objective: taking messages.

This initial version allows us to observe callers’ behaviors, misunderstandings, business expectations, and situations that require adjustments. The feedback then helps us define the next features.

This approach aligns with how we work. We start with a specific need. We test. We listen. Then we refine the service.

⚙️ The Technology Strategy

4. Why was a brick-based architecture chosen?

We could have chosen a single platform capable of handling the entire conversational journey. Instead, we opted to select a specialist for each function.

Gladia handles speech-to-text conversion. Mistral helps with understanding conversations and generating content. Voxygen converts responses into speech.

This architecture gives us flexibility. Each component can evolve at its own pace. Our teams can work on one part of the system without having to rebuild the whole thing. We also retain greater independence in our technical choices.

This approach requires more integration work. In return, it gives us greater control over the solution and its future direction.

5. Why was technological sovereignty a factor in your decision? 

As is often the case with this type of project, integration went beyond simply connecting an API. We had to develop several technical adaptations to address the constraints of our environment, particularly regarding telephony, where audio standards differ from the models typically used to train voice AI systems. The work therefore progressed gradually between our respective teams, with regular exchanges among engineers to refine the solutions on both sides.

Beyond the purely technical aspects, we also appreciate the quality of our interactions with Voxygen’s support team. Discussions take place directly between engineers and technicians, each with their own roadmap and constraints. This close collaboration facilitates communication and allows us to jointly develop solutions as needs arise.

✅ Choosing Voxygen

6. What were your criteria for text-to-speech?

The voice could not be viewed as merely a technical function. On the phone, the caller cannot see facial expressions or body language. The entire interaction relies on sound, rhythm, intonation, and the clarity of the sentences. We were therefore looking for a voice that was fluid, intelligible, and pleasant to listen to.

Latency was also a major factor. A response that arrives too late creates silences and disrupts the flow of the conversation. The technology had to generate the voice quickly enough to maintain a coherent exchange.

We also evaluated the solution’s reliability, its ability to function in a telephone environment, and the scalability options offered by the vendor.

Finally, we wanted to work with a responsive team. babol was going to evolve. We needed a partner capable of collaborating with our developers and addressing the challenges encountered in the field.

7. Why did Voxygen stand out in your study?  

Voxygen met both our technical requirements and our desire to work with a specialized French provider.

The quality of the voices offered was, of course, a key factor in our decision. We listened to several female and male voices before selecting the one that best suited the first version of babol.

Voxygen also offered another significant advantage: the ability to communicate directly with teams familiar with our technical environment.

We weren’t just looking for access to a technology. We wanted to be able to discuss the challenges we faced, track changes, and share babol’s future needs.

The quality of our interactions, the responsiveness of their support team, and the ability of their technicians and engineers to communicate directly with our developers all reinforced our decision.

🗣️ The Voice at the Heart of the Experience

8. What do you expect from a synthetic voice?

A good synthetic voice must, first and foremost, ensure immediate comprehension.

The caller should not have to make any special effort to understand a sentence. They should be able to follow the conversation and respond naturally to the questions asked.

The voice must also remain pleasant, even when the conversation lasts several minutes. We therefore seek fluidity, a consistent rhythm, and a delivery that avoids sounding too mechanical.

The goal is not to make it seem at all costs that a person is responding. babol is presented as a conversational artificial intelligence. However, the fact that the call is automated should not result in an experience that feels cold or difficult to follow.

9. Why is this topic so important to absys?

The voice has been at the heart of our business for over thirty years. At one time, some callers even recognized what they called “the Absys voice.” They identified a particular way of responding, a tone, and a welcoming manner.

This culture still lives on in the training of our customer service representatives. Our tagline, “smile included,” captures this idea. You can’t see a smile over the phone, but you can hear it. It influences the tone, the willingness to help, and the way we assist the caller.

We don’t expect artificial intelligence to replicate all the interpersonal skills of a human professional. Nevertheless, we want its voice to meet the standard of hospitality expected from an absys solution.

10.  In the long run, will companies be able to choose their own voice?

This is one of the planned developments. The first version of Babol features a voice selected by our teams. It aligns with the product’s current scope.

Future versions are expected to offer greater customization. The ability to choose from multiple voices could be part of this evolution.

A company’s expectations aren’t necessarily the same across all business activities. A medical practice, a tradesperson, or a company providing technical support doesn’t receive the same types of calls.

The choice of voice could therefore take into account the context, the company’s identity, and the type of relationship it has with its callers.

🔗 The Integration of Voxygen 

11. How did the integration into your technical environment go?

Integration wasn’t simply a matter of connecting a technical interface.

A phone conversation involves several technologies that must work together in real time. Speech must be captured, transcribed into text, understood, and then converted into a voice response.

The telephone environment also presents specific audio challenges. Sound quality is not always comparable to that of a recording made under ideal conditions.

Our teams therefore made several adjustments. They worked with Voxygen on issues related to integration, model updates, and certain authentication mechanisms.

A few incidents required adjustments during the project. The Voxygen teams remained accessible and responsive. Issues were resolved directly between the development teams. The platform is now stable, and service interruptions remain rare.

12. What do you appreciate most about this collaboration? 

The close collaboration between our teams makes a real difference. Our developers can communicate directly with Voxygen’s technical teams, which makes it easier to make adjustments and speeds up the resolution of issues.

We also appreciate their responsiveness and their commitment to evolving their technology based on customer feedback. This approach aligns with our own: advancing babol by drawing on real-world use cases. This shared vision strengthens the quality of our partnership.

📈 Results and Profits

13. Does Voxygen's voice meet babol's expectations? 

Yes. The voice we selected fulfills the expected role in this first version. It clearly conveys responses and guides the caller throughout the process. It remains pleasant to listen to and integrates well with the other components of the solution.

We’re receiving more feedback on babol’s features than on the voice itself. For example, users tell us about a question they’d like to add, a flow they’d like to customize, or a caller behavior that babol needs to better understand.

The fact that the voice elicits few comments shows that it blends naturally into the interaction. It fulfills its purpose without distracting the caller.

14. What does this partnership offer you beyond the technology?  

Voxygen brings us highly specialized expertise in speech synthesis. For our part, we bring more than thirty years of experience in call management and designing customer journeys tailored to businesses.

The combination of these two areas of expertise fuels the project. Our teams can share real-world scenarios they’ve encountered on the phone. The Voxygen teams can explain the capabilities of their technology and the conditions needed to achieve the best results.

This complementary relationship helps us make more informed decisions for babol. It also allows Voxygen to better understand certain use cases related to outsourced customer service and the challenges faced by a voice assistant when dealing with a wide variety of callers.

🔜 Next Steps 

15. How will babol evolve? 

Taking messages is the first step. Next, we want to offer more customization. Companies will be able to define their greeting, instructions, and the information that babol should collect in greater detail.

We’re also working on a more nuanced understanding of context. Eventually, babol should be able to follow more advanced workflows, ask questions tailored to the situation, and access a company-specific database.

Managing business scenarios, voice selection, and opening up to new use cases are among the planned features. The timeline will depend on user feedback, development priorities, and the maturity of the various integrated technologies.

16. What role will Voxygen play in this development? 

Voice will remain a central component of the experience. As babol takes on more advanced workflows, it will need to provide a wider variety of responses, account for different contexts, and adapt to each company’s specific expectations.

The capabilities offered by Voxygen can support this progression, particularly in terms of voice selection, customization, and the ability to accommodate a wider range of use cases.

🤝 A project built on complementary areas of expertise

babol illustrates how absys approaches artificial intelligence: by developing a useful solution designed to meet the concrete needs of businesses.

To achieve this, absys draws on its expertise in customer relations and on specialized partners such as Voxygen, whose technology gives Babol a voice and supports its evolution.

Beyond technical integration, this partnership is based on a shared vision: advancing solutions through real-world use cases, listening to users, and close collaboration between teams. This complementary expertise enables us to offer a smoother and more natural phone experience.