Introduction
The telephone accessibility of your company is crucial for customer satisfaction and business success. Many companies therefore rely on traditional hotline services or external telephone secretariats – such as providers like Starbüro or ebuero, where human staff answer calls on behalf of the company. At the same time, modern solutions like the smao AI telephone assistant open up new possibilities: With artificial intelligence, calls can be automatically answered and common concerns can be handled immediately.
But which option is better for your company – the traditional hotline service vs. AI telephone assistant? In this article, we compare both approaches objectively based on important criteria: Price, scalability, data protection (including EU hosting), response time, 24/7 availability, language comprehension, service quality, and transfer competence. You will learn the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches and how they can relieve your team. In the end, we will give a recommendation on what is more future-proof and fits your needs better.
What is a traditional hotline service?
A traditional hotline or telephone service is an external office service that answers calls for your company. Ideally, callers do not realize that they are not speaking directly with your office – professional service providers like Starbüro answer using your company name, friendly and competent. Typically, the staff notes the request or the call-back request and forwards the information to you via email or SMS. Some services also offer to forward calls according to your specifications – for example, defined VIP callers can be directly connected to you. Such a telephone service can serve as a virtual secretary to ensure no call goes unanswered and you can work undisturbed.
Advantages of a hotline service: Callers speak to a real person, which can be particularly pleasant for personal or sensitive matters. The staff is trained, polite, and can also respond empathetically in more complex conversations. Your team is relieved from telephone duties – especially with many incoming calls, an external service can take the load off. Additionally, such a service can usually be switched on and off flexibly or used only in overflow situations (e.g., when you are in a meeting). Many providers advertise with high professionalism and confidentiality – for example, Starbüro is 100% GDPR compliant and is contractually committed to confidentiality.
Disadvantages and costs: The personnel-intensive service comes at a price. Usually, you pay per call and per minute a fee, often in addition to a basic fee. Starbüro, for example, operates without a monthly fee but charges €0.59 per accepted call and per conversation minute. Other providers like ebuero charge a basic fee of about ~€59 per month plus around €1.39 per call and €1.39 per minute, and often there is an extra charge for calls outside business hours. A short customer call of 3 minutes can thus cost over €5, depending on the provider. These costs accumulate, especially when the call volume increases. Furthermore, an individual employee can only handle one call at a time – with multiple simultaneous calls, wait times occur or additional staff must be available. Therefore, more calls in traditional hotline structures either mean longer wait times or significantly higher personnel costs. During peak times (like noon or during campaigns), the lines of traditional hotlines are often busy, and callers may end up waiting in line. Outside core hours, the service must also be explicitly booked for 24/7 availability (sometimes for an extra charge); otherwise, callers might not receive personal service in the evening or on weekends. Overall, traditional telephone services are reliable in human interaction but quickly reach their limits in terms of scalability and costs.
What is the smao AI telephone assistant?
The smao AI telephone assistant is a modern solution where incoming calls are answered and processed by artificial intelligence. Instead of a human agent, a digital assistant responds in natural language. Smao understands the caller's concern in real-time thanks to advanced voice recognition and can refer to a stored knowledge database, specially configured for your company. Common or simple questions – such as opening hours, status inquiries, or FAQs – are answered by the AI fully automatically in seconds. The virtual assistant sounds friendly and always professional. Complex issues requiring expert knowledge are identified by smao and routed directly to the right contacts in your team. The AI transfers all relevant information from the conversation, even as an automatically created ticket with a conversation summary, so that your colleague is immediately informed and the customer does not have to repeat their request. These smart transfer competencies ensure seamless transitions between AI and human.
Advantages of the AI telephone assistant: The AI is available around the clock and responds to every call immediately – no ringing goes unanswered, busy lines and waiting times are a thing of the past. Even at night, on weekends, or during sudden spikes in call volume, the digital assistant is there without overtime pay or staff shortages becoming a problem. This 24/7 availability is included at no extra charge with smao. Additionally, scalability is nearly unlimited: One AI instance can theoretically handle multiple calls simultaneously, or additional AI lines can be added automatically if needed – completely automated. This means that even with high volume, response times remain consistently short.
The costs are often lower compared to human services. Smao offers a usage-based model: there are no fixed costs, instead, you only pay per call minute (e.g., €0.14–€0.22 depending on the package). Contracts are flexible and per-second billing ensures that you really only pay for the services you need. For example: While a 3-minute call with a traditional service can cost over €5, the same call via an AI assistant would only cost approximately €1.50 – so ~70% cheaper. This can lead to enormous savings, especially for companies with many or long calls.
Another advantage is data protection: Smao is operated in German/European data centers, and all conversations and data are processed in accordance with GDPR. No foreign person eavesdrops, which can be a significant advantage for sensitive industries (e.g., medicine, law). Companies can integrate the solution into their own IT security architecture to ensure the highest compliance standards are met. Therefore, you do not have to worry about data protection or confidentiality – the AI operates 100% compliant and without human intervention, which presents a decisive advantage over some other solutions.
Technically, the smao assistant is also very powerful: Through seamless integrations into CRM, ticketing, and calendar systems, the AI can be directly embedded into existing processes. For example, it can automatically create support tickets, schedule appointments, or retrieve customer data from your systems while speaking with the caller. The voice recognition of smao has been trained with modern algorithms and is increasingly able to understand dialects, technical terms, or calls with background noise. Regular updates bring new features (such as DTMF inputs via keypress for menu navigation) and continually improve the recognition rate. In short: The AI telephone assistant is a future-proof solution that is continuously evolving. Your team will be noticeably relieved as the AI filters and resolves routine inquiries while your employees can focus on more complex tasks. This interplay – automation of the masses and targeted human expertise in special cases – is the appeal of AI assistance.
Comparison: Hotline service vs. AI telephone assistant
How do traditional hotline services and the smao AI telephone assistant perform in the most important categories? The following table provides an overview:
Criterion | Traditional Hotline Service | AI Telephone Assistant (smao) |
|---|---|---|
Price | Ongoing costs per call (e.g., ~€0.59/minute at Starbüro) and often a basic fee. Open-ended costs at high call volumes, possibly surcharges for 24/7. Additional costs for email sending. | Lower variable costs per minute (approx. €0.14–€0.22). Per-second billing, 24/7 without extra charge. Saves up to ~70% costs per call. |
Scalability | Limited: More simultaneous calls require more staff. During peak times, wait times or overflow occur, and scaling up staff can be costly and time-consuming, which is reflected in end customer prices. | High: Automatic scaling to many calls in parallel. No waiting times, AI is elastic – peak loads are easily managed without a loss of quality. |
Data protection & hosting | Generally GDPR compliant (processing contracts, confidentiality agreed). Nevertheless, external parties gain access to customer data during calls. | Fully GDPR compliant (EU hosting, no sharing with third parties). No human listeners, thus less risk of data leaks. Integratable into corporate IT for maximum compliance. |
Response time | Very good during business hours: Calls are usually answered by service staff after a few rings. However, with high volume, waiting times may occur (in line) or calls may be missed. At night/holidays only with booked 24/7 service. | Lightning fast: Immediate call acceptance around the clock, even at night and on weekends. No busy signal, no waiting line – every call is directly answered by the AI, regardless of the day or time - without extra charge. |
24/7 availability | Optional, depending on provider. Many traditional services offer 24/7 availability, sometimes for an additional fee. Staff must also be available at night, which can be costly, or partner call centers take over with possibly varying quality. | Inherent 24/7: The AI is always available – 365 days a year around the clock without additional cost. No staffing shortages during off-peak times, consistent service at any time. |
Language comprehension | Humanly intuitive: Trained staff generally understand dialects, follow-up questions, and complex issues well. They can flexibly ask for clarification if something is unclear. However, quality may vary with the person, and foreign language skills may be limited. | AI-supported and surprisingly precise: Modern speech AI recognizes concerns in natural language and continuously improves. Many systems support multiple languages. With a strong accent or very complex phrases, misunderstandings can occasionally occur, but updates continuously reduce this. |
Service quality | Personal and empathetic: A good hotline employee can grasp emotions, respond individually to the caller, and conduct a conversation that gives the customer a human feeling. However, external secretariats are often limited to taking messages and providing simple information – they can rarely provide deeper assistance. Quality may also vary (different employees). | Consistent and solution-oriented: The AI offers standardized quality – every caller receives polite, factual help. Routine questions are answered by the assistant immediately and correctly (according to the stored knowledge) – no waiting for a call back is necessary. In complex cases, the AI ensures a seamless handover to your team with all the information. Empathy in the human sense is missing from the AI (it follows scripts), but it is never impatient and treats every caller with equal attention. |
Transfer competence | Manually controlled: The hotline service can route calls according to your specifications (e.g., VIP calls to you, certain topics to specific people) but needs to have fixed rules for doing so. Usually, a callback is offered rather than live transfer, unless explicitly agreed upon and someone is available. | Intelligent and integrated: Smao recognizes the concern and decides in seconds whether it can resolve it itself or directs it to the appropriate contact. The AI can enter information into the CRM/ticket system and notify colleagues. Direct call forwarding or appointment scheduling can also be automated. This way, no important calls are lost and urgent cases land directly with the right person, including all necessary details. |
Conclusion: What fits better for your company?
Both traditional hotline services and AI telephone assistants have their validity – but the weighting of the criteria determines what fits your company better. Traditional telephone services score with a human touch and simple implementation: You book the service, and real people take care of the callers. If your customers place great importance on personal contact or very complex, advisory-intensive conversations are common, a human service (e.g., Starbüro or ebuero) may be appropriate. Even with low call volumes, a simple external telephone service may suffice, although in this case, one should expect higher costs compared to AI solutions.
However, the trends and advantages clearly show that the AI telephone assistant has the edge in many areas. It is more cost-effective, indefinitely scalable, 24/7 available, and provides your team with enormous relief in routine tasks. At the same time, it achieves a high level of professionalism and response speed that no human team can deliver at that scale. Through intelligent forwarding, smao connects the best of both worlds: standard inquiries are resolved immediately, and tricky cases are handed over without loss of information to you or your team.
For most modern companies that are growing or already receiving many calls today, an AI solution like smao is clearly the more future-proof choice. It scales with your business, keeps costs predictably low, and continuously improves its capabilities. Your team can focus on value-added tasks while the AI confidently handles first-level support. The question "Hotline service vs. AI telephone assistant?" can therefore often be answered in favor of AI – especially when you focus on innovation, efficiency, and reliable accessibility. More information on the topic "AI architecture" can be found here.
