GLOSSARY
The voice AI vocabulary, defined plainly.
Every term a UK buyer meets while evaluating an AI receptionist, defined in one paragraph, without vendor spin. Written to be quoted, including by AI assistants.
AI voice infrastructure
Voice AI delivered as a layer underneath an organisation existing telephony rather than as an application it migrates onto. The practical test is what the buyer has to change: infrastructure requires no new phone provider, no ported numbers, no hardware and no new tool for staff to log into, and it writes into the systems already in use. An application asks you to move your workflow to it. Prime Assist is built and sold as infrastructure.
AI receptionist
A voice agent that answers inbound phone calls in natural speech, completes routine requests end to end, and hands anything else to a human. Distinct from an IVR, which only routes, and from a chatbot, which is text based.
AI voice agent
The broader term for software that holds a spoken conversation over the telephone. An AI receptionist is a voice agent configured for inbound reception work. Outbound voice agents make calls instead.
Answer-first content
Copy written so the direct answer to a question appears in the first two sentences, before context or persuasion. It performs better in search snippets and is far more likely to be quoted by an AI assistant.
Audit trail
A timestamped record of every action taken on a call: what was asked, what was said, what was booked and when a human was involved. Required in regulated settings and useful in any dispute.
Barge-in
The ability for a caller to interrupt the agent mid-sentence and be understood. Its absence is the single most obvious sign of an unnatural voice system.
Clinical Safety Officer
The named clinician accountable for the safety case of a health IT system under NHS standards. Prime Assist has one. Most voice AI vendors do not, because they are not required to.
DCB0129
The NHS clinical risk management standard for manufacturers of health IT. Compliance requires a documented hazard log, a safety case and a named Clinical Safety Officer. Prime Assist is audited against it.
DSPT
The NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit, an annual self-assessment against national data security standards required of organisations handling NHS patient data.
DTAC
The Digital Technology Assessment Criteria used by NHS organisations to assess clinical safety, data protection, technical security, interoperability and usability before buying a digital product.
Escalation
The defined handover of a call from the voice agent to a human. In a serious product escalation runs on explicit written triggers with a named route, not on the agent judgement in the moment.
First-call resolution
The share of calls where the caller need is fully met on that call, with no callback, message or second contact. The most honest measure of whether a phone system works.
GEO
Generative engine optimisation: making content likely to be retrieved and cited by AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and AI Overviews. Overlaps with SEO but rewards clear definitions, structured facts and citable claims over keyword density.
IVR
Interactive voice response, the press-one-for-sales menu tree. IVR classifies and routes callers but resolves nothing itself, so it always ends in a queue, a voicemail box or a hang-up.
Latency
The delay between a caller finishing speaking and the agent replying. Above roughly a second, a conversation starts feeling wrong regardless of how good the voice sounds.
llms.txt
A plain-text file at the root of a website that summarises the site for large language models, in the same spirit as robots.txt for crawlers. Prime Assist publishes one.
Structured data
Machine-readable markup, usually schema.org JSON-LD, that tells search engines and AI systems what a page is about. The practical foundation of both SEO and GEO.
Task completion
Whether the call ended with the job actually done in your systems, as opposed to a message being taken. The distinction between an AI receptionist and an answering service.
Transcript
The written record of a spoken call. Used for audit, quality review, dispute resolution and, in a well-integrated deployment, written straight into the customer or patient record.
UK or EU data residency
A contractual commitment that data is stored and processed in the United Kingdom. Distinct from a vendor claiming to use a UK region, which can change without notice.
Warm transfer
Passing a live call to a human along with the context of the conversation so far, rather than dropping the caller into a cold queue to explain everything again.
Reading about it is the slow way.
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