Go High Level’s New AI Phone System: Capabilities and Limitations

In a significant move to expand its automation capabilities, Go High Level (GHL) has recently introduced AI-powered phone agents, marking the platform’s entry into the increasingly competitive space of conversational AI for voice communications.

While this integration showcases GHL’s commitment to innovation and demonstrates several compelling features, it also reveals the current limitations of AI voice technology in customer service applications.

Deep Integration with the GHL Ecosystem

The introduction of AI phone agents represents a natural evolution of GHL’s comprehensive marketing and business automation platform. These virtual agents seamlessly integrate with GHL’s existing CRM infrastructure, enabling automated customer interaction management around the clock.

One of the system’s strongest features is its native integration with GHL’s workflow engine. When a call concludes, the AI agent can automatically trigger specific workflows, update contact records, and send follow-up SMS messages without requiring additional configuration or third-party connections.

This integration eliminates the technical hurdles often associated with implementing AI communication solutions, making it particularly attractive for businesses already invested in the GHL ecosystem.

The Promise of Automated Voice Communication

GHL’s implementation offers a robust suite of automated communication features that extend well beyond basic call handling. The system’s comprehensive approach to customer interaction management showcases the platform’s commitment to end-to-end automation.

At its core, the AI phone agent serves as a sophisticated communication hub. During calls, it maintains natural conversations through advanced speech recognition while systematically collecting and processing customer information. The system’s ability to understand context and maintain conversation flow across multiple topics demonstrates impressive technological sophistication.

The post-call automation capabilities particularly shine, offering businesses a complete communication and documentation ecosystem. After each interaction, the system generates detailed email summaries containing call transcripts, duration details, and specific actions taken during the conversation. These summaries can be automatically routed to relevant team members, assigned account managers, or custom email addresses, ensuring proper follow-up and accountability.

The platform’s integrated communication features include:

• Automated SMS dispatch capabilities for immediate follow-up or appointment confirmations
• Comprehensive email summaries with call transcripts and interaction details
• Intelligent call routing based on business hours and availability
• Contact record updates with newly collected information
• Custom workflow triggers based on call outcomes
• Voice customisation with ten distinct options for brand alignment
• Seamless CRM integration for contact management and tracking
• Automated voicemail handling during off-hours
• Call recording and storage for quality assurance and training

The system’s 24/7 availability ensures consistent customer service coverage while maintaining professional interaction standards. This always-on capability, combined with the ability to handle multiple simultaneous calls, effectively eliminates traditional bottlenecks in phone-based customer service.

Furthermore, the platform’s integration with GHL’s existing workflow engine enables sophisticated automation sequences. When a call concludes, the AI agent can initiate complex workflow chains, updating multiple systems simultaneously while ensuring no customer interaction goes without proper follow-up.

Current Limitations and Considerations

While GHL’s AI phone agents represent a significant step forward in automated communication, several key limitations warrant careful consideration when evaluating the system for business deployment.

Restricted Action Framework

The system’s action capabilities currently confine themselves to four primary functions: call transfers, workflow triggers, contact field updates, and SMS dispatch. While these cover basic interaction needs, they may prove insufficient for businesses requiring more complex engagement scenarios.

Advanced operations like direct database queries, real-time inventory checks, or complex booking systems remain outside the system’s current capabilities.

Limited Training Capacity

Perhaps the most significant constraint lies in the AI’s knowledge base limitations. The master prompt restricts itself to 2,000 words, creating a substantial barrier for businesses needing to program comprehensive information into their virtual agents. This limitation becomes particularly challenging for:

• Companies with extensive product catalogs
• Businesses requiring detailed troubleshooting capabilities
• Organisations with complex service offerings
• Industries with specific compliance or regulatory requirements

Focus on Information Gathering vs. Problem Solving

Real-world usage patterns reveal that the system primarily excels at collecting information rather than providing detailed solutions. Official demonstrations show the AI agents focusing predominantly on gathering caller details and arranging callbacks rather than directly addressing complex customer inquiries.

This limitation can lead to increased handling times for customer issues that require immediate resolution.

This can be seen in this demo video:

Voice Customisation Constraints

While the system offers ten distinct voice options, this relatively limited selection may not fully meet the branding needs of all businesses. Organisations seeking highly specialised voice characteristics or specific regional accents might find the current options insufficient for their brand identity requirements.

Additional Cost Considerations

The pricing structure requires an additional investment of $127 per month for unlimited AI agent minutes.

While this fee includes access to other AI features like conversation AI messages (used inside GHL AI chatbots), content AI, and image AI, it represents a significant consideration for smaller businesses or those operating on tight margins.

Organisations must carefully evaluate this cost against their expected usage and potential return on investment.

This is a rather expensive pricing for AI tokens, according to us, given that 127$ worth of OpenAI GPT 4o-mini credits (what they are most definitely using as an LLM here), covers more than the monthly needs of a company heavily using all these GHL features.

Integration Depth vs. Breadth

Despite its deep integration with GHL’s native tools, the system’s limited action framework may pose challenges for businesses requiring connections with external systems or specialised third-party applications.

This limitation could impact organisations with existing technology stacks that require more sophisticated integration capabilities.

The Reality of Current Implementation

Real-world usage patterns reveal that the system primarily excels at information gathering rather than providing detailed responses to customer inquiries. As demonstrated in official demonstrations, the AI agents typically focus on collecting caller details and arranging callbacks rather than directly addressing complex customer questions.

The pricing structure, while integrated into GHL’s broader AI feature set at $127 per month for unlimited minutes, represents an additional investment that businesses must evaluate against their specific needs and usage patterns.

Custom Chatbots: A More Comprehensive Solution

When considering automated customer interaction solutions, custom chatbot implementations often present several advantages over the current GHL AI phone agent system:

Custom solutions like our custom developed AI inbound call handlers, typically offer more extensive training capabilities, allowing businesses to create comprehensive knowledge bases that enable direct problem resolution rather than mere information collection.

They can be programmed with industry-specific terminology, complex decision trees, and detailed product information that exceeds the current 2,000-word limitation of GHL’s system.

The flexibility of custom chatbot solutions extends to action capabilities as well. While GHL’s system restricts itself to a couple of primary actions, custom implementations can integrate with virtually any business system, execute complex operations, and provide real-time solutions to customer inquiries.

Looking Forward

GHL’s entry into AI-powered phone communications represents a significant step forward for the platform, particularly for small businesses seeking an integrated solution within the GHL ecosystem. The system’s seamless integration with existing GHL tools and workflows provides undeniable value for current platform users.

However, businesses requiring more comprehensive automated communication solutions may find the current limitations restrictive. As the technology evolves and GHL potentially expands the system’s capabilities, these limitations may diminish. For now, organisations should carefully evaluate their specific needs and consider whether a custom chatbot solution might better serve their automated communication requirements.

The ideal approach might involve utilising GHL’s AI phone agents for basic information gathering and initial customer interaction while implementing custom solutions for more complex engagement scenarios. This hybrid strategy could leverage the strengths of both systems while mitigating their respective limitations.