Artificial Intelligence
Alex Levin, CEO of Regal, On Tying AI Adoption To Business Value, Not Vanity Metrics
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Overview
Here is a brief introduction to Alex Levin:
Alex Levin graduated from Harvard with a degree in Mind, Brain, and Behavior, where he worked closely with renowned linguist and cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker on groundbreaking research into consciousness. He later became a pioneer in online marketplaces, helping grow home services leader Angi (NASDAQ: ANGI) from $1 million to $1.5 billion in revenue as SVP of Growth. During his time overseeing the customer experience (CX) teams, Alex encountered the limitations of traditional contact center software and human support operations. Drawing on his academic foundation in human psychology and his firsthand experience with CX challenges, Alex envisioned a future where voice AI Agents transform business-consumer interactions. This vision led him to found Regal, now a leader in voice AI Agent technology. Alex and Regal’s mission is to offer every enterprise the ability to build customizable AI voice agents. Alex raised $82 million for Regal to put that mission into action.
TD Editor: Many startups are experimenting with AI assistants. What differentiates an “agent” from a simple chatbot, and why does that distinction matter for founders and businesses?
Alex Levin: Functionally, agents (or agentic AI) go far beyond simply responding to prompts with static answers. A traditional chatbot might tell you that it’s possible to add a driver to your auto insurance, but it stops there. An agent, by contrast, would actually be able to complete the task on your behalf – initiating the request, updating your policy and confirming it’s done. It shifts the role of AI from an informational assistant to a true operator that can resolve customer needs directly.
Agents also excel at the basics that customers expect (but rarely get) from traditional automation: answering calls immediately, carrying context forward so customers never need to repeat themselves, and maintaining a consistently positive tone. These qualities help transform customer service from transactional interactions into trusted relationships.
For businesses, that distinction matters because it removes friction from the customer journey, reduces the need for separate self-serve tools or human intervention, and ultimately elevates customer satisfaction. In many cases, this difference is what separates an AI feature from a true business advantage that directly impacts growth.
TD Editor: There’s often skepticism about AI replacing human connection. How do you balance automation with authenticity so that users still feel heard and supported?
Alex Levin: The current landscape is bleak – few have access to expensive experts or premier customer service phone support. So, it’s not a choice between connection and AI but rather a choice between no access and access to AI. And AI is great at actually listening and using the context to help you in a way most human support doesn’t have time for anymore.
In many ways, AI actually levels the playing field by being available to any customer, at any time they may need help. And while human support teams can be constrained by factors like internal bandwidth or language barriers, AI is able to listen, absorb context, and tailor responses in a way that feels highly personalized.
Part of achieving a sense of authenticity comes from intentionally designing each AI agent to reflect your brand’s voice and promise. By embedding a personality that aligns with company values, interactions feel less mechanical and more like a natural extension of the customer’s relationship with the brand. Done well, it can give users the sense of being truly heard, sometimes even more so than traditional customer support interactions. Over time, the best AI implementations won’t feel like a trade-off but rather a natural extension of customer care.
TD Editor: Looking at the bigger picture, where do you see AI voice agents creating the most impact outside of entrepreneurship—customer service, healthcare, and education?
Alex Levin: The first breakout use case for AI agents was coding assistants, and that momentum validated what’s possible. The next frontier we’re seeing emerge is customer experience. In the next five years, over 90% of the 16 million human customer support agents globally are expected to be replaced by AI agents. That shift represents not just cost savings, but a complete reimagining of how companies deliver service: always-on, multilingual, hyper-efficient and consistent across every interaction.
As customers realize that the voice agents are always available and consistently easy to use, we expect voice to become the preferred method of customer support over self-service portals or other digital channels. The convenience factor is what will accelerate adoption and cement voice as the dominant way people interact with businesses.
TD Editor: AI adoption often brings cultural and organizational hurdles. What advice would you give to leaders trying to integrate voice AI into their workflows successfully?
Alex Levin: The key is to keep the focus on business outcomes, not technology checkboxes. Companies can fall into the trap of setting broad technology goals, such as “just use generative AI,” which is no more strategic than asking a customer support team to “just answer every call in one second.” Both directives are unrealistic and disconnected from the actual purpose of the work. Success comes when AI adoption is tied to measurable business value, not technology benchmarks for their own sake.
Leaders also need to prepare for internal organizational changes, especially in terms of setting performance goals – if teams are measured on outdated, pre-AI metrics, neither the technology nor the team using it will reach its full potential. Alignment around new outcomes is essential to successfully integrate AI into workflows.
TD Editor: Beyond startups, what opportunities do you see for enterprises leveraging AI voice technology for customer engagement and retention?
Alex Levin: The demand for voice AI in customer experience is virtually limitless, and enterprises in particular stand to benefit. Unlike startups, where savings may amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year by replacing a handful of customer support agents, large enterprises are looking at savings in the hundreds of millions. For example, replacing half of ten agents at a startup might free up $250,000 annually. At the enterprise scale, the equivalent transformation can free up $250 million or more.
Those savings aren’t just about cutting costs; they can be reinvested into marketing, lower pricing, enhanced R&D, or new customer engagement strategies. In other words, implementing voice AI enables enterprises to improve efficiency and reinvest in growth at a scale startups won’t be able to match.
Voice AI also helps solve the relentless turnover that enterprise-level contact centers experience, which is approximately 40% annually. By automating daily tasks that are repetitive (and often thankless), enterprises not only save on costs but also stabilize their workforce by allowing human agents to focus on higher value, career-building work.
Thu, Oct 16, 2025
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