RFP Template: How to Evaluate Voice AI Vendors (40 Questions)
To evaluate voice AI vendors, run a structured Request for Proposal (RFP) covering eight areas: languages, accuracy, compliance, security, integration, pricing, service-level agreements (SLAs) and data residency. This template gives you 40 buyer-focused questions so you can compare vendors on evidence, not sales decks.
This is a procurement guide for Indian Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) buyers, not legal advice. Confirm regulatory obligations with your compliance team.
A voice AI platform will touch your customers, your core systems and your regulated data — so the buying decision deserves more rigour than a demo. A good RFP forces every vendor to answer the same hard questions in writing, which is the only fair way to compare a global player, a startup and an incumbent side by side.
Below are 40 questions grouped into eight evaluation categories. Copy them into your RFP, weight the categories to your priorities, and score each response 1–5. For a wider view of the market first, see our guide to the top voice AI platforms for Indian banking and how to choose the right AI platform for your business.
Why Does a Voice AI RFP Need 40 Questions?
Because a voice call is where compliance, customer experience and technology meet at the same instant. A vendor can have brilliant speech recognition and still fail Reserve Bank of India (RBI) outsourcing expectations, or nail security and stumble on Hindi-English code-mixing. Eight categories keep the evaluation honest across every dimension that matters in Indian BFSI.
A structured RFP also protects you commercially. Written answers become contractual reference points — if a vendor claims 95% accuracy or 99.9% uptime in the RFP, that claim can be held to the SLA later.
What Should the RFP Ask About Languages and Accuracy?
India runs on many languages and constant code-mixing, so language coverage is a make-or-break criterion, not a nice-to-have. Accuracy questions should always ask for evidence on your data, not vendor benchmarks.
# | Category | Question |
|---|---|---|
1 | Languages | Which Indian languages do you support for both speech recognition and text-to-speech, and which are production-grade vs beta? |
2 | Languages | How do you handle code-mixed speech (for example Hindi-English) within a single sentence? |
3 | Languages | Can the bot detect the caller's language automatically and switch mid-call? |
4 | Languages | How are regional accents and dialects handled, and how do you measure quality per accent? |
5 | Accuracy | What is your word error rate (WER) and intent-recognition accuracy, measured on BFSI call data? |
6 | Accuracy | Will you run a paid pilot on our own call recordings and share per-language accuracy results? |
7 | Accuracy | How do you handle background noise, poor network audio and low-cost handsets common in India? |
8 | Accuracy | How is the model retrained on our vocabulary (product names, scheme names, local terms)? |
For depth on this, see how to train voice AI on banking-specific vocabulary and our voice AI vs IVR comparison for Indian banks.
How Do You Evaluate Compliance, Security and Data Residency?
This is the category most likely to disqualify a vendor. Your questions must map to India's actual regulatory stack: the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, RBI's outsourcing expectations, and the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR), 2018.
# | Category | Question |
|---|---|---|
9 | Compliance | How does your platform support obligations under the DPDP Act, 2023 — consent capture, purpose limitation and data-principal rights? |
10 | Compliance | How do you support consent and preference rules under the TCCCPR, 2018 for outbound commercial calls? |
11 | Compliance | Can calling windows, frequency caps and disclosures be enforced in configuration (for example, no recovery calls before 8 a.m. or after 7 p.m.)? |
12 | Compliance | Do you provide full call recordings, transcripts and audit logs for every interaction? |
13 | Security | What are your certifications (ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II) and when were they last audited? |
14 | Security | How is data encrypted in transit and at rest, and how are encryption keys managed? |
15 | Security | What is your access-control and role model, and how are administrator actions logged? |
16 | Security | What is your incident-response and breach-notification process and timeline? |
17 | Data residency | Where are our data and call recordings stored and processed — is all storage within India? |
18 | Data residency | Do any sub-processors or model providers move data outside India, and how is that governed? |
19 | Data residency | How do you support our obligations under RBI's outsourcing of financial services guidelines? |
20 | Data residency | On exit, how is our data returned and securely deleted, and within what timeline? |
What Should You Ask About Integration, Pricing and SLAs?
A voice AI platform is only as good as its connection to your core banking, loan management and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. Pricing and SLA questions protect you once the honeymoon demo ends.
# | Category | Question |
|---|---|---|
21 | Integration | Which core banking, loan management and CRM systems have you already integrated with in India? |
22 | Integration | Do you offer documented Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and webhooks for real-time data exchange? |
23 | Integration | How do you connect to telephony (SIP, cloud contact centre, on-premise PBX)? |
24 | Integration | Can the bot escalate to a live agent with full context, and how is that handoff logged? |
25 | Integration | What is a realistic timeline from contract to first production use case? |
26 | Pricing | Is pricing per minute, per call, per successful outcome or a licence — and what triggers overage charges? |
27 | Pricing | Are language models, integrations, support and retraining included or billed separately? |
28 | Pricing | What is the all-in cost at our projected volume, and how does unit cost change as we scale? |
29 | SLA | What uptime do you guarantee, and what service credits apply if you miss it? |
30 | SLA | What are your support response and resolution times by severity, and is support available in Indian time zones? |
Model these numbers against your current spend using our voice bot vs human call-centre cost comparison, and see how to integrate voice AI with core banking systems in India.
What Are the Final Vendor Due-Diligence Questions?
These 10 questions cover the softer risks — reliability, references and roadmap — that decide whether a vendor is a supplier or a partner.
# | Category | Question |
|---|---|---|
31 | Scale | How many calls per month does your platform handle today, and what is your largest live BFSI deployment? |
32 | Reliability | How do you handle peak call volumes and traffic spikes without degradation? |
33 | Quality | How do you monitor live call quality and flag failures or misfires in real time? |
34 | Governance | Can we review and approve every script and disclosure before it goes live? |
35 | References | Can you share two reference customers in Indian BFSI we can speak to directly? |
36 | Support | What onboarding, training and ongoing account management do you provide? |
37 | Roadmap | What is your product roadmap for Indian languages and BFSI use cases over the next year? |
38 | Reporting | What dashboards and reports are provided for compliance, quality and business outcomes? |
39 | Continuity | What is your business-continuity and disaster-recovery plan? |
40 | Exit | What are the notice period, data-portability and transition-assistance terms if we leave? |
How AI Helps You Run a Faster, Fairer Evaluation
A modern voice AI platform makes the RFP easier to score because it answers many questions with evidence rather than promises. YuVoice, for example, is built for Indian BFSI — multilingual coverage with code-mixing, configurable calling windows and disclosures, full recording and transcript logs, and pre-built core-banking and CRM integrations.
The best signal in any evaluation is a pilot on your own data. Ask every shortlisted vendor to run the same use case on your call recordings, then compare accuracy, compliance controls and cost side by side. Evidence from your environment beats any benchmark in a slide.
FAQ
What is a voice AI RFP? A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a structured document you send to shortlisted vendors asking them to answer the same questions in writing. For voice AI, it lets you compare languages, accuracy, compliance, security, integration, pricing, SLAs and data residency on a like-for-like basis.
Which is the most important category to weight? For Indian BFSI, compliance, security and data residency usually carry the highest weight because a gap there can block deployment entirely. Language and accuracy come next, since they determine whether customers actually complete the call.
How should I score vendor responses? Weight each of the eight categories by importance, score each answer 1–5 with evidence, and require a paid pilot on your own data before final selection. Written RFP claims can then be carried into the SLA.
Do I need to check data residency for voice AI? Yes. Ask exactly where data and recordings are stored and processed, whether everything stays within India, and how sub-processors are governed. Align this with your obligations under the DPDP Act, 2023 and RBI's outsourcing guidelines.
How long should a voice AI evaluation take? Plan for six to twelve weeks: two weeks to issue and score the RFP, three to four weeks for a pilot on your data, and the rest for security review, references and commercials.
Can one vendor cover all Indian languages? Coverage varies widely. Insist on a per-language, production-grade breakdown and test the top two or three languages your customers actually use, including code-mixed speech, during the pilot.
Conclusion
A disciplined RFP turns voice AI buying from a demo-led gamble into an evidence-led decision. Use these 40 questions to hold every vendor to the same standard across languages, accuracy, compliance, security, integration, pricing, SLAs and data residency — then let a pilot on your own data settle it.
Ready to put a voice AI platform through its paces? Talk to the YuVerse team to run a pilot on your own call data.
References
- Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) — https://www.meity.gov.in/content/digital-personal-data-protection-act-2023
- Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 — Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) — https://trai.gov.in/tcccpr
- Guidelines for Managing Risk and Code of Conduct in Outsourcing of Financial Services — Reserve Bank of India — https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=12123&Mode=0
- Outsourcing of Financial Services – Responsibilities of regulated entities employing Recovery Agents (DOR.ORG.REC.65/21.04.158/2022-23, August 12, 2022) — Reserve Bank of India — https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=12378&Mode=0
