What should an AI cold calling agent actually say?
Most cold call scripts fail for the same two reasons: they are written as a speech rather than a conversation, and they leave out the sentences UK law does not treat as optional. This page sets out the six parts of the call, what has to be in it, how writing for an agent differs from writing for a person, and a complete template you can copy. Legal quotes were read on legislation.gov.uk on 29 August 2026.
This is not legal advice
The quotes below are from the legislation itself and are dated. They are not advice about your campaign, which depends on your list, your data source and your consent position. The wider rules — screening against the TPS and CTPS, your own suppression list, the 28-day rule — are covered separately in is cold calling legal in the UK. Read that one first if you have not.
The short answer: six parts, in this order
- Who you are. Your name and the company, in the first sentence.
- Why you are calling this business. One sentence, in plain words.
- Permission to continue. A real question, which they are allowed to answer no to.
- Two or three qualifying questions. One idea each.
- Approved answers, and a boundary. What you will say to the objections you already know, and what the agent must never claim.
- One next action. Named out loud and confirmed back.
Nothing in that list is novel. What changes when the caller is software is how literally each part has to be written, because an agent will do exactly what the script permits and nothing it does not.
The parts that are not yours to choose
Two of the six are legal duties in the UK, not style preferences. Regulation 24 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, read on legislation.gov.uk on 29 August 2026, states:
“Where a public electronic communications service is used for the transmission of a communication for direct marketing purposes the person using, or instigating the use of, the service shall ensure that the following information is provided with that communication— … (b) in relation to a communication to which regulation 21 … (telephone calls) applies, the particulars mentioned in paragraph (2)(a) and, if the recipient of the call so requests, those mentioned in paragraph (2)(b).”
And paragraph (2) says what those particulars are:
“(a) the name of the person; (b) either the address of the person or a telephone number on which he can be reached free of charge.”
Read plainly: the name is given on every call, and the contact details are given whenever they are asked for. Note the asymmetry the regulation draws — for automated calls under regulation 19 the contact details must be provided with the message, while for live calls under regulation 21 they are provided on request. Either way, an agent that cannot answer “who is this and how do I contact you” is not finished.
Separately, regulation 21(A1) requires that you either do not prevent presentation of the calling line identity, or present the identity of a line on which you can be contacted. That is a dialling configuration rather than a script line, but it is the same conversation and it is worth settling before the first call rather than after the first complaint.
Source: PECR 2003, regulation 24, read 29 August 2026.
Parts 1 and 2: the opening
Write it as two sentences and resist the urge to make them clever.
“Hello, this is Alex calling from FoxEra. I’m calling because you run a restaurant in Manchester and we help venues answer the calls they miss.”
What that opening does not do matters as much as what it does:
- No manufactured familiarity. “How have you been?” to a stranger reads as a script within one second, and it costs you the rest of the call.
- No invented connection. Never write “we spoke previously”, a shared contact or a referral into a script unless it is true of the specific person being dialled. An agent will say it to everyone.
- No question stacked onto the introduction. “Hi, is that the manager, and do you handle the phones?” asks two things and gets one answer, and you will not know which.
Give the agent a single explicit instruction for the case where the person answers with something other than a greeting — a name, a company name, silence, or “who is this?”. That last one is one of the most common opening turns in cold calling and it deserves a written answer rather than an improvisation.
Part 3: ask, rather than assume
A short permission question does three useful things: it gives the person a polite exit, it surfaces the real objection early instead of at minute four, and it produces a clean opt-out you can record. Something as plain as “Is now a bad time?” or “Have you got thirty seconds for me to explain, or shall I leave it?” is enough.
Then write what happens on each answer — not a paragraph of guidance, the actual words. If the answer is no, the agent thanks them, records the outcome and ends the call. It does not try a second time. Regulation 21(1)(a) of PECR makes a subscriber’s own notification not to call a duty separate from the statutory register, so a “do not call me again” heard on a call is a legal instruction, not feedback. It needs to reach your suppression list the same day.
Part 4: questions, one idea at a time
The most common defect in a script written for an agent is the compound question. A person hears “how many covers do you do at the weekend, and are you taking bookings by phone or online?” and answers the half they remember. So does an AI, and it then records a half-answer as a whole one.
Two or three questions is a realistic first call. Each one should be worth a field in your CRM, and each should be answerable in a sentence:
- “Who normally picks up the phone when you’re busy?”
- “Roughly how many calls do you think go unanswered on a Friday night?”
- “Is that something you’ve already tried to fix?”
If a question is only there to set up your pitch, cut it. People can tell, and it is the point at which a call starts to feel like a form being filled in.
Part 5: approved answers, and the boundary
Write the answers to the objections you have already heard — price, “we already have someone”, “send me an email”, “how did you get my number”. That last one is not an objection to be handled; it is a question you must be able to answer honestly, and if you cannot, the problem is the list rather than the script.
Then write the boundary explicitly, because this is the part scripts written for humans leave out. A person knows not to promise a discount they cannot authorise. An agent knows only what the script says. Put in writing:
- Prices and terms it may state, and that it may state no others.
- Claims it must not make — results, guarantees, comparisons with a named competitor.
- What it does when it does not know: say so, and offer to have someone follow up. Never fill the gap.
- When it must stop and hand over to a person, and how.
Our own AI sales calling agent page puts the same requirement in the buyer’s terms: an introduction that accurately identifies the purpose of the call, approved responses for common questions, and clear opt-out and suppression procedures. That is the checklist, and it is worth reading it as work you have to do rather than a feature you are buying.
Part 6: one next action
End on a single outcome. A call that closes on “I’ll send you some information and maybe we can speak next week and I’ll also add you to the newsletter” has closed on nothing. Pick the one thing — a booked slot, a callback at a stated time, permission to email — say it out loud, and confirm the detail back:
“So that’s Thursday at ten, and I’ll send the confirmation to bookings at, and then the venue name, dot co dot uk. Have I got that right?”
Spelling an email address back is not padding. It is one of the highest-value sentences in the whole script, because a mis-heard address turns a successful call into a silent failure that nobody investigates.
What is genuinely different about writing for an agent
The structure above would serve a human caller equally well. These six habits are the ones that only matter once software is delivering it.
- One idea per turn. A person recovers from a rambling sentence by reading the room. An agent finishes the sentence.
- Write numbers as they are spoken. “Twelve pence a minute”, not “12p/min”. Same for dates, times and postcodes.
- No nested conditions in one line. Split “if they’re busy but interested, unless they’ve already got a system” into separate branches with their own wording.
- Write the silences. What happens after three seconds of nothing? After voicemail? After a switchboard? These are a large share of dial outcomes and they are usually the part of the script nobody wrote.
- Write the wrong-person branch. “He’s not in” needs a real answer: take a name and a better time, or end politely. Not a pitch to whoever answered.
- Write in the language the call will be made in. A script written in English and translated word for word arrives as a translation. It is heard as one.
A template you can copy
Fill in the brackets. Keep the shape.
Open: “Hello, this is [name] calling from [company].”
Reason: “I’m calling because [one true, specific thing about this business], and we [what you do, in eight words].”
Permission: “Is now a bad time?”
— If no: continue.
— If yes: “No problem — when would be better?” Take a time, or end.
— If ‘don’t call me again’: “Understood, I’ll take you off our list now. Sorry to have bothered you.” End. Record the opt-out.
Question 1: “[Question about how they do the thing today.]”
Question 2: “[Question about the size or cost of the problem.]”
Question 3: “Have you already tried to fix it?”
Relevance: “The reason I ask is [one sentence connecting their answer to what you do].”
Close: “Would it be worth [one specific next action]?”
Confirm: “So that’s [detail], and I’ll send it to [address, spelled out]. Have I got that right?”
If asked who you are or how to reach you: “[Name], from [company]. Our number is [freephone or contact number] and our address is [address].”
If asked something you do not know: “I don’t know, and I don’t want to guess. I’ll have [person] come back to you.”
Test it on calls, not in a document
A script reads fine to the person who wrote it. The only useful evidence is what happened on the call, which is why the transcript matters more than the draft. Read the first twenty in full — not the outcomes, the words — and you will usually find the same two or three sentences causing most of the drop-off. What to look for when you read them is a page of its own.
Testing costs the minutes you connect. FoxEra Calls charges 12p per connected minute and starts new accounts with £7 of free calling credit, both read from foxera.co.uk on 29 August 2026; the arithmetic is set out on how much AI calling costs and cost per connected minute. Every call is logged word for word against the contact in the outbound calling CRM, which is also what you need if anyone ever asks what was said.
Two things this page deliberately does not do. It does not tell you whether your list is lawful to call — that is building the list, and TPS and CTPS screening is your responsibility, not something FoxEra performs for you. And it does not answer whether you must tell the person they are speaking to software: the UK and EU positions differ, and we quote the primary sources for both on do you have to tell someone they are talking to an AI.
Frequently asked questions
What must an AI cold calling agent say by law in the UK?
Regulation 24 of PECR 2003 requires the name of the person to be provided with a live marketing call, and either an address or a telephone number reachable free of charge to be provided if the recipient asks. Regulation 21(A1) separately requires that you do not prevent presentation of the calling line identity, or that you present a line on which you can be contacted. Read on legislation.gov.uk, 29 August 2026.
How long should a cold call script be?
The opening and the reason for calling are two short sentences. The rest should be questions and approved answers rather than prose. A script that reads straight through is a monologue, and the point of a call is that it is not one.
Does an AI agent need a different script from a human caller?
The structure is the same; the writing is not. One idea per turn, numbers and addresses written as they are spoken, no nested conditions in a single line, and explicit branches for silence, voicemail and the wrong person. A human improvises around a gap. An agent does whatever the gap leaves it free to do.
Should the agent say it is an AI?
That is a separate question from the identification duty, and the UK and EU positions are not the same. We quote the primary sources for both on our AI disclosure page rather than summarising them here.
What do you do when someone asks to be taken off the list?
Stop, acknowledge it, end the call and record it the same day. Regulation 21(1)(a) of PECR treats a subscriber’s own notification not to call as a duty separate from the statutory register, so it is a legal instruction rather than feedback.
How do you test a script cheaply?
In small batches, on real calls, reading the transcripts rather than the draft. At 12p per connected minute with £7 of starting credit, a first round costs the price of the minutes you actually connect.