Dutch phone company adds an AI assistant to answer small business calls

KPN, the largest telecom provider in the Netherlands, has launched Mobiel AI, an AI assistant for small business owners that helps manage their phone calls. It was built with ElevenLabs, a voice AI company, and it is live for KPN's business customers.

What it is

Mobiel AI is an add-on to KPN EEN MKB mobile subscriptions. It works inside KPN's existing mobile app. Owners keep their number and their plan. The first working version was an AI voicemail, built in a design sprint with KPN developers and business owners in one room.

Why it matters

For a plumber or hairdresser, a missed call can mean a lost job. Yet 53% of entrepreneurs say being reachable by phone hurts their employees' concentration. Also, 69% name customer satisfaction as one of their top business challenges.

Dutch is hard for voice software, with long compound words and regional accents. After gathering more Dutch data and fine-tuning the transcription model, the teams raised verification accuracy from roughly 50% to 90%.

Privacy and what is unknown

Mobiel AI runs on KPN's network and in its own data centers. Voice data stays in the Netherlands. ElevenLabs processes speech in real time and returns results to KPN. Customer data is not used to train AI models and is not shared with third parties.

The source does not give the price or a full list of features. The two companies say they are already scoping what comes next.