Bland Labs catches critical bugs
before customers even begin testing
“It's like going from a hoe to a tractor. Building voice agents is 70% testing—Hamming makes that 70% actually manageable.”
Ahmad Rufai Yusuf, AI Solutions Engineer at Bland Labs
Meet Bland Labs
Bland Labs is the leading enterprise voice AI platform, powering phone automation at scale. Their platform handles up to 1 million concurrent calls across healthcare, financial services, and logistics—trusted by Samsara, Snapchat, and Gallup.
With Hamming, Bland Labs was able to
The Challenge: Manual Testing Was the Biggest Bottleneck in Voice Agent Development
Before Hamming, testing was 'very painful' and 'time draining.' Engineers spent entire days—sometimes entire weeks—manually reviewing call logs for each customer deployment. With customers running thousands of calls daily, engineers had to scan transcripts call-by-call to catch bugs, hallucinations, and errors against the call criteria.
Ahmad identified testing as the primary bottleneck in voice agent development: 'You could spend 30-45 minutes prompting an agent with AI assistance, but then spend the next 2-3 hours testing.' The engineering team's time was consumed by manual review instead of higher-value work—and with each engineer having their own testing style, there was no standardized approach to quality assurance.
The Testing Bottleneck Was Real
- Days of manual review: Engineers would spend entire days scanning call logs when calls came in concurrently
- Week-long testing cycles: Some deployments took half a week or a full week of back-and-forth review
- No standardization: Each engineer had their own testing style, making quality inconsistent across deployments
- Language barriers: Testing German agents was nearly impossible without in-house German speakers
The Impact
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Test calls run before customer testing begins | 200+ |
| Faster deployment cycles vs manual testing | 3x |
| Multilingual coverage without in-house speakers | 100% |
| Critical healthcare guardrail failures in production | 0 |
How Hamming Transformed Voice Agent Testing at Bland Labs
Pre-Deployment Testing at Scale
Here's the new reality: Bland Labs fires off 100-200 test calls before customers even touch the agent. The obvious bugs? Caught. Edge cases? Found. Weird hallucinations? Flagged and fixed.
"By the time customers make their first test call, we've already run 200," Ahmad says. "They never see the embarrassing bugs—we've already killed them."
Learn more: Guide to AI Voice Agent Quality Assurance →
Behavioral and Multilingual Testing
Healthcare customers throw curveballs: angry patients who won't let the agent finish a sentence, elderly callers who need extra patience, impatient people who just want answers. With Hamming, Bland Labs tests all these personas without hiring actors or making calls themselves.
"We don't have a single German speaker on the team," Ahmad admits. "Before Hamming, we'd ship and pray. Now we actually know it works."
Learn more: Multi-Language Support for Voice AI Testing →
Healthcare Guardrails and Compliance Testing
One wrong response in healthcare? That's a compliance nightmare waiting to happen. Hamming flagged an agent saying "I assure you that you're going to get 100% healthy after this procedure." Catch that in testing, not in a lawsuit.
"Hamming caught stuff that would have gotten us and our customers in real trouble," Ahmad says. "Medical advice, health forecasts—things you absolutely cannot say."
Learn more: HIPAA PHI Clinical Workflow Testing Checklist →
Team Standardization and Shared Framework
Before Hamming, everyone tested differently. One engineer might run 50 calls, another might run 10. One checks edge cases obsessively, another focuses on happy paths. Quality was a coin flip.
"Now 'I tested it with Hamming' actually means something," Ahmad says. "I know critical paths are covered. I don't have to ask follow-up questions."
Regression Testing for Live Agents
Here's a scenario that keeps engineers up at night: you ship an update to a live agent, and suddenly an edge case that was fixed three months ago starts breaking again. Customers hit the same bug twice. That's how you lose trust.
"When we push updates to live agents, we run Hamming first," Ahmad explains. "We're not going to let customers hit the same issue twice."
Why Bland Labs Chose Hamming
Platform Evolution
Ahmad has watched Hamming evolve over time: "The platform speed improved significantly—it was very slow to load initially but is much better now. The UX is definitely better. The audio quality evolved from very robotic to more realistic."
Responsive Support
"Support is pretty good, especially the monthly feedback sessions," Ahmad notes. "It was especially helpful when the platform was less user-friendly—getting explanations from the team on 'am I doing this right?'"
Auto-Generated Test Quality
"The auto-generated test quality is pretty good, especially when I provide detailed category descriptions," Ahmad says. The team values how auto-generation provides baseline coverage without extensive manual effort.
UI-First Approach
Bland Labs works in Hamming's UI rather than the REST API. "It just clicks," Ahmad says—test cases, guardrails, assertions all map to how their engineers already think about QA.
"I would definitely recommend Hamming to anyone that builds voice agents, especially if they do a lot of volume. It speeds up the rate of builds because testing is what makes agents feel more natural than robotic to customers. The better and faster the testing, the more rockets you can launch quickly—and feel good that they won't blow up."
— Ahmad Rufai Yusuf, AI Solutions Engineer at Bland Labs
"Hamming saved us a lot of headaches. We caught a critical bug—the agent was saying 'I booked your appointment' but didn't actually book it. That's the kind of silent failure that destroys trust. We killed it before any customer saw it."
— Josh Collin, CEO & Co-Founder at Bland Labs
The Transformation
Time Savings
Remember those days spent scrolling call logs? Gone. Hamming handles the grunt work so engineers can actually build things.
Customer Confidence
Customers don't stumble on obvious bugs anymore—Bland Labs finds them first. That peace of mind? It's the whole point.
Team Process
"I tested it with Hamming" now means something specific. Same framework, same rigor, no matter who runs the tests.
Related Resources
HIPAA-Compliant Voice Agents: How to Build and Test Safely
Complete guide to building and testing voice agents for healthcare.
Multi-Language Support for Voice AI Testing
Test voice agents in 11+ languages with accent coverage.
AI Voice Agent Regression Testing
Build regression test suites that catch breaking changes.
Why Voice AI Still Breaks at Scale
Understanding why voice agents fail in production and how to prevent it.
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