"We're not trying to be deceptive," Coombs concluded. "What we're trying to do in the industry is combine the human intelligence of a human being with the accuracy and consistency of technology."

"We think it's wrong to play that game that was played in that recording," Munns said. And he wanted it noted, it's very rare that their agents are asked if they are recordings or robots.

I asked if he had a name for when that happens. "We don't because it does not happen," he responded. "We get it maybe once every three or four months. It's built to work very well."

These guys want standards put in place that require the disclosure of pre-recorded audio, in one form or another. Being businessmen, they would prefer self-regulation, but one can easily see the FCC, perhaps, stepping in to make sure that happens.

I've contacted the FCC for their position on soundboard-assisted calls, but have not heard back.

Perhaps this is ironic, or merely interesting, but if you look at the marketing that all of the companies do, they push the idea that their systems can help people who want to do telemarketing stay within the bounds of the existing American regulations. CallAssistant's Bills pointed out that a nationwide debt-settlement company is being sued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for deceptive telemarketing calls made by an old-school telemarketing company.

"Consumers thought they were getting something for free, a trial, and they kept getting billed," he said. "One of my agents can't do that. The offer is going to be made exactly as it is intended to be. You take away the ability of someone to misrepresent something. You take away the ability to omit required disclosures."

To hear these companies tell it, if you take away a lot of abilities, perhaps what's left is a more ideal telemarketing call experience.

For example, the data that they can capture with these systems is far less noisy than what anyone could collect from a traditional call center. That has allowed CallAssistant, for example, to reduce the number of times that an agent tries to keep you on the line after you've already said no, which is by far the most annoying thing telemarketers do.

"It became obvious to us we were wasting time with rebuttals that were never going to go anywhere. We were doing too many rebuttals. Not only are you wasting time talking to people if it is only going to convert 1 out of 1000 times. It's also irritating consumers," Bills said. "An agent could just sit there and pound someone with rebuttals, but our system won't allow them to."

Over and over in these conversations, I wondered how workers responded to the system. Did they feel that they were actually connecting with people, as they sat there pushing the equal sign to say, "Exactly"? Wasn't there something fundamentally wrong about that?