Put operational evidence, responsibilities and exit provisions alongside price. The contract should make clear who fixes an incorrect action, who supports an outage and how the buyer verifies delivered outcomes.
NIST’s generative-AI profile recommends explicit supplier responsibilities, appropriate service agreements, incident arrangements and ongoing third-party risk monitoring. It is a risk-management reference, not a ready-made voice-agent contract or legal mandate. (nvlpubs.nist.gov)
Our recommended commercial schedule includes:
| Contract area | Evidence or term to request |
|---|---|
| Scope | Supported tasks, excluded actions, integrations and location rules. |
| Acceptance | Agreed tests, result evidence, remediation and production-release approval. |
| Pricing | Billing units, minimums, transfers, add-ons and change notices. |
| Support | Severity definitions, coverage hours, response commitments and named escalation. |
| Quality operation | Monitoring responsibilities, correction process and review access. |
| Data | Permitted processing, subprocessors, retention, access and deletion. |
| Changes | Notice and testing arrangements for material model or workflow changes. |
| Incidents | Ownership, communications, evidence preservation and restoration. |
| Exit | Usable exports, transition assistance, number-control arrangements and deletion evidence. |
Ask counsel to review liability allocation, exclusions, indemnities and termination rights against the actual failure scenarios—not only a standard software template.
Finally, distinguish a support response commitment from a restoration commitment. A supplier agreeing to acknowledge a ticket quickly is not necessarily agreeing to restore successful call handling within the same period.