“Voice is dead” is a common phrase you may have been hearing in your UC circles for the past few years.
It no doubt makes for a good soundbite. However, recent developments may be moving the dial away from sensationalism to something with a bit more substance.
Yet just as a tide of new technology is seemingly turning against the use of voice, a new wave of innovation may be bringing it back into relevance.
With the global economy shaky and budgets subsequently tightening, many companies looking to invest in their UC solutions may be in this tough dilemma: take some money to invest in voice or invest it into omnichannel comms alongside more promising technologies like AI.
So where is voice as a concept of communication currently in market? What are the concerns, and what could present some opportunities for a future resurgence?
Vocalising Voice’s Concern
Prior to the launch of UC giants like Teams and Zoom, the industry was filled with legacy providers.
These providers were largely telcos, and thus, a big part of their offering was voice-based communication.
However, their traditional business model began being disrupted by the advent of Covid and the associated lockdowns.
“The pandemic greatly accelerated the migration of UC to the cloud, and this had a downward effect on legacy UC vendors,”
David Evans, Vice President of Product Management at GoTo, told UC Today.
This switch took away the influence of many voice-centric vendors and moved them on to more chat enabled platforms.
Beyond that, however, consumer communication preferences have changed.
A 2024 survey of 2,000 people from price comparison company Uswitch found a quarter of people aged 18 to 34 never answer the phone.
Respondents say they ignore the ringing, respond via text, or search the number online if they don’t recognize it.
This highlights one of the first problems facing voice. Scam calls are rife, and users are becoming increasingly wary of picking up the phone to a unknown number.
Indeed, at the annual Cavell Europe Summit, over 50% of attendees attending a session on voice’s future said the main issues hindering it are trust issues.
Equally, the Uswitch survey found that nearly 70% of 18-34s prefer a text to a phone call.
As a result, companies have been focusing more on integrating new omnichannel capabilities that help expand their ability to connect to their customers via their chosen communication platform.
However, despite this growing push for chat-based communication, developments in the UC sphere are showing how voice as a medium could be having a resurgence, and it’s all thanks to AI.
AI Receptionists to the Rescue?
This year has begun with the same fervor of AI as the last year.
However, where 2024 was all about generative AI, this year’s trend is about Agentic AI.
Agentic AI is a form of AI designed to autonomously analyze, strategize, and execute tasks with minimal human intervention.
Already following Enterprise Connect, companies have been releasing a raft of new Agentic AI solutions.
One of which that has been gaining interest is AI Receptionist. Released by both RingCentral in February, and then by GoTo in March, this solution allows AI to take voice calls, respond in real time, book appointments, transfer calls and give business information out to the customer.
The real gem, however, is solutions like this eliminate the concept of being put on hold.
In the past, if an agent wasn’t available, you would wait to be attended to.
Anyone who has ever been on hold can tell you how frustrating this is.
Indeed, Zendesk reported that nearly 60% of customers feel long wait times are the most frustrating parts of a service experience, and chatbot company Tidio reported 82% of respondents would talk to a chatbot if there were any waiting involved in talking to a human representative.
With AI Receptionists now being able to eliminate wait times altogether and even address queries, people might be more likely to pick up the phone to call.
After all, voice remains one of the best ways of communicating large swathes of information quickly.
It seems investors are equally keen on the idea of voice’s utility going forward.
After Enterprise Connect, where RingCentral got to demo its new AI Receptionist product to a large industry audience, its stock saw a notable uptick, breaking its downward trend and climbing away from the 52-week low of $26.22.
The Future of Voice
Although it isn’t clear exactly where voice fits into the future of UC, innovative AI-powered voice technologies are breathing new life into this communication medium.
Whether this new age of AI Receptionist is enough to warrant a large focus on voice remains to be seen.
Yet, its fundamental solution is to remove one of the causes that contributed to the demise of the voice.
Ultimately, the decision to invest in UC voice solutions should be based on your organization’s specific needs and customer preferences.
While chat and text-based communications are growing in popularity, voice could yet prove to be a vital channel for many businesses and consumers as long as the long-term aim is to focus on solutions that leverage AI and other advanced technologies to enhance the voice experience, rather than simply maintaining legacy systems
Are you considering the future of voice when it comes to investing in UC solutions?
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