Humans win, and bots assist. A return to real human connections, contact centers being designed for people first and bot second, and customers increasingly opting out of those AI loops that go round in circles. Jon Zoltie talk through top five predictions for 2026 in the contact center environment: the option to speak to a human at every step rather than buried deep within menu systems; CRMs losing a little bit of their status as the gospel of truth as organizations realize the contact center captures what customers actually said, how they said it, how they felt—more objective—and that becoming the source of truth. Voice as a primary interface across devices, apps, and workflows. AI is built into tools and embedded in existing platforms rather than delivered as point solutions. And the ROI element: measurable business impact, clear KPIs, average handle time, misroutes, deflection, wrap-up time, and data that can be proven and quantifiable.

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📌 What We Cover

• Humans win, and bots assist: over automation, a return to real human connections, people first and bot second
• Customers opting out of AI loops and requesting human agents straight away
• IVR flows to always include the option to speak to a human at every step, not buried deep within menu systems
• CRMs losing status as the gospel of truth; contact center conversations as the source of truth
• Investing massive amounts in conversation intelligence rather than relying on manual CRM entry
• Automatically pushing transcripts, summaries, and sentiment analysis from contact centers into the CRM
• Voice as a primary interface across devices, apps, and workflows; conversational IVR, long prompts, and AI assistants
• ROI as a key driver: measurable business impact, clear KPIs, average handle time, misroutes, deflection, wrap-up time, time to resolution

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🔗 Resources Mentioned

• CRM
• IVA
• IVR
• conversational IVR
• conversation intelligence
• transcripts and summaries
• sentiment analysis
• large language models
• AI assistants

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