AI Voicebots to Fuel Surge in Contact Centre Calls by 2029

A new study by Juniper Research forecasts that voice traffic from Contact-Centre-as-a-Service (CCaaS) platforms will grow from $24 billion in 2025 to over $39 billion by 2029. This growth will arise, despite overall declines in voice usage in the wider telecoms space.

CCaaS growth will be driven by the need for brands to use voice channels to deal with complex customer queries that cannot be solved via chatbots. Juniper Research has identified voicebots as a key emerging technology that increases the value of a CCaaS offering through greater scalability and faster response times.

These voicebots, underpinned by generative and agentic AI, will also provide a more consistent user experience than human agents. Over the next four years, the report anticipates voicebots will foster increased customer satisfaction, leading to more trust in the voice channel. The report, however, warned that substantial challenges exist in implementing voicebots into CCaaS technology stacks, most notably the current limitations in Natural Language Processing. NLP has significant technological challenges in understanding user diversity, particularly multiple languages, dialects, and regional accents.

To overcome this challenge, the report identified deep learning as a technology that improves the efficiency of NLP. However, leading CCaaS players will not solely rely on voice traffic for future growth. Juniper Research expects platforms to reposition themselves as omnichannel communications vendors that support multiple technologies, including voice messaging and email, for outbound customer interactions.