Editorial
Editor's note: Part 1 of this three-part series on voice AI captured the essence of voice AI and the technologies behind it. Now, Part 2 divulges the three market trends accelerating that growth and how it’s being used in different verticals. In Part 3, we assemble market visions on where the voice AI market will take us over the next 10 years, including exhilarating ideas the author hadn’t thought of.
Voice AI has evolved from "cutting edge" to "advanced" to a normal solution used by many. As of 2024, nearly 50% of US internet users had used voice assistants. The majority of users, 89%, use it via smartphones, according to EMarketer.
Blair Pleasant, president and principal analyst of COMMfusion, cited Zoom and Deepgram/AWS as two examples of how “Agentic AI keeps growing as leading companies expand their voice AI usage. Voice is the most natural way to communicate. Voice AI, enabled by agentic AI, is making it easier for consumers to communicate with brands intuitively, leading to improved business outcomes.”
To map sector expansion, I worked diligently on confirming growth projections, reviewing four published reports by credible firms. The key takeaway is that we are early in a lasting market growth cycle.
This credible analysis by Market.us shows a 34% CAGR to hit a stunning $47B in 10 years. It is important to note that "voice AI in customer service" is just part of this overall sector, consistent across all studies analyzed. Also note that sector sales in 10 years ranged, but their CAGR was consistent. "Net net?" We are still early in the growth curve.
Related Article: The Acceleration of Voice AI: Where Customer Service Goes From Here
Table of Contents
- What Is Driving This? 3 Key Market Trends Combining to Accelerate Market Growth
- Future Uses of Voice AI are Stunning but Logical
What Is Driving This? 3 Key Market Trends Combining to Accelerate Market Growth
Better solutions do help, but could this be just a fad? No. We need a locomotive engine driving consistent growth over time. We now have three engines like they do at the front of really long trains.
1. Demographics: Like electric cars, youth are the mass-market adopters that validate lasting trends.
It’s like adults using email and youth using text messaging. The demographic change starts, then, as youth accepts, it ramps up over time and becomes well accepted. Just ask my twins for a fast response to an email. The trend is scaling as “50% of consumers have made a purchase assisted by voice AI,” according to PwC. The “majority of voice assistant users (89%) access it via smartphones, a trend more pronounced among Gen Z’s at 94%,” according to EMarketer. Combine rising smartphone usage and Gen X/Y/Z users, and together they literally create a voice AI rocket.
A subtle but critical change here is the conversational AI hyper-personalization. It’s not just LLMs, but the mood, tone of voice, dialogue terms and age matching (if data is available) that all contribute to that demographic targeting. The net result is a more comfortable, casual dialogue, boosting FCR. It’s helpful to all and critical for Gen X/Y/Z, relaxing users’ moods. It now feels like a digital concierge vs. a robotic program that could make users uneasy five years ago.
Stats? “Nearly 80% of CX leaders believe voice AI is ushering in a new era of more seamless problem-solving,” according to Zendesk.
Pleasant said using voice is a more natural experience for consumers. The ability to simply say what they want and have the system respond and provide the required information or perform the necessary tasks makes contacting customer service less painful. It improves overall brand customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, she added.
Related Article: The Loyalty Equation: Trust + Context + Community
2. Vertical Market Expansion: Voice AI is expanding uses and entering new vertical markets.
Rapid vertical market and company integration now takes weeks, not months. Keywords, acronyms and "sector language" integration for a vertical have likely been done already and can be customized quickly for a particular client. “80% of businesses plan to use AI-driven voice technology in their customer service operations by 2026,” according to Statista.
Similarly, testing and improvement steps are quicker, more comprehensive and done with near-full automation. This shortens time to market. Voice AI integration in some or all modes into a vertical solution is now an easier business decision to make. The risk is lower, and the ROI is achieved faster. “Companies using AI-powered customer service report a 20-30% reduction in operational costs,” according to Netomi.
Other verticals already active and expanding their uses include:
- Healthcare – High quality CX and transcribing customer dialogues quickly benefits healthcare professionals. It enables them to spend more time one-on-one with patients and less time in post-session note taking and then revisiting patient history before the next appointment.
- Banking – Security and user information are priority one, and customers were always nervous there. Fraud detection and multiple forms of user authentication here now have propelled users’ comfort and the UX in handling more finance transactions via voice AI.
What is next? Mobile ecommerce and order taking are early but quite active. What is really next is new voice AI uses like device commands to enact the right action. Picture it as there is a vast number of use cases. Change audio settings or map searches in your moving car via voice.
Hotels can use it for phone or on-site transactions, and manufacturing will use it to command robotics. A good example of voice AI in other channels such as sales is Invoca. "At Invoca, we use Voice AI as a revenue engine," says Surbhi Rathore, VP of AI product and strategy at Invoca. “Our focus is on converting high-intent calls into sales outcomes — to make every conversation count."
Here is a snapshot of that sector evolution:
3. More SW Integration: Real-time integration into other platforms amplifies the benefits dramatically.
Formerly voice AI data analysis in isolation was useful but took time to be compared with other solution data sets. Now, real-time integration via API’s with CRMs (e.g. Salesforce, Hubspot), marketing platforms, CCaaS (NICE, Genesys) and WFMs are already set up by companies for the leading solutions in each sector. Not sexy, but the benefits are huge. Voice AI ease of data integration via APIs amplifies the business use cases tremendously and expands learning and ROI across the board.
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Future Uses of Voice AI are Stunning but Logical
Technology evolves and users get more comfortable. We covered growth drivers and touched on some next use cases, but picture voice AI in two years. Five years.
How will consumers and business use it then? Future uses as the sector explodes seem stunning now but will be here soon.
“The number of voice assistant users in the U.S. is expected to grow to 157 million by 2026,” according to Statista. I live in this sector and some of the uses are ones I seriously had not even thought of. Future uses in two to five years with examples are our focus in upcoming Part 3.
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