For decades, IVRs have been a necessary evil in contact centres.
They were built to automate call handling, reduce pressure on agents, and route callers quickly.
In reality, they’ve done quite the opposite - becoming synonymous with frustration, inefficiency, and a poor customer experience.
Just ask the 55% of customers who say IVRs make them jump through hoops to get help. Or the 51% who abandon businesses entirely to avoid dealing with one.
In an era of technologies like conversational AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), is this really the best automated support call centres can offer?
It’s time to say what many already know: traditional IVRs are broken. And they’re not worth fixing.
Why IVRs are dead
Static menus. Rigid flows. Impersonal scripts. Traditional IVRs rely on technology that hasn’t evolved with the people it serves.
They don’t understand natural conversation. They don’t accommodate nuance or context. And they certainly don’t reflect the expectations of today’s customers who want faster, smarter, and more human support.
Most IVRs operate like outdated vending machines: press the right buttons and you might get what you need. But if you say the wrong thing or get routed to the wrong team? You’re back to the main menu.
This isn’t efficient automation. It’s obstruction.
And it’s not just customers who suffer. IVRs are hard to maintain, require manual updates, and offer minimal insight into why callers are reaching out - making life harder for the teams trying to support them.
In short: IVR isn’t just a bad experience. It’s bad business.
Why Voice AI is the solution
Enter Voice AI: the next generation of automated phone support.
Unlike legacy IVRs, Voice AI doesn’t rely on rigid trees and pre-recorded prompts. It listens, understands, and responds to customers in real time, just like a human agent would.
That means callers can speak naturally, get answers instantly, and feel heard - all without waiting in a queue or navigating a labyrinth of options.
But this isn’t just a better experience for the customer. It’s better for your business too. Here’s why:
- Better language understanding: With Voice AI, customers can ask questions in their own words. In turn, the AI responds in a natural, conversational way, while also being able to handle speech pauses, stutters, and interruptions.
- Higher containment rates: AI voicebots can resolve many customer calls without human intervention - driving huge efficiency gains and reducing cost-per-contact.
- Smarter routing: AI understands intent. So, when an escalation is needed, it passes the call (and the context) to the right person instantly.
- Advanced self-service: By integrating with company knowledge bases and other systems (e.g. CRMs), AI voicebots can answer a huge range of queries and automate tasks like appointment bookings, order status updates, and more.
- Multilingual capabilities: With support for a range of languages, accents, and dialects, Voice AI helps you serve diverse customer bases and improve accessibility.
- Deeper insights: AI-powered analytics and reporting give you better insight into what your customers are saying, why they’re calling, and how to improve.
This is what modern phone support should look like: seamless, intelligent, and built around the customer.
Replacing IVR doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel
One of the biggest misconceptions about Voice AI is that it’s complicated to implement. But it doesn’t have to be.
Modern solutions (like Talkative’s Voice AI) are built for easy deployment, deep CCaaS integration, and low operational overhead. Whether you’re replacing an existing IVR or launching AI call handling from scratch, it’s never been easier to get started.
Best of all, it’s designed to help and empower your agents, not replace them.
When a caller’s query falls outside the scope of Voice AI’s capabilities, it seamlessly hands off to the appropriate team, along with a full transcript and summary of the interaction so far. This means agents get the context they need instantly - and customers don’t have to repeat themselves.
The result? Faster resolutions, less frustration, and a smoother experience for both callers and agents.
The future of phone support is here
The bottom line? Customers still want to pick up the phone. But what they don’t want is another dead-end menu system.
Voice AI gives them a better way. And, it gives contact centres the ability to deliver it at scale.
Want to hear more?
See Talkative’s CEO, Felix Winstone, speak on this topic live at the Call & Contact Centre Expo this November.
