IVR systems have been the bane of customer service for decades. Now AI is stepping in to save us all from menu purgatory with smart, conversational call routing.
I have never known a customer who calls a company and enjoys listening to a long menu asking them to “press 1 for sales, press 2 for service, press 3 for accounting….” and so on. Yet, for more than 40 years, businesses have embraced the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system.
Companies have misused and overused IVRs, leaving customers to pound the zero button or yell “agent” repeatedly for those that are voice-enabled.
A long-overdue change is looming, thanks to AI.
Already, 37.6% of companies plan to fully replace IVRs with AI triage agents, and 62.5% of Metrigy’s Research Success Group plan to do the same, according to Metrigy’s CX Optimization 2025-26 global study of 656 companies. (The Research Success Group comprises companies that have the highest measurable business metric improvements with AI, and they are historically a leading indicator of what’s to come.)
I made the prediction that the use of IVRs would be drastically reduced by 2030 and would be gone within the next decade during my session at the recent Salesforce Dreamforce. The audience of about 200 people had interesting reactions: Some shook their heads in enthusiastic agreement, while others grimaced with expressions that shouted, “Oh crap!”
After all, IVRs have been a stalwart in the contact center. They house the results of hours-long meetings to determine scripts that address high-level reasons customers call, along with sub-menus of detailed reasons. Get rid of IVRs? And then what happens?
What’s Next With Customer Triage?
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