The future of Contact Centers will increasingly rely on Synthetic Agents—LLM assistants equipped with functions triggered by the context of the conversation. IVRs will progressively disappear completely as the technology becomes widespread.
Luxury services will increasingly use the human factor as a selling point but will slowly and inexorably move towards this trend, albeit passively. I would not be surprised to see this happen in less than 10 years.
Telco companies that will rise are those enabling stream towards speech-to-speech models, as that is a fundamental pillar enabling this technology—they will gain prominence by positioning themselves early, establishing themselves as references in the space.
Older, traditional players will mostly lag behind, surviving thanks to their sheer physical infrastructure, which will allow them to remain afloat and eventually adopt the technology. Others will disappear, and some will survive by swallowing up smaller but innovative challengers.
This is where the industry is heading, but for those interested and impatient, the tech exists today and it is not overly complicated. You do need people passionate about the topic, of course, but it is not rocket science.
As time goes on, the price to run these models and the providers supporting them will decrease, democratizing the feature. Very soon, it will be everywhere and will become quite banal.