Sarah-Jane Heber-Hall
Operations Director
Computertel Ltd.
United Kingdom

"No, Humans have a basic need to interact with each other on some level, therefore there will always be a customer need to speak with someone. Contact Centre agents will be utilised in a more specialised, highly skilled way and offer an expert status of information transference to the customer, when they want it."

Tom Smith
Senior manager for contact center solutions product marketing
Verizon
United States

"If that day ever does come, it is a long way off. For the foreseeable future, only live contact center agents will be able to fully understand and address some of the more complex problems that callers need help with. Technology (including speech) should not be viewed as the solution to all contact center needs; rather, it is an indispensible tool to empower callers and agents to resolve problems."

D. Daniel Ziv
VP Voice of the Customer Analytics
Verint
United States

"No. I believe humans will always have the need to interact with other humans. And although self service will increase and improve leveraging speech technologies, there will always be complex interactions that will require human intervention with a live agent."

Jeff Schlueter
VP, Marketing & Business Development
Nice Nexidia
United States

"No, there will always be a need for some type of human interaction between companies and customers."

Steve Pels
Director
Contact Centre Action
Australia

"Absolutely not. As lower value transactions are being automated, more and more work is being shifted into the contact centre. Even during the recent economically difficult times we saw significant growth in the Australian contact centre industry."

Nigel Sedgwick
Director
Cambridge Algorithmica Limited
United Kingdom

"I do hope not, though less customers will need an agent and less transactions will need an agent."

Karl Graham
Vice President - regional and Telecommunications Markets
Xerox
Jamaica

"Not at all!! but it will reduce the need for human capital tremendously."

Ross Krisel
Vice President of Marketing and Business Development
IntelePeer, Inc.
United States

"Never, as customers become more in tune to utilizing virtual agent and speech related applications, IVR containment will continue to grow allowing contact centers the ability to have thier agents focus on more strategic customer facing initiatives, as we know companies cannot automate everything, there will always be a need for good live agents."

Brett Feldon
General Manager, EMEA
Salmat
United Kingdom

""Absolutely not, and it never should. Speech has its benefits in routing, ID&V (Identity & verification) and simple self-service, but this should be used to complement and assist contact centre agents in providing callers with an excellent customer experience. As soon as it’s more appropriate for an interaction to take place with a live agent, the call should be seamlessly transferred, with all the necessary information going with it.""

Andrew Kay
Director
Jersey

"There is a fair chance of this."

Trevor Geraghty
Business Development Director
Difference Corporation
United Kingdom

"No I feel it will replace and enhance certain aspects of processes but with such a diverse set of users great technology coupled with great human support is the best match. It would be like asking will supermarkets ever replace great restaurants both sell food !"

Rupert Utteridge
Director - Sales & Marketing
Digital Techniques
Australia

"While many of the contact centre functions can be replaced by speech processing and computer applications there are many times when "real person" is more important. People sometimes require people for socialising."