For years the conventional wisdom was that voice was dying: younger customers wanted chat, messaging, and self-service, not phone queues. The 2026 data complicates that story. McKinsey finds 71% of Gen Z would now reach out to support via a live phone call, a reversal of the digital-only assumption that shaped a decade of contact-centre strategy.
The pull is coming from consumers, not just vendors. Zendesk's Customer Experience Trends Report 2026 finds 60% of consumers want companies to adopt advanced Voice AI, and around 70% say more natural-sounding AI on the phone would improve their experience. Quality is the gating factor: near-human fluency is what converts reluctant callers into willing Voice AI users.
The timing matters because call volumes are climbing. 57% of business leaders expect service call volumes to rise by up to a fifth over the next one to two years. That combination of rising demand and renewed preference for voice is exactly the pressure that pushes contact centres toward AI to absorb volume without proportional headcount growth.
The most AI-mature teams have already made the call: 90% of Zendesk's CX 'Trendsetters' believe Voice AI is ushering in the next era of voice-driven service. For everyone else, the strategic risk is treating voice as a legacy channel to wind down rather than an AI channel to rebuild.