‘Finally Good Enough’: Agents Take On Voice AI

The latest buzzword is “agentic.” Not only is ServiceNow investing heavily in the tech, but also about half of the companies surveyed by PwC have broadly or fully adopted agents.

And among the latest and most promising frontiers in agentic is Voice AI. In 2025, two things have become clear, said Alex Levin, CEO of contact-center software company Regal: “Voice AI technology is finally good enough, and companies understand that they need to invest in it.” 

Over the past couple of years, the progress in what agents can actually achieve has been immense. 

“LLMs are increasingly able to replicate the complex parts of human workflows,” Levin said. “For example, we have a customer that has automated negotiations via Voice AI. That’s something that wasn’t possible two years ago.” 

But still, he cautioned against over-promising: “Most AI agent projects fall short in execution.” Plus, he added, “building directly on LLMs is like building on sand.” 

What’s important is that companies properly incorporate and take advantage of the tech. That, he says, is how AI agents can succeed. 

“Success isn’t binary, it’s iterative, and the teams that understand that are the ones succeeding,” Levin said. He’s seen insurance and healthcare lead the Voice AI charge, taking over support, lead nurturing, and operational calls. AI can reduce cost-to-serve while maintaining the high level of consideration people expect. 

And that’s just in the past two years. In the next year, Levin foresees organizations adopting AI agents in droves, just like they did with mobile apps. The agents themselves will have improved latency, cadence, tone and emotion, making them feel more human.

“Over 90% of interactions will be voice as it’s what customers want (when they can’t self-serve) and the cost will be lower than any other channel,” Levin said. “Chatbots as we know them today won’t exist a few years from now. People don’t want to type; they want to pick up the phone and get something done.”