Zendesk contact centre voice passes 100 sales leads

Zendesk's contact centre voice business has passed 100 sales opportunities in the past year, a milestone it linked to rising demand for AI-based voice tools as call volumes remain high.

Voice still accounts for 40% of contact centre volume, according to Zendesk research, while 75% of contact centre leaders said legacy technology prevents them from delivering a true omnichannel service.

That backdrop has shaped demand for Zendesk Contact Centre, the voice product introduced after the company acquired Local Measure and integrated a native voice offering into its Resolution Platform. The strongest response has come from organisations with 250 to 750 agents, though Zendesk also reported wins in the 600 to 1,000-agent segment.

Among the commercial results disclosed were individual seven-figure annual recurring revenue agreements and a 4,000-seat deployment. The service also now officially supports HIPAA-enabled accounts.

Voice demand

The figures point to a market in which voice remains central to customer service despite years of investment in digital channels such as chat, email and messaging. Many contact centres are now trying to connect voice systems with the same customer history and service context already available through those digital tools, Zendesk argued.

Phone support has long operated on separate systems from digital service operations, leaving agents to switch between tools and customers to repeat information. That divide is becoming harder to justify as firms seek tighter integration across channels.

A customer using the platform described the operational appeal of working from one interface. "The value of a single interface has been huge for us, especially as we scale," said Bridget O'Sullivan, HR Manager, Five Iron Golf.

Competitive push

Zendesk said it has displaced established legacy providers in a number of competitive deals, though it did not name them. The product also won business in every region over the past 12 months.

The company is positioning the offer around a unified desktop for service agents, combining telephony infrastructure from Amazon Connect with Zendesk's own AI tools. It is sold through a bundled commercial arrangement with AWS, allowing telephony, platform minutes and AI services to be billed by Zendesk under one contract.

That approach reflects a broader effort by software vendors to simplify buying decisions for contact centres that would otherwise need to combine separate providers for telephony, workflow software and automation. For buyers, especially in larger deployments, a single commercial arrangement can matter as much as technical integration.

Tom Eggemeier, Chief Executive Officer, Zendesk, framed the shift as part of a wider change in how customer service teams operate. "Voice can no longer live in an isolated operational silo," he said. "Our incredible contact center momentum over the past year proves that businesses want voice natively woven into a single, AI-first resolution platform. By eliminating the friction of disconnected tools, we are giving organizations the exact foundation they need to run a modern, autonomous contact center workforce."

Market shift

Zendesk's argument rests on the idea that AI in customer service is moving beyond digital self-service and into traditional phone support. While chatbots and automated workflows are already common on websites and messaging apps, voice has often remained dependent on older infrastructure and separate software stacks.

For vendors such as Zendesk, that creates an opening to sell more integrated systems to companies trying to modernise without maintaining separate environments for calls and digital interactions. Omnichannel support has been a feature of the sector for years, but persistently high voice volumes suggest many contact centres still rely heavily on the telephone.

Jonathan Barouch, General Manager, Zendesk Contact Centre, said the company sees this as a structural shift rather than a short-term product cycle. "The future of service belongs to the unencumbered," he said. "By harmonizing deployment, support, and cutting-edge AI under one roof, we've removed the invisible boundaries that have held contact centers back for decades. This isn't just a milestone year for Zendesk - it's a defining moment for where the industry goes next."