Artificial intelligence (AI) has reached a point where the conversation is no longer about capability, but clarity. Businesses are asking a different set of questions than they were even a year ago: What decisions will AI help me make? Where does it reduce risk? And how do I keep the customer experience feeling human, not automated for automation’s sake?
Across the industry, we’re seeing a shift from experimenting with standalone AI features to orchestrating entire customer journeys. This is where agentic voice AI is starting to change the equation. Rather than operating as a chatbot, or an add-on within a communications stack, agentic AI can observe, interpret, and act, closing the loop between conversations, journeys, and the workforce.
Done well, this offers something organisations desperately need, and that SMEs in particular are often lacking: clarity. Clarity about demand. Clarity about customer intent. Clarity about which actions will drive better outcomes. Simplifying and strengthening the customer journey is critical not only before customers engage, but during and after each interaction.
This shift isn’t about the technology itself, but rather how organizations are directing it toward the moments that matter most to customers and teams alike.
Before: Managing demand earlier in the journey
For many organizations, the customer journey is already compromised before a human ever gets involved. Missed calls, poorly triaged enquiries, and unpredictable peaks in demand create friction that customers now have very little patience for.
Agentic voice AI is providing businesses with a far clearer picture of what’s coming. Instead of relying purely on historical data or instinct, companies can use real-time insights to forecast demand more accurately, adjust staffing proactively, and route calls intelligently from the outset.
For SMEs, where we witness heightened role consolidation compared to larger businesses, this matters even more. A single missed call can be the difference between winning and losing a customer. Smarter call handling ensures that demand is captured, scored, and directed to the right place first time. The aim isn’t to replace people, but to reduce abandoned calls, blind transfers, and the moments where customers feel they’ve fallen between the cracks.
This early-journey orchestration sets the tone for the entire experience. Customers get answers faster, staff waste less time on misrouted work, and businesses avoid the silent leak that many never realise is happening.
During: Elevating the agent experience
Once a customer is in conversation with a business, expectations change. People want quick answers, but they also want to feel understood. It’s in this moment that another big risk lies – over automation. Although with good intentions, endless layers of technology can make the experience feel less human, not more helpful. Customers notice this immediately.
Agentic voice AI works differently by sitting alongside the agent rather than in front of the customer. It listens, interprets context, surfaces relevant information and guidance, and summarises key points in real time, all without interrupting the flow of the conversation. Instead of replacing the human, it strengthens them.
Across sectors like healthcare, financial services and retail, we’re seeing similar patterns. Teams want help with accuracy, compliance, and consistency, and to feel like they are delivering a genuinely human experience. When AI is used well during an interaction, the customer never feels the seams of the system. They simply get a smoother experience because the agent is more informed and better supported.
After: Turning conversations into a strategic data set
The most overlooked part of the customer journey has always been what happens after a voice interaction is finished. Historically, organizations captured recordings and metrics, but few could understand or act on the why behind them. The result was an enormous amount of untapped value.
Post-interaction insights and analysis of them at scale can pinpoint gaps in routing, highlight where scripts need refining and reveal where demand isn’t being met. This level of clarity gives leaders the confidence to act on data rather than gut feel. Business can also turn this insight into a strategic lever for growth.
The organisations seeing the strongest results are the ones that treat conversations as a continuous feedback loop rather than a one-off transaction. Every interaction becomes an opportunity to improve the next one.
Defining AI’s next phase
Agentic voice AI isn’t about replacing agents or reinventing customer service from scratch. It’s about orchestrating the journey so that each moment of an interaction — before, during and after — is handled with more insight, more consistency, and more human understanding. It lets organisations connect conversations, journeys and workforce decisions in a way that improves outcomes on all sides.
In this shift, Agentic voice AI becomes a practical, trusted partner for teams, ensuring customers get the right answers, faster, and clarity, trust, and readiness at the centre of every experience.
John Finch, VP product marketing at RingCentral