In 2025, advancements in generative and conversational AI have pushed AI-driven tools out of the experimental stage. AI-powered automations, virtual agents, and analytics have become necessary and foundational to the operations of contact centers. Companies that use CcaaS software are starting to invest less in traditional seat licenses, and more into innovative AI features that will have a big impact on the customer experience and the bottom line.[*]
Two trends gaining traction are the use of AI-powered agent assistance, which is expected to reduce costs by 30-40%. [*] and AI Receptionists which typically cost 50-75% less than live answering services.[*] Many contact centers have raced to integrate AI to power chatbots and voice agents alike, creating natural and dynamic conversations for customers. One company reported a 300% ROI in the first year of implementing AI Receptionists.[*]
Despite the staggering advancements of AI in 2025, there were some setbacks. One big obstacle is the massive amount of energy that AI uses. There has been such a surge in energy consumption that Gartner predicts GenAI will exceed power utilities' capacity by 2027.[*]
Let's look at other factors impacting the state of the contact center in 2026.
CCaaS/CX Providers to Disrupt the Space in 2026
The vendor landscape is evolving quickly, with several providers distinguishing themselves through innovation and strategic developments.
Here are three notable CCaaS/CX platforms to look out for:
#1 - Nextiva
Nextiva has become a pioneer in integrating customer experience solutions into its unified CX platform. Their NextOS ecosystem goes beyond traditional contact center features by centralizing customer data from various touchpoints and using AI-driven insights to provide personalized interactions and enhance customer engagement.
Key Disruptions:
- AI Moving from Pilot to Performance: Nextiva’s advanced AI has expanded upon routine automations to focus on measurable impacts such as reduced handle time, higher customer satisfactions rates, and improved containment rates.
- True Unified Communications + CCaaS: by blending UCaaS with CCaaS, Nextiva offers a cohesive experience for both agents and customers in any segment.
- Ultimate Simplicity: they’ve simplified CCaaS adoption for SMBs and enterprises by offering transparent low pricing, and a no-code out of the box interface.
With its focus on simplicity, AI, and unifying communications across platforms, Nextiva is proving to be a formidable disruptor.
#2 - Zoom
In 2025, Zoom was recognized for the first time by Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service. This is notable as Zoom just barely launched its CCaaS solution in 2022. As with its video conferencing platform, Zoom has continuously enhanced and innovated its CCaaS platform, leveraging the company’s expertise in real-time communication to revolutionize customer engagement.
Key Disruption:
- Agentic AI capabilities: At Zoomtopia 2025, Zoom announced that its AI can now take context from conversations and reason with that context, allowing it to not only determine the next best steps, but perform them
- Zoom CX Insights: An interactive native conversational intelligence tool that allows admins and supervisors to ask questions about customer issues and trends using natural language launched in 2025
- Deep CRM integrations: Zoom has made its real-time transcription, unified routing, and AI assistance available in Salesforce Service Cloud and launched an agent-to-agent integration with ServiceNow for cross-department automation
Zoom’s ability to combine its communication strengths with innovative AI tools has positioned it as a key player reshaping the CCaaS market.
#3 - Microsoft
In 2025, Microsoft began diverting all internal links from the Microsoft Digital Contact Center platform to the Dynamics 365 Contact Center product page, signaling its full commitment to the CCaaS space for 2026 and beyond. By leveraging its robust cloud infrastructure and AI capabilities, Microsoft provides businesses with an integrated platform that connects CX directly to other operational areas.
Key Disruption:
- End-to-End CX Ecosystem: Dynamics 365 Contact Center seamlessly integrates with Microsoft’s existing suite of tools, including Azure, Teams, and Power BI, enabling businesses to create a unified CX strategy.
- Generative AI Leadership: Microsoft customers can now use CoPilot Studio to create AI agents that have access to the company knowledge base and CRM, can answer common questions, and perform simple processes
- Teams Phone Integration: In September 2025, Microsoft announced Teams Phone extensibility for Dynamics 365 Contact Center, fully converging UCaaS and CCaaS capabilities under one pane of glass
Microsoft’s strategic focus on embedding CX into broader business workflows is disrupting traditional contact center models, making it a leader in the category.
As we move further into 2026, Nextiva, Zoom, and Microsoft are setting new benchmarks for what CCaaS platforms can deliver to contact centers, driving innovation and reshaping how businesses interact with their customers.
Generative AI Inspires More Conversational Support
Contact center providers continue to integrate conversational AI technology into their support and sales-focused CCaaS software. Providers like Five9 and Genesys have incorporated artificial intelligence across several aspects of the call center experience. Modern CCaaS technology commonly uses AI for live call transcription, live-agent support, canned response suggestions, and even automated post-call summaries.
However, the most popular and rapidly trending use of AI focuses on automated customer self-service: AI Receptionists, which can chat with customers via text or voice, and converse using natural human languiage. Today's CCaaS providers offer highly conversational AI agents, embedded into companies' websites and apps, and able to answer calls and texts.
These automated tools provide a major advantage over traditional live-agent service because virtual agents provide convenient 24/7 customer support. Customers appreciate this, as 73% state that long waiting times are a major problem.[*] In short, companies are using AI to improve the customer's experience.
For example, in 2025, Five9 announced two CX-focus updates to its Genius AI Suite. An AI performance analytics tool that monitors and analyzes 100% of customer interactions to identify problems, trends, customer sentiment, and agent behavior, and Genius AI Routing, an adaptive queueing and routing bot that determines the best available agent based on AQM data and real-time customer activity.
Expansion In Omnichannel Customer Service
While customers continue to use digital channels more frequently, 86% still say they prefer to receive customer support over the phone.[*] To meet these mixed communication preferences and optimize customer convenience, contact centers have turned to omnichannel solutions.
Most of today's leading CCaaS providers offer multiple types of plans: voice-only, digital-only, and omnichannel plans. These omnichannel plans provide agents with a singular interface that unifies key channels like voice, SMS, live chat, email, and social media messaging. Contact center users can jump between tasks easily, switching channels depending on which one the customer is using. This flexibility simplifies things for the customer, which is especially important for younger audiences, as 87% of millennials say convenience is important to them.[*]
NICE CXone's omnichannel dashboard
Contact center providers like Talkdesk, NICE, and Twilio Flex offer customizable dashboards that let administrators and agents choose how they want the CCaaS app's interface to look. As we move forward into 2026, expect omnichannel interfaces to become more deeply integrated and increasingly user-friendly for agents.
AI In Video Messages, Just Getting Started
For many years, the pre and post-meeting experience have benefitted greatly from artificial intelligence enhancement. Lead Analyst at ZK Research, Zeus Kerravala, notes that:
“AI in video meetings is just getting started and for it to show the real value it has to be used to solve harder problems. Transcription is nice, but meeting notes are better. So I’m pretty excited about AI being used not just during the meeting experience but also in the pre-and post-meeting experiences as well.”
For instance, if an action item is stated in a meeting, some systems, namely Cisco's advanced meeting tools - can extend reminders and automatically create action items to ensure the proverbial ball doesn't get drooped. Deemed the Webex Assistant, it uses AI to take notes, extend closed captions, and even has voice-activated commands.
Webex Digital Assistant
As for the use of video in CCaaS, providers like Zoom and Google found even more uses for AI in 2025, such as Zoom's customizable video waiting rooms, and Google Cloud's Smart Device features which blend channels to facilitate video sharing and on-device authentication. This all points to GenAI in video being all the more relevant in 2026.
A Growing Emphasis On Higher Security
2025 saw a proposed update to HIPAA as well as the largest deployment of encryption in over a decade, highlighting the attention on better security to prevent data breaches. About 58% of businesses leverage AI for key encryption management and compliance tasks. [*] The proposed HIPAA update would make encryption of health data mandatory.[*]
In addition to data encryption, CCaaS providers must now comply with an expanding number of regulations including:
- GDPR: Mandatory to safeguard personal data of EU citizens
- CCPA: California Consumer Privacy Act which protects the data of Californias residents
- PCI-DSS: Ensures secure handling of credit and debit card and payment information
- SOC-2: Mandatory controls for security, processing integrity, confidentiality, privacy, etc.
And in order to remain competitive in the healthcare industry, CCaaS providers must also comply with HIPAA. Many CCaaS providers now offer tools to automate compliance as well as features like multi-factor authentication, detailed activity logging, and real-time monitoring to identify potential breaches.
2026 will be one for the books
For the contact center arena, it is sure to be an interesting one, thanks to the countless advancements made last year and the ones we can likely anticipate this year as well.
And there are countless trends that could shift how we view CCaaS, like new offerings and the use of more artificial intelligence during the agent experience: ones designed to make their jobs easier to execute.
