For a long time, the contact center’s relationship with AI has seemingly been framed around one question: how many jobs can it cut?
It’s an understandable instinct. Contact centers have historically been viewed as overhead, a necessary cost to manage rather than an asset to grow.
So, when AI arrived with promises of efficiency, the conversation quickly turned to headcount reduction, shorter calls, and trimmed budgets.
But that framing is leaving real money on the table.
Martin Kalinov, CMO at Voiso, thinks most contact center leaders are asking the wrong question entirely.
“The biggest misconception is that integrating AI in a contact center is mostly about cutting costs – shorter calls, fewer agents, that kind of thing,” he told CX Today.
“But the revenue impact actually comes from better execution: reaching the right customers faster, prioritizing the right conversations, and reducing friction for agents during live calls.”
Cost savings and revenue growth aren’t mutually exclusive, but right now, too many leaders are only chasing one of them.
Voice Isn’t Going Anywhere
It’s worth addressing a customer service assumption before going any further; that voice is on the way out, because the data says otherwise.
As digital channels have scaled, voice has consolidated its role as the channel where high-stakes conversations actually get resolved. Renewals, pricing negotiations, urgent issues – these rarely close well over async messaging, and customers know it.
Kalinov is blunt about the commercial reality, claiming that “as digital channels scale, voice consistently shows up as the highest-intent channel for complex, time-sensitive decisions.
“Digital is great for deflection and efficiency, but when revenue is on the line, voice is still where commitment happens.
“And let’s face it, voice will always remain the premium channel for human interactions.”
For contact centers trying to grow revenue, deprioritizing voice in favor of chat and self-service often means deprioritizing exactly the interactions most likely to convert.
The Leaks Nobody’s Measuring
Ask most leaders where their biggest inefficiencies are, and they’ll point to idle time or average handle time.
This makes sense, as it’s visible, measurable, and easy to report on. The less obvious problems, the ones quietly killing revenue, are harder to pin down.
Kalinov points to a few that come up repeatedly:
“Follow-ups that happen hours too late or leads worked out of priority order eat away at conversion rates.”
But the deeper issue is visibility, as “leaders often don’t know in real time which conversations are stalling, which queues are backing up, or where agents are struggling until it’s too late to do anything about it.
“Companies tend to focus on the top of the funnel, while the bottom – exactly where customers are ready to buy – gets ignored, or is expected to sell itself.”
It’s rarely about effort or headcount. More often, it comes down to whether leaders can see what’s happening while they can still do something about it.
Better Infrastructure, Same Team
Smarter dialing, cleaner routing, real-time dashboards; while none of these are new concepts, the way modern platforms actually implement them is a long way from what most legacy setups can offer.
Voiso’s AI dialer reduces idle time and improves connect rates by automating outbound sequencing.
Flow Builder handles routing logic so calls reach the right agent without manual triage, while live dashboards give team leaders visibility into queue buildup, agent availability, and dialing performance as it happens.
Kalinov pointed to Airpaz, a global online travel agency handling high inbound volumes across multiple markets, as a practical illustration.
Prior to Voiso, a significant share of calls were abandoned before reaching an agent, and routing complexity made real-time fixes nearly impossible.
“After implementing routing through our Flow Builder tool, call abandonment dropped from 50 percent to 10%,” he said.
“Local caller ID increased answer rates five times over. The revenue impact didn’t come from AI selling, it came from more calls reaching the right agents faster, fewer missed conversations, and agents spending their time on higher-value interactions instead of routine inquiries.”
That means there’s no need for new hires; it’s the same team, but with better results.
Fixing Problems While You Still Can
There’s a meaningful difference between a leader who manages by end-of-day reports and one who can react during the shift. At enterprise scale, that gap gets expensive fast.
Kalinov details how “team leaders get live visibility into agent availability, active calls, queue buildup, connect rates, and dialing performance throughout the day.
“They can spot problems early – priority leads waiting too long, agents sitting idle, routing creating bottlenecks – and adjust on the spot.
“That ability to course-correct mid-shift is the difference between managing activity and actually protecting revenue.”
Where to Start
For leaders who recognize these problems but feel constrained by their current setup, Kalinov’s advice is to pick one workflow rather than attempt a complete overhaul.
“The fastest wins usually come from tightening execution, reducing time-to-first-call, improving how priority leads get routed, or giving leaders better visibility into what’s happening,” he said.
“Once leaders can clearly see where conversations are stalling or leaking, it becomes a lot easier to justify broader changes.”
Most contact centers already have the team in place. The question is whether the infrastructure around them is doing its job.
Explore Voiso’s full suite of AI-powered contact center tools by visiting the website today.
