Since the early days of VoIP, we’ve been talking about the demise of legacy telephony structures. “Press 1 for sales” was always a symptom of old-school thinking. Now, with OpenAI’s real-time SIP integration, that era is finally over.
For years, I’ve advocated for smarter systems. In 2018, when Dialpad acquired TalkIQ, I wrote how AI would become as common in communications as voicemail once was—and I called out telcos who weren’t adopting AI as heading toward irrelevance ~[Dialpad Adds Voice AI via TalkIQ Acquisition] (Yes, i’m a Dialpad shareholder and I refer often to this post as it’s seminal to so much of today’s VoIP + AI world)
Fast-forward to 2025, and AI isn’t just assisting, it’s replacing. Contact centers don’t need crude IVRs anymore. With SIP-native AI, the AI understands your words, your intent, and gets things done faster than any Tier 1 agent ever could. This isn’t an enhancement. This is the extermination of inefficiency.
The “press 1” world was a patchwork of menus, decision trees, and delay loops. In 2014, I pointed out that enterprise VoIP was becoming more about customer experience than call completion. Back in 2004, I wrote ~[For Whom The Bell No Longer Tolls]~ about how VoIP was disrupting telecom. Now we’re here.
Telcos win this round. Why? Because AI over SIP turns the old “minutes business” into “intent minutes.” As I wrote in 2010, BroadSoft’s push into the cloud was the early clue. It was never about the phone—it was about the platform ~[Broadsoft Heads for The Clouds]~ .
Even back in 2005, I highlighted the original Dialpad’s disruption of the pricing model and its impact on user experience. That DNA of innovation never left them ~[“Dialpad’s Unlimited Calling”] before being sold to Yahoo, and today they, Zoom, Twilio, and 8×8 are reaping the benefits by building AI-first call flows.
Let’s be clear, IVR vendors are now on hospice care. Tier 1 BPOs are about to be squeezed like toothpaste. Human agents? They’ll still have roles, but for empathy, not entry-level billing queries.
We’ve moved from “press 1” to “tell me what you need.”
And the real kicker? You won’t even notice the change. That’s what great UX is: invisible until you realize everything is just easier.
At the end of the day, if you’re still building your customer experience around a keypad, you’re not building for the future. You’re maintaining a museum.