What’s Next for Talkative in 2026

‍AI adoption in contact centres has moved quickly over the past few years - but progress hasn’t always been linear. 

Many teams have experimented with chatbots, voice automation, and generative AI, only to find that promising demos don’t always translate into real-world results.

As we head into 2026, the conversation is shifting. Contact centres are moving beyond experimentation and into execution, where trust, quality, and operational simplicity matter just as much as raw AI capability.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in voice AI, which is following the same adoption curve chat did - but with far higher impact and expectations.

At Talkative, we see 2026 as a continuation of momentum, not a reset. It’s the year AI becomes a reliable, scalable layer within the contact centre - delivering measurable value without adding complexity.

2025: Building the foundations for quality, scalable AI

In 2025, we focused on building AI that works in real contact centre environments - guided by customer needs. We delivered major product updates, including:

• A new voice AI configuration interface, making it easier to set up, manage, and optimise voicebots.
• Voice AI Copilot, providing real-time transcription, guidance and support for human agents during live calls, and deeper insights for supervisors.
• Expanded multilingual capabilities, with new language options for voice AI and a browsable library of voices, accents, and dialects - complete with audio previews to ensure bots sound natural and on-brand.
• A Voice AI Playground, allowing teams to test their AI voicebots instantly in-browser - making it easy to validate knowledge base lookups, call flows, integrations, and performance without test calls.
• Enhanced voice AI tools, enabling smarter call handling through configurable actions such as transfers, knowledge base search, external API calls, and calendar bookings - unlocking more advanced self-service and automation.

We also continued our commitment to providing the safest access to AI for contact centres, underpinned by our ongoing compliance with standards such as ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, PCI, and the EU AI Act.

On the integration side, we expanded Talkative's ability to fit into existing tech stacks. This included new launches across hosted telephony platforms such as 3CX and Coredial, alongside continued growth through our OEM partnership with Mitel. 

The success with these integrations reinforced our approach of modernising contact centres without forcing rip-and-replace decisions.

Our customer results also validated this direction. Premium baby and parenting brand Bugaboo achieved a 75% containment rate and a 35% increase in average order value with Talkative AI. What’s more, their customers who interact with AI proved to be three times more likely to add items to their cart.

Meanwhile, Healthspan, a leading wellness and supplement brand in the UK, achieved a 90% chatbot containment rate for product queries within just eight weeks of deployment. 

These case studies demonstrate how quickly AI can deliver measurable value when it’s built on company knowledge, designed for real use cases, and deployed as part of the existing contact centre stack.

The reality of contact centre AI in 2026

Despite rapid advances in AI, many contact centres still struggle to move from promise to performance. 

The challenge isn’t access to powerful models or technology. It’s making AI reliable, scalable, and operational in real-world environments.

We consistently see three barriers holding teams back:

1. Trust remains the biggest hurdle. Organisations need confidence that AI will provide accurate, brand-aligned answers over time, yet many lack the tools to refine prompts, audit knowledge, and manage performance. 
2. Quality is another challenge. Teams are often forced to choose between rigid, rule-based bots or generic AI wrappers that struggle with latency, context, and natural conversation - particularly on voice. 
3. And finally, there’s complexity. Too many AI solutions are still delivered as heavy engineering projects, with long setup times and ongoing dependency on specialist services.

At the same time, expectations are rising. Customers increasingly engage through conversational interfaces, and AI is becoming a brand touchpoint - not just a cost-saving tool. 

In 2026, success will depend on AI that can be trusted, delivers high-quality conversations across channels, and integrates easily into existing contact centre environments.

Our focus for 2026

In 2026, our focus is simple: helping contact centres deliver exceptional AI customer service at scale - without added complexity.

Everything we’re building is guided by a clear set of priorities:

1. AI you can trust - grounded in brand knowledge and easy to control, continuously improve, and tailor to specific use cases.
2. High-quality service and experiences across voice and digital channels - with AI that supports customers, agents, and CX leaders.
3. Easy deployment and integration - working as a flexible AI layer within existing contact centre environments.
4. People-first AI adoption -empowering agents, supervisors, and leaders through real-time support, deeper insights, and enablement.

These pillars shape how we’re evolving Talkative this year, from greater investment in voice AI and knowledge-led systems to broader integrations, faster time to value, and stronger enablement for customers and partners alike.

Below, we break these pillars down in more detail and explain what they mean in practice for Talkative and contact centres in 2026.

1. AI customer service you can trust 

Trust is the hardest problem to solve in contact centre AI - and the one that matters most.

Accurate answers, consistent behaviour, and brand alignment don’t come from models alone. They come from how knowledge, prompts, and performance are managed over time.

In 2026, we’re continuing to invest heavily in Talkative’s knowledge base and prompt methodology. This includes a complete overhaul of the knowledge base management experience, making it easier for teams to structure, refine, and maintain the information their AI relies on.

Alongside this, our prompt-driven approach will give teams fine-grained control over how AI behaves across channels. Prompts can be managed and updated in natural language, enabling rapid testing and refinement using real interaction data. This creates a continuous feedback loop in which AI is improved over time without relying on busy technical teams.

The result is AI that stays accurate as businesses evolve, behaves predictably at scale, and delivers excellent customer experiences - allowing contact centres to deploy AI with confidence.

2. High-quality CX across voice & digital channels

In 2026, voice AI is our primary vehicle for growth. 

While chat adoption has matured over the past few years, telephony remains the largest cost centre for contact centres - and the biggest opportunity for meaningful AI impact.

We’re seeing accelerating demand for voice solutions as organisations look to move beyond rigid IVRs and basic automation to intelligent AI that doesn’t compromise customer experience. 

Talkative is positioned at the front of this shift, delivering high-quality voice conversations that handle interruptions, context switching, and natural dialogue - not rigid, menu-driven flows.

Alongside continued investment in voice AI enhancement, we’re extending the same fluid, prompt-driven approach across chat and messaging. 

A fully prompt-based chatbot solution will ensure consistency, control, and brand alignment across every channel - all driven by a single AI layer.

The result is one AI brain across voice, chat, and messaging channels, delivering exceptional service and experiences wherever customers choose to engage.

3. Delivered easily, integrated everywhere

For AI to succeed in contact centres, it has to fit seamlessly into the systems teams already use. 

In 2026, we’re continuing to focus on making Talkative easy to deploy, integrate, and scale.

We’re working to expand our ecosystem of telephony providers, CCaaS platforms, and VAR partners - building on the success of our OEM partnership with Mitel and extending the same model across other environments. 

Our Voice AI is designed to be provider-agnostic, working within existing tech stacks to support faster, more flexible deployments.

This approach is particularly important as adoption accelerates across sectors like public services, healthcare, retail, and hospitality - where legacy systems, regulatory requirements, and cost pressure make rip-and-replace projects unrealistic.

By combining rapid deployment, no-code configuration, enterprise-grade security, and broad integration support, Talkative brings scalable, high-performance AI to market without the overhead traditionally associated with contact centre transformation.

4. Supporting humans through change

As AI becomes a more visible part of customer service, the role of human teams is evolving. 

In 2026, our focus remains firmly on supporting people - not replacing them.

Talkative is designed to give organisations flexibility. AI can handle entire conversations where appropriate, or seamlessly hand over to a human when nuance, empathy, or judgement is required. 

Tools like AI Copilot provide suggestions, guidance, and context during live interactions, helping agents perform at their best when it matters most.

Meanwhile, our advanced AI-driven analytics give supervisors and managers deeper visibility into performance, customer intent, and AI behaviour - enabling better decision-making, faster optimisation, and more effective coaching across teams.

Beyond the technology itself, we’re investing in enablement. Through events, webinars, and partner programmes, we’re helping customers and partners share best practices, learn from real-world deployments, and build confidence as AI becomes part of everyday operations.

Because successful AI adoption isn’t just about automation - it’s about supporting teams through change.

What this means for customers & partners

In 2026, our goal is to deliver AI customer service that works in the real world - trusted, high-quality, and easy to adopt. 

For our customers, that means faster time to value, better experiences across channels, and AI that fits naturally into existing operations. 

For partners, it means new opportunities to extend offerings, deepen relationships, and grow recurring revenue as demand for voice AI accelerates.

With evolving voice and digital AI solutions, a growing library of proven customer results, and an expanding global partner ecosystem, momentum is building. 

We’re excited to continue this journey alongside our customers and partners - and to keep shaping the future of customer service together.

If you’re exploring how AI could work within your contact centre - or how to bring AI to your customers as a partner - we’d love to be part of the conversation.

Get in touch with the Talkative team to see how we can help.