AI voice agent statistics

Numbers about AI voice agents travel fast and lose their sources on the way. Every figure on this page links to the page we read it on, with the publisher, the date and the sample where one was given. We mark vendor-commissioned research as such, and we review the page every quarter.

People and the phone

Statistic	Source
80% of US adults don't generally answer calls from unknown numbers; 67% check the voicemail if one is left	Pew Research Center, 2020, 10,211 adults
86% of unknown calls go unanswered; 41% of people wait to see if a voicemail is left	Hiya State of the Call 2026, 12,000+ consumers in 6 countries (vendor)
More than 28% of 46.75 billion unknown calls analysed in 2023 were spam or fraud	Hiya, 2024 (vendor)
31% of consumers say they have received a deepfake voice call	Hiya State of the Call 2026 (vendor)
Live phone conversations rank among the most preferred support channels for all ages, including Gen Z	McKinsey, March 2024, 3,500 consumers
56% prefer phone support for general issues; 74% for complex or urgent matters	Five9 / Zogby, 2025, 1,006 consumers (vendor)
259 million active registrations on the US Do Not Call Registry	FTC DNC Data Book 2025, as of 30 Sept 2025

Attitudes to AI in customer service

Statistic	Source
64% of customers would prefer companies didn't use AI for customer service; 53% would consider switching	Gartner, July 2024, 5,728 customers
87% say companies using generative AI must offer a way to reach a human; 50% say it makes interactions easier	Gartner, August 2026, 3,566 customers
Only 27% would try a chatbot again after a negative experience	Gartner, September 2026
Nearly 75% want to know if they are communicating with an AI agent; 45% are more likely to use one with a clear escalation path	Salesforce, October 2024, 15,015 consumers (vendor)
47% of US adults think AI would do customer service worse than people; 19% better; 19% about the same	Pew Research Center, April 2025, 5,410 adults
Disclosing a bot before an outbound sales call reduced purchases by more than 79.7%; later disclosure reduced the effect	Luo et al., Marketing Science, 2019, field experiment with 6,200+ customers

Adoption in customer service

Statistic	Source
44% of customer service leaders were exploring a customer-facing generative AI voicebot, 11% piloting and 5% had one deployed	Gartner, December 2024, 187 leaders
91% of service leaders report executive pressure to implement AI in 2026	Gartner, February 2026, 321 leaders
Only 14% of service issues are fully resolved in self-service; 36% of "very simple" ones	Gartner, August 2024
57% of customer care leaders expect call volumes to rise by up to a fifth in one to two years	McKinsey, March 2024
Forecast: agentic AI will resolve 80% of common customer service issues without human help by 2029	Gartner, March 2025 (prediction)
Forecast: one in ten contact center interactions automated by 2026, up from 1.6% in 2022	Gartner, August 2022 (prediction)
US customer service representative jobs projected to fall 5.5% (153,700) from 2024 to 2034	US Bureau of Labor Statistics, July 2026

Speed to lead and calling attempts

Statistic	Source
Of 2,241 US companies, 37% responded to an online lead within an hour, 24% took over a day and 23% never responded	Harvard Business Review, 2011
Trying within an hour made qualifying a lead nearly 7× as likely as an hour later, and 60× as likely as after a day	Same, 1.25 million leads at 42 companies (one author led a sales software firm)
Odds of reaching a lead were 100× higher when called within 5 minutes than after 30	Lead Response Management Study, 2007, 15,000+ leads (vendor-led)
93% of converted leads were reached by the sixth call attempt	Velocify, 2013 (vendor)
Contact rates at the best and worst times of day differed by only 2.6 percentage points	Velocify, 2016 (vendor)

Key rules and dates

Date	Rule
8 Feb 2024	US FCC: AI-generated voices are "artificial" voices under the TCPA, so calls need prior express consent
8 Aug 2024	US FCC proposes requiring AI disclosure at the start of each call; still pending in 2026
2 Aug 2026	EU AI Act transparency duty applies: people must be told they are interacting with an AI system

For what these numbers mean in practice, see the AI receptionist and lead qualification guides.

How we compile this page

We only include figures we could read on the original publisher's page or document. Claims we could not trace to a source — such as the widely repeated "62% of callers go to a competitor" or "85% of callers won't call back" — are left out. Older studies are kept when nothing newer exists and are dated so you can judge them. Spotted an error or a better source? Tell us through the waitlist form on the home page.

Frequently asked questions

How many people answer calls from unknown numbers?

Few. Pew Research found 80% of US adults generally don't, and Hiya's 2026 survey across six countries puts unanswered unknown calls at 86%.

Do customers want to talk to AI on the phone?

Many are wary: 64% told Gartner they would prefer companies didn't use AI in customer service, and 87% say a way to reach a human is essential. Most also want to be told when they are talking to an AI.