NiCE opens ANZ event as contact centres rethink AI

NiCE has opened the Australian leg of its NiCE World 2026 series in Melbourne, bringing together more than 1,600 customer experience and technology leaders across three cities.

Research released alongside the event suggests many Australian contact centres are preparing to refresh early artificial intelligence tools rather than abandon them. The ContactBabel study, supported by NiCE, surveyed managers and directors at 112 contact centre operations across Australia and New Zealand, as well as 1,500 consumers across both countries.

Among Australian users of chatbot systems, 40% said they planned to replace or upgrade their current solution. The figure was 38% for SMS tools and 37% for speech analytics.

At the same time, chatbots were the leading investment priority for the next 12 months, cited by 36% of respondents. That points to a market still willing to spend on customer service automation, but with growing scrutiny of first-generation systems.

The Melbourne event is part of a wider series that will also run in Sydney and Adelaide. Organisations named as participants include Allianz Australia, Optus, NTT DATA, Concentrix, Datacom, Columbus Capital, Humint Labs, Arzo, DCS and Lake.

Sessions in Melbourne focused on the shift from basic chat tools that answer questions to software agents designed to complete tasks inside business systems. Those tasks can include bookings, payments, identity checks and workflow actions, adding new demands for oversight and control.

The discussion reflects a broader change in how companies approach AI projects in customer operations. Early chatbot deployments were often designed as narrow front-end tools. Businesses are now looking more closely at whether those systems can connect with back-end platforms and handle practical customer tasks.

Investment reset

The ContactBabel findings suggest dissatisfaction with some earlier tools has not led to a retreat from AI spending. Instead, operators appear to be reassessing budget priorities and the level of integration they expect from suppliers.

That matters for the contact centre software market in Australia and New Zealand, where buyers have spent the past several years testing digital service channels under pressure to reduce handling times and improve customer access. As those trials mature, purchasing decisions are likely to hinge less on the presence of AI features and more on whether systems can be deployed safely within existing processes.

The consumer portion of the research drew on responses from 1,000 Australians and 500 New Zealanders. While the release did not provide detailed consumer sentiment figures, the combination of buyer and consumer data suggests vendors are under pressure to demonstrate practical gains rather than make broad claims about automation.

Operational focus

NiCE used the Melbourne event to frame that debate around so-called agentic AI, a term increasingly used in the software sector to describe systems that do more than generate responses. In customer service settings, that can mean software that identifies intent and carries out an action inside another platform, rather than handing the task back to a human agent or the customer.

For contact centres, that introduces operational as well as technical questions. Companies must decide what authority to give automated systems, what checks are required for identity-sensitive actions, and how to maintain records when software takes steps previously handled by staff.

Governance was a recurring theme in the Melbourne discussions, according to the event outline. The issue has become more prominent as businesses move from pilot programmes to broader deployments that interact with payments, customer records and internal workflows.

Nigel Lindsay Smith, Managing director, ANZ, NiCE, linked the event's focus to the state of AI adoption in the region. "AI is no longer the future of customer experience. It's here; the only question is whether your customers are experiencing it yet," he said.

He said the regional conversation had moved on from theoretical use cases. "Across our region, the conversation has shifted from what AI could do to what it has actually delivered. NiCE World is where the organisations already achieving AI value at scale show others how," Smith said.

The ANZ series is intended to focus on the practical requirements of deploying AI in customer experience across large organisations. The emphasis on orchestration, governance and control suggests suppliers are increasingly trying to address buyer concerns about reliability and accountability as automation spreads into more sensitive parts of customer operations.

For software providers selling into contact centres, the data offers a mixed but potentially encouraging signal: some existing tools may be nearing replacement, but spending plans remain active. For buyers, the challenge now appears to be less about whether to use AI and more about which systems can move beyond simple interactions without creating new operational risks.