NiCE has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Centre as a Service and was placed furthest among providers for Completeness of Vision.
The recognition comes as NiCE reported continued growth in its artificial intelligence business. AI annual recurring revenue reached USD $362 million in the second quarter, up 52% from a year earlier, and now accounts for 15% of cloud revenue.
NiCE, which sells cloud-based customer service software, linked the ranking to a broader shift in the contact centre market as businesses combine AI tools with human agents in customer support operations. Demand, it said, is moving beyond pilot projects to larger deployments across enterprise operations.
The quarter also marked a record period for AI bookings, driven by NiCE Cognigy, its AI offering for customer service automation.
Several large organisations were cited as users of the technology in live production settings, including Openreach, Toyota, Lufthansa Group and Tripadvisor.
At Openreach, NiCE said AI agents reduced missed appointments and inbound contact volumes by one-third. At Toyota, 95% of customers offered the AI service chose to book directly with an AI agent.
Lufthansa Group uses AI agents to handle more than 16 million customer conversations a year, according to NiCE. Tripadvisor, meanwhile, moved AI voice agents from concept to live calls in 2.5 months.
The contact centre software sector has become a focal point for AI investment as companies look to automate more customer interactions while keeping human staff involved in more complex cases. Vendors increasingly describe the next phase of the market as mixed environments in which AI systems and human agents work together on the same platform.
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