Deutsche Telekom says its customer service phone menus are being replaced by AI agents that talk instead of asking you to press 1 for billing.
The German telecom giant is swapping out automated phone trees for AI-driven agents, according to chief AI officer Kartik Sheth. Sheth said the share of customer calls resolved without ever reaching a human employee is climbing by one to two percentage points every month. He made the comments on September 24, 2026, during a talk at the HumanX conference in Amsterdam. The company has not detailed a rollout timeline or said which markets get the change first.
Phone trees are one of the most disliked interfaces in consumer tech, and Deutsche Telekom is betting voice AI can finally clear that low bar. If the monthly gains Sheth described hold up, the carrier would be automating a meaningful slice of its call volume within a year, a pace few telecoms have claimed in public.
Carriers have promised smarter phone support for decades; the real test is whether callers notice anything beyond a friendlier hold message.