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The Dutch National Voice Monitor 2026, the annual study by Speakup, Y.digital and Markteffect among 1,016 Dutch consumers, paints a clear picture. The Dutch consumer wants to be heard. Not by a chatbot. Not through a menu system. Simply by a human, through a channel that works.
That sounds straightforward. Yet most organisations fail to deliver it.
The figures are uncomfortable. Despite years of investment in automation and digital channels, only 12% of customer queries to chatbots are answered correctly. Twelve per cent! That means nearly nine out of ten consumers do not get the answer they are asking for.
At the same time, frustration is rising. Poorly functioning chatbots are the second biggest irritation in customer contact in 2026 (50%), just behind long waiting times (52%). Where irritation with waiting times and menu systems is slowly declining, frustration with chatbots grows year on year. The top spot is within reach.
The pattern the National Voice Monitor exposes is painfully recognisable. Organisations add channels but fail to connect them. A consumer starts in a chatbot, gets no answer, is referred to a phone number, ends up in a queue, gets transferred to an agent who asks for the whole story again. Four contact moments, zero progress.
One respondent in the study puts it like this: first he tries the app, then calls, and then the chatbot starts all over again. That is not customer contact. That is a maze!
The core of the reachability problem does not lie in a lack of channels. It lies in the absence of coherence. The National Voice Monitor divides channels into three categories:
Telephony and email together form the primary channels. Roughly 68% of consumer preference goes here. These channels are the stable foundation, year after year. Live chat, WhatsApp and face-to-face are secondary channels. Together accounting for approximately 28% of preference. WhatsApp is growing steadily within this group, particularly in sectors such as government, healthcare and telecoms. SMS, social media and chatbots are tertiary channels. Together less than 4%. The chatbot sits at the bottom. Zero per cent preference in 2026.
Yet organisations invest heavily in precisely that bottom category. The Voice Monitor puts it sharply: organisations deploy low-valued channels and eliminate preferred ones. That is not digital transformation. That is the opposite of listening to your customer.
The research shows that consumers are not opposed to technology. A full 52% are open to automated customer contact. But it does have to work. And that is precisely where it falls short.
Approximately 90% of consumers consider “being properly understood” the single most important factor in customer contact. Not speed. Not immediately reaching the right agent. Being understood. This has been consistent for years and it does not shift.
In addition, 88% want to receive a confirmation of what was discussed, for example via SMS or email. Consumers want to know that their query has been logged, that there is a trail, that they do not have to start over at the next contact moment.
Telephony is the leading preferred channel in 2026 at 48%. In the top three, 77% choose the telephone. For advisory queries this rises to 47%, for usage and maintenance likewise 47%.
Why? Because the consumer is left with the complex questions. The simple things he handles himself, via self-service or an app. As soon as it becomes complicated and context is needed, he wants to call. A human.
This is amplified in specific sectors. In healthcare, 50% choose telephony as their preferred channel. In government, 49%. In telecoms, 48%. Precisely the sectors where queries are rarely standard and where trust is everything.
WhatsApp has shown a rising trend as a customer contact channel for years. In the National Voice Monitor 2026, growth is significant across multiple sectors. In government, the preference for WhatsApp rose from 3% to 5%, in healthcare from 3% to 6%, in utilities and telecoms likewise.
But the growth of WhatsApp is not a replacement for telephony. It is complementary. Consumers use WhatsApp for practical queries: deliveries, returns, opening hours. For complex questions, they call. The Voice Monitor has confirmed this pattern three years running.
The interesting point is that WhatsApp and telephony are not competitors. They complement each other. The consumer wants both, depending on the situation. What he does not want is having to start over with each channel.
The National Voice Monitor identifies four consumer profiles. The shift between these profiles tells an important story.
The “critical customer” grows from 27% to 39%. These are consumers who have experience with automated customer contact and are done with it. They want human contact. But they are open to WhatsApp and live chat, as long as there is a human on the other side.
The “traditional caller” shrinks from 37% to 25%. Not because people want to call less, but because part of this group shifts into the critical customer category. They have tried chatbots, been disappointed, and now demand quality.
The “digital self-server” grows slightly from 10% to 13%. This group manages perfectly well without human contact, provided self-service works properly. The “social explorer” remains stable at around 24%. This group is pleasantly surprised by the possibilities of digital contact, but sometimes misses the human interaction.
Together, these profiles paint a picture of a consumer who is not opposed to digitalisation, but opposed to poor digitalisation. The growth of the critical customer is the clearest signal: experience with automation does not lead to greater acceptance, but to higher demands.
A striking nuance in the Voice Monitor: consumers who have more frequent contact with chatbots or voice assistants are more positive about them. Among daily and weekly chatbot users, 44% are positive, compared to just 7% of quarterly and annual users.
That sounds like good news for automation, but there is a condition attached. The positive attitude only develops when the contact actually delivers results. As soon as the chatbot gets stuck, the answer is wrong or the transfer to an agent is missing, frequency works in reverse. A neutral consumer then becomes a critical customer.
The question is not whether organisations should digitalise. The question is how. The National Voice Monitor consistently points in the same direction: the consumer wants reachability. Not more channels. Reachability.
The National Voice Monitor confirms what many organisations already notice but ignore: email is very much alive for the consumer. Consumers value email because they can communicate at their own pace, save messages and maintain control over the contact. Particularly with online retailers, email is even the dominant preferred channel, above telephony.
At the same time, organisations are phasing out email. The reason: costs too high, turnaround times too long, too many inefficient email exchanges. The tension between what the customer wants and what the organisation offers is symptomatic of the broader reachability problem.
The solution does not lie in abolishing email or adding a chatbot. It lies in offering a channel that provides the same benefits as email (documentation, reference, own pace) but faster and with a higher read rate. WhatsApp and SMS offer precisely that. Provided they are linked to the same number and the same inbox as the telephone.
Reachability is not the same as “we have a chatbot, a phone number, an email address and a WhatsApp Business account.” Reachability means that a customer makes contact and is helped. Without repetition. Without channel-hopping. Without dead ends.
The Voice Monitor shows that investment in customer contact is shifting. No longer from human to bot, but from bot back to human, supported by technology. The experts in the report call it the shift from “the human in the loop” to “AI in the loop”: technology that supports the agent, rather than blocking the customer.
The phone number is the only contact detail that every Dutch person already has, already knows and already trusts. It is universal. It does not matter whether someone calls, messages or sends a text. The phone number is the anchor point.
Organisations that bundle calling, SMS and WhatsApp from a single number solve the fragmentation problem the Voice Monitor describes. No separate system per channel. No standalone chatbot that does not know what the agent discussed yesterday. One inbox, one conversation history, one phone number.
That is not a technological innovation. That is orchestration.
Healthcare: Telephony is the dominant channel (50%), but WhatsApp is growing significantly. Healthcare organisations that link both channels to a single phone number reduce waiting times and decrease no-shows. In practice, organisations that deploy WhatsApp for appointment reminders and follow-up calls via the same number achieve up to 75% fewer no-shows.
Government: The preference for WhatsApp rose significantly, while the positive attitude towards automated contact increased from 34% to 38%. Municipalities that deploy WhatsApp alongside their existing phone number demonstrably increase resident contact. In practice, this leads to 20% to 50% more contact moments, depending on implementation.
SMEs and professional services: Email and telephony run neck and neck here. The Voice Monitor reveals a paradox: consumers want email (documentation, own pace), while organisations are phasing it out (costs, turnaround time). A single team inbox that combines WhatsApp, SMS and calling gives the consumer the documentation he seeks, through a channel with a 98% read rate.
At RippleCom, we see the patterns from the National Voice Monitor reflected in practice every day. Organisations managing three, four, five separate channels without coherence. Agents having to switch between different systems. Customers telling their story three times over.
The solution is not to add yet another channel. The solution is to bundle the existing channels. Calling, SMS and WhatsApp from a single phone number, in a team inbox where the entire team can follow along. Where conversation history remains intact, regardless of channel. Where a missed call automatically triggers a WhatsApp follow-up.
That is what improving reachability truly means. Not more technology. More orchestration.
The National Voice Monitor signals a broader shift. The investment focus is moving from customer-facing automation (chatbots, self-service) to agent support. AI that does not handle the customer, but helps the agent. Analysing customer information, making relevant suggestions, summarising conversations.
Consumers are positive about this. 40% appreciate it when AI automatically generates a summary after a conversation. That is not a replacement of human contact. That is reinforcement of it.
The lesson from seven editions of the National Voice Monitor is consistent: the consumer wants to be heard by a human, through a channel he trusts, without obstacles in between. Organisations that facilitate this earn the contact. Organisations that block it with bots and menu systems lose it.
The National Voice Monitor 2026 makes one thing clear: reachability is not a technical question. It is a choice. The choice to hear your customer, through the channel he prefers, without barriers.
Curious how your organisation scores on reachability? The RippleCom Communication Scan maps out in twelve questions where your customer contact stands and where the opportunities lie. No sales pitch. Insight.
The National Voice Monitor is an annual study by Y.digital and Markteffect, in collaboration with Speakup, Custom Connect, Customer Contact Company, KSF and Vodafone Business. The full report can be downloaded via Y.digital.
