IVR: Custom Voice for Voice Agents
If you’ve spent any time configuring IVR inside Dynamics 365 Contact Center, you already know the frustration. Some voices give you a little control over pitch, tone, and speed. Others? You get what you get. The voices work, but they don’t exactly sound like a person you’d want to talk to.
That’s about to change. The 2026 Release Wave 1 includes a new feature called “Custom AI Voices for Voice Agents,” and it’s going straight to general availability with no public preview period. Details are still thin in the release notes, but what’s there is enough to get excited about.
Key Takeaways
- Custom voices are coming to IVR in Dynamics 365 Contact Center as part of the 2026 Release Wave 1, with a direct GA release and no public preview phase.
- The feature lives inside the Channels area of Contact Center, where you’ll navigate to a new “Custom AI Voices” section to connect your voice resource.
- Setup uses cascading dropdowns to select your speech resource and custom voice model, according to the official release notes, though the full UI hasn’t been revealed yet.
- Today’s built-in voices have real limitations ā while some allow adjustments to pitch, tone, and speed, many sound mechanical, and there’s no way to bring in a voice that truly fits your brand.
- AI-generated mockups from Copilot and ChatGPT hint at what the interface might look like, with familiar dropdown patterns similar to the current English US / Ashley Neutral voice selection flow.
- The big open question is quality ā will custom voices actually sound natural enough to improve the customer experience, or will they still carry that slightly robotic edge? That answer is coming soon.
For more on how AI and voice bots are evolving inside Dynamics Customer Service, check out Beyond the Text: Harnessing the Power of AI and Voice Bots in Dynamics Customer Service. And if you’re exploring the broader customer journey side of things, Exploring a Customer’s Journey to CX Success with Dynamics and Contact Center is worth a read too.
