With the IVR market becoming saturated, industry consolidation, and the remaining customer distaste for automated IVR systems, what’s needed to move the speech industry forward? Speech technology holds the promise of enabling customers and businesses to connect in a timely, effective, and engaging manner, but how can businesses achieve this goal? The hard reality is that the industry must embrace change or become obsolete. The days of separate voice-only and visual-only interactions are gone. An organization must enable customers to get the same information via any channel (IVR, web, mobile applications, social networks, or face-to-face interaction) and enable them to switch channels seamlessly without losing information. This closing keynote presentation reviews the best ideas presented at the conference and adds suggestions for how to improve the interaction between customers and businesses in this smartphone age.