" THE MORE CAPABLE YOUR PEOPLE ARE, THE MORE VAL- UE THEY DELIVER TO BOTH THE BUSINESS AND THE CUSTOMER."
FEATURE
Finally, double down on retention strategies that matter.
Flexibility in scheduling, mental health support, excellent pay and benefits, and visible career paths all go a long way in reducing turnover. Pair that with a strong onboarding experience, recognition for performance, tools that make the job easier, and consistent team engagement through huddles or check-ins.
Remember, every investment in your people saves far more than the high cost of replacing an agent or leader. When your team loves where they work, they’ ll rave about your company: and your customers will notice.
• Redesign for flexibility. Use AI to forecast more precisely, but give people autonomy to manage their schedules.
• Align people, process, and technology. The best staffing outcomes happen when human capital, process redesign, and digital investments move together.
At the end of the day, employee experience is customer experience, and the organizations that protect and elevate both will lead the market in 2026.
MP: First, redesign agent and leadership roles with AI in mind. Ask what tasks can be automated, and what tasks must stay human?
For example, if a payment needs to be entered into two different systems, automation can handle the duplicate entry, allowing the agent to focus on resolving the customer’ s issue.
Preserve and protect the human moments that add value. Like untangling a billing dispute or calming a frustrated customer.
Additionally, update job descriptions to ensure executive teams clearly understand the value your center provides. That transparency helps protect against arbitrary cuts and makes hiring and training decisions better.
Second, keep investing in training. Short, bite-sized learning( microlearning) is effective, but balance it with robust courses that develop both today’ s skills and tomorrow ' s.
Don’ t just train agents and leaders on daily tasks like soft skills. Also prepare them for emerging areas such as working alongside AI tools, interpreting analytics, or managing digital channels. The more capable your people are, the more value they deliver to both the business and the customer.
"... EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE IS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, AND THE ORGANIZATIONS THAT PROTECT AND ELEVATE BOTH WILL LEAD THE MARKET IN 2026."
-- LIZ GRIFFIN
" THE MORE CAPABLE YOUR PEOPLE ARE, THE MORE VAL- UE THEY DELIVER TO BOTH THE BUSINESS AND THE CUSTOMER."
-- MARK PEREIRA
SR: As we move toward 2026 and beyond, contact centers will need to address both talent scarcity and talent quality.
With the BLS projections showing declining employment in customer service and a shrinking labor force overall, contact centers can no longer rely on volume-based hiring. The priority must be finding and developing the right people, not just filling roles.
That means going beyond traditional resumes and timeto-hire metrics to measure the soft skills that drive loyalty and customer satisfaction, like empathy, communication, and problem-solving.
AI-driven assessments can now evaluate these skills at scale through short, job-like simulations, helping hiring teams quickly identify top talent. For supervisors, AI can also help detect leadership potential early, ensuring a stronger internal pipeline.
The contact centers that thrive will be those that combine human judgment with AI insights to make fairer, faster, and more predictive hiring decisions, ensuring that, even in a smaller and more automated job market, they retain the human edge that customers still value.
Brendan Read is Editor of Contact Center Pipeline. He has been covering and working in customer service and sales and for contact center companies for most of his career. Brendan has edited and written for leading industry publications and has been an industry analyst. He also has authored and co-authored books on contact center design, customer support, and working from home. Brendan can be reached at brendan @ contactcenterpipeline. com.
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