CUSTOMER CONTACT OPTIMIZATION
BY JEFF SHEEHAN
ILLUSTRATION PROVIDED BY ADOBE STOCK
AI WON’ T SAVE YOUR CONTACT CENTER FIRST, ELIMINATE THE PREVENTABLE CALL VOLUME.
Every contact center leader feels pressure to modernize by adopting AI, digitizing everything, reducing costs, and improving customer experience( CX). But before you optimize, automate, or modernize anything, you need to confront a hard truth:
You cannot optimize a contact center until you eliminate unnecessary contacts.
This isn’ t a technology problem. It’ s a discipline problem. And it requires leaders at every level— supervisors, managers, directors, and VPs— to stop normalizing avoidable volume and start treating it as what it truly is:
A signal that something upstream is broken.
30 CONTACT CENTER PIPELINE
Across industries, 20 % to 40 % of inbound customer contacts are preventable. This range aligns with what I have seen for more than 25 years advising telecom, banking, retail, and technology organizations, and it mirrors patterns highlighted in research from Gartner, McKinsey, SQM Group, and COPC.
The proportions vary by company and sector. But the theme remains consistent: a significant share of contact volume is driven by upstream friction, unclear processes, and preventable breakdowns.
FIGURE 1 illustrates the proportions of contact reductions I see most often when applying customer contact optimization( CCO) methodology.
While the exact percentages vary by organization, the pattern is stable: roughly 40 % of contacts can be eliminated, 30 % can be simplified, 20 % can be digitized or automated, and 10 % should be elevated as high-value human conversations.
This model helps leaders target unnecessary demand while strengthening the interactions customers value most.
These four strategic actions drive measurable CX management( CXM) ROI, but only when leaders first understand the root causes behind their volume.