-- SARIKA PRASAD
WHAT IS THE STATE AND DIRECTION OF AI IN THE CONTACT CENTER? IS IT MATURE AND RELIABLE, OR DOES IT STILL HAVE ISSUES? ARE CONTACT CENTERS REALIZING BENEFITS FROM IT AND IF SO, WHERE?
FURTHER, WHAT IS AI BEING USED PREDOMINANTLY FOR? ASSISTING LIVE AGENTS TO IMPROVE THE CX? OR TO DEFLECT AND / OR SHORTEN LIVE AGENT CONTACTS AND REDUCE THE NEED FOR STAFF?
SARITA FERNANDES: AI is delivering real value today, especially in areas like agent assist, summarization, and automating routine interactions. Many organizations are already seeing improvements in efficiency and productivity.
Where it still falls short is consistency. In a lot of environments, AI doesn’ t have full visibility into the customers, the interaction histories, or what’ s happening across systems. When that context is missing, the outputs can feel disconnected.
That’ s why more of the focus is shifting to how systems connect and share information in real time. With MCP, AI can access live, contextual data during the interactions, improving both accuracy and relevance.
" AS AI CONTINUES TO EVOLVE, ITS USAGE IS GO- ING TO GO MUCH FURTHER, BECOMING MORE MATURE, RELIABLE, AND MORE WIDELY ADOPTED..."
-- SARIKA PRASAD
Contact center agents can now be more proactive with customer responses, as they’ re able to leverage the power of AI to easily access a vast array of data points, such as customer profile and demographics, behavioral data, transactional data, and more.
Right now, the most common use cases are clear. AI is helping agents with real-time guidance and next best actions. It’ s handling routine inquiries, directing requests to the right places, and turning conversations into structured data that the business can actually use and learn from over time.
As that happens, the connection between AI and human agents becomes more important. When both are working from the same context, transitions are smoother, and the experience stays consistent.
All of this also depends on having the right governance and data controls in place, so organizations can trust how AI operates and how customer data is being used.
LISA ORFORD: AI is delivering real value, but not universally and not by accident.
Where it works well: agent assistance. Real-time coaching, post-call summaries, and surfacing the right information at the right moments. Agents handle calls faster, with more confidence, and customers feel the difference: faster resolution, less repetition, and fewer transfers.
Where AI falls flat is when organizations deploy it on fragmented infrastructure. A chatbot that doesn ' t know what happened on the phone last week isn ' t helpful; it ' s just another thing customers have to work around. Those failures aren ' t AI problems; they ' re data problems.
The honest truth is AI will handle an increasing share of routine contacts. That ' s not a threat; it ' s an opportunity if you ' re prepared for it.
It means live agents can focus on the interactions that actually benefit from human judgment and empathy. The contact centers winning right now are the ones using AI to make human interactions better, not just to reduce headcount.
SARIKA PRASAD: AI in the contact center is maturing quickly, reshaping how we know it today.
AI is not just an automation process making back-office operations smoother; it is now a key business lever at the front lines of the customer CX journey. It’ s highly effective at handling high-volume interactions, improving routing, and supporting agents with actionable insights in real-time.
That said, adoption rate and meaningful value are not the same thing. While over 80 % of contact centers have adopted AI, according to our 2025 Business Leaders CX report, many are still closing the gap between deployment and real operational impact.
Unfortunately, urgency is outpacing readiness. Consequently, and not surprisingly, organizations rushing to implement without the right data infrastructure, integration maturity, or governance foundations are finding it difficult to scale beyond early pilots.
As AI continues to evolve, its usage is going to go much further, becoming more mature, reliable, and more widely adopted, making automated CX operations more efficient and seamless.
AI has multiple use cases within the contact center and across the CX journey, being most widely used to gather key information, quickly resolve routine tasks, and seamlessly route interactions to humans or other digital channels, when needed. So, organizations must get the implementation right to benefit.
26 CONTACT CENTER PIPELINE