BY ROB DWYER, LEVEL AI

ILLUSTRATION PROVIDED BY ADOBE STOCK

Here’ s the scenario:

• A customer emails about a billing charge.

• She explains the problem, attaches a screenshot, and gets a reply telling her it has been escalated.

• The ticket closes.

22 CONTACT CENTER PIPELINE

• A week later the charge is still there, so the customer opens a new ticket, re-explains everything, and re-attaches the same screenshot to a different agent, who has no idea the first conversation ever happened.

• Nothing the customer did the first time carried forward, so she started over from zero.

I spent 15 years on the operations side before I moved into this seat and found that pattern is common across industries. What is new is how fast enterprises are scaling their use of AI and the unaddressed challenges associated with it.

Gartner found that 91 % of customer service leaders reported executive pressure to deploy AI in 2026. That pressure creates demand for a metric that proves quick ROI.