AUTOMATED QA SHOULD THEREFORE EVALUATE THE ENTIRE JOURNEY...
• Took the right action?
• Recognized when it couldn ' t solve the problem?
• Escalated at the right time?
• Preserved the customer ' s context?
A natural-sounding conversation isn ' t enough if the AI fails to take these steps and actions.
6. ENTIRE CUSTOMER JOURNEY EVALUATION
Automated QA must also keep up with increasing complexity. Contact centers are moving beyond simple bots toward agentic and multi-agent experiences, where specialized AI agents may handle different parts of a customer ' s request.
For the customer, however, the technology behind the interaction matters less than whether each handoff brings them closer to a resolution. According to our Closure Index, 85 % of consumers say the ability to move seamlessly from AI to a human when needed is important to achieving true resolution.
Automated QA should therefore evaluate the entire journey, including whether the right agent handled each task, whether context was preserved, and whether a handoff happened at the right moment.
As systems become more autonomous, evaluating how those pieces work together becomes more important than assessing individual responses in isolation.
QUALITY ASSURANCE
SHAPING THE QUALITY OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES
QA used to be the last step in the interaction: review what happened, assign a score, and move on. In an AI-powered contact center, it can become part of what happens next.
Instead of simply documenting performance, fully automated QA turns every interaction into an opportunity to improve your CX. The result is a QA process that doesn ' t just measure quality. It shapes it.
David Karandish is the Founder and CEO of Capacity, an enterprise SaaS company headquartered in St. Louis, MO. Capacity is the agentic support automation platform that powers every customer experience activity from a single AI knowledge orchestration layer. More than 20,000 organizations rely on Capacity to automate customer and employee support.
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DS: First, start with your interaction data. Pull the conversations with high satisfaction, no callbacks, and short handle time. That ' s the answer your best agent already gave, and it becomes the foundation for everything you automate.
Second, match the tool to the job. Routine questions like order status call for a deterministic answer, delivered quickly and at low cost. Reserve reasoning models for the complex, frequent, multi-intent conversations where they earn their cost.
Third, build compliance rigor in from the start, not at user acceptance testing. In a regulated context, one hallucination is one too many, and that constraint should shape the architecture from day one.
On EX, be honest about the math. Automating routine work leaves agents with queues of difficult, high-stakes, often emotional conversations.
Gartner found nearly 80 % of organizations plan to move agents into new roles and 84 % are adding skills to agent profiles. That harder queue deserves to be paid, staffed, and coached for.
EW: Listen to what customers are actually telling you. Organizations cannot deliver high-quality CX if they do not understand what customers want, where they are experiencing friction, and what changes would make their experiences better.
Customer insights should be used to drive real operational improvements, not just measure performance after the fact.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Recognize that CX and EX are directly linked. Agents who are supported, coached, and equipped to do their jobs well are more likely to deliver strong CXs. That becomes even more important as automation shifts more complex interactions to human agents.
Use AI and automation to remove unnecessary burden from employees. Automating tasks like call summaries, after-call work, dispositioning, and other repetitive administrative work gives agents more time and energy to focus on customers.
The goal should not be automation for its own sake. The goal should be better outcomes for customers, employees, and the business.
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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