Contact Center Pipeline September 2026 | Page 23

ARE CONTACT CENTERS HIRING AND RETAINING THE EMPLOYEES WITH THE QUALITY- AND IN THE QUANTITIES- THEY NEED? WHAT DEVELOP- MENTS AND ISSUES MATTER MOST?

A: Contact center executives are experiencing challenges in hiring and retaining employees at the quality or scale they need. Every executive I speak with echoes the same concern: the challenge is getting harder, not easier.

What’ s driving this isn’ t a shrinking need for people. Quite the opposite. As organizations accelerate their AI strategies, technology is reshaping roles by raising skill requirements and increasing the complexity of the work that reaches human agents.

In our research, we are finding AI is not eliminating jobs. Instead, it is transforming them and, in many cases, increasing the need for well-trained AI-literate employees.( Ed. note: see BOX for an in-depth discussion on AI).

Research from ICMI underscores the depth of the retention problem. Turnover remains high, fueled by low pay and, most importantly, a lack of career growth opportunities. Half of all agents cite limited advancement as a primary reason for leaving.

At the same time, even with AI automating routine tasks, 87 % of contact centers still plan to hire or backfill roles, according to ICMI. This is a clear signal that automation is shifting the nature of the work, not reducing the workforce.

Another way to look at the changes impacting our workforce is how AI shifts the profile of the ideal agent. As automation handles simpler inquiries, the interactions that reach humans are more emotionally charged and more complex.

Calabrio( now Verint) reports that 61 % of centers are seeing an increase in emotionally intense customer interactions, and customer expectations for empathy in the human interface continue to rise.

This means agents must now excel at being critical thinkers while working seamlessly alongside AI systems that provide real-time guidance and workflow support.

Taking it together, the evidence is clear: contact centers are struggling to hire and retain the talent they need, not because AI is replacing people, but because AI is raising the bar for what human roles require.

These shifts in our industry point to a future where success depends on building a more skilled, AI-augmented workforce. The centers that thrive will be those that invest in elevating human capability to meet the new demands created by AI-driven operations.

WHAT NEW SKILLS ARE AGENTS NOW EXPECTED TO HAVE? AND CAN LONGER-TENURED AGENTS BE TRAINED EFFECTIVELY TO HAVE THEM?

A: This is a great question because it gets to the heart of how new agents and tenured agents each bring different, but equally valuable, strengths to today’ s contact centers.

Technology enhancements and shifts in customer expectations are reshaping the nature of customer interactions, and as a result, [ and as ] we have already discussed, the skills required by human agents are evolving.

New hires often enter the workplace with fresh perspectives and come with digital fluency, having been raised on technology solutions.

I think back to my kids’ learning experience in school compared to mine. Anyone who entered school in the late 2000s and early 2010s grew up in an education system that was rapidly shifting toward digital learning. This generation was among the first to complete assignments on school issued devices, whether laptops, Chromebooks, or tablets. Most students were routinely using technology as part of their daily academic experience.

This early exposure to digital tools has shaped how today’ s new contact center agents think, learn, and problem solve, giving them a natural fluency with technology that complements the AI-enabled environments they now enter.

Tenured agents, on the other hand, carry deep tribal knowledge which should not be discounted. These agents have an intuitive understanding of customer patterns that systems simply are unable to replicate.

In addition, given today’ s labor market, the financial case for retention of tenured team members is especially compelling because the true cost of turnover is extraordinarily high.

Data consistently shows that replacing an employee typically costs between 50 % and 200 % of their annual salary when leaders account for recruiting, onboarding, training, and lost productivity during ramp-up, according to“ The Myth of Replaceability: Preparing for the Loss of Key Employees.”

The article, written by Regina Dyerly and published by the Society for Human Resource Management( SHRM), also points out that in many cases, total costs can climb even higher depending on role complexity and experience level.

SEPTEMBER 2026 23