Having been in the contact center industry for 20+ years, we like to keep our fingers on the pulse. What’s trending, where the risks are, and what’s coming next. In this post, we’ll share what we believe the top challenges will be for human contact center agents—a critical distinction, these days—in 2025.
We based this list on internal expertise, our read of authoritative external sources, as well as our own conversations with our customer contact center teams. The results speak not only to what contact center agents will face in 2025, but where their leadership teams would be wise to dedicate their focus.
1. The shifting sands of customer expectations
It turns out that Gen Z expects high levels of service, just like their Boomer counterparts. Gen Z’s reliance on new media and tech is only accelerating this demand, as is the rapid proliferation of AI. Across the board, what matters most is speed, ease, and personalization. Nobody from any generation likes to wait on hold, be transferred, or repeat themselves; younger generations seem to like it the least.
What’s more, a growing share of customers expect proactive customer service. That is, knowing what customers need without having to ask, ideally before the agent picks up the phone (or joins the chat). To deliver on this expectation, agents need the technology and insights to do so. But even though 61% of service professionals claim that they’re proactive about customer issues, only 30% of customers agree.
Takeway: The heat is on to make the most of the little time that customers are willing to spend interacting with the contact center. In an environment where 72% of customers want to spend less time interacting with customer service, what are we doing to best equip agents to meet these shifting demands without feeling overwhelmed/burned out?
Investments in omnichannel service, for one. While it’s a topic that comes up year after year, its importance remains undeniable. A robust omnichannel platform not only equips agents with the 360-degree context they need to be fast, accurate, and proactive but also ensures seamless transitions between channels while preserving customer history. It’s a timeless challenge because customers’ expectations for effortless, connected service continue to grow.
Customer self-service, too: 72% of execs see an increase in self-service demand overall (CMP). The question is, will better self-service options be enough to take the heat off your agents?
2. AI and digital labor platforms as work in progress
It’s probably more accurate to put AI above the list of agent challenges, as opposed to part of it: you’ll find AI intertwined with each agent challenge in some form. In many cases, AI is both a cure and an indirect cause of persistent agent woe.
AI enables some incredible opportunities to help agents work smarter. At its very best (think Salesforce Agentforce, Next Best Actions and Recommendations, and Cisco’s Webex AI Agent), AI stands to augment and enhance the work of agents rather than replace them entirely. For example:
- Automating CSAT surveys
- Generating call summaries
- Delivering recommendations on likely solutions and Next Best Action
- Detecting burnout
Then again, some think AI might also replace human agents in some instances. Gartner forecasts a complete shift to AI-only service channels by 2028. Among their many other challenges, agents must wonder if their job will continue existing at all.
At the same time, the so-called rise of AI in the contact center is relatively fresh. Much of what’s written about new developments in AI describes the ideal end state: this is how efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction will look once [insert technology of choice] is fully adopted.
Yet many contact centers find themselves early along in the contact center AI maturity model. A Call Centre Helper report finds that many contact centers still have advanced AI-powered solutions on their wishlists or don’t yet have them at all:
- Process automation (54%)
- Chatbot (56%)
- Interaction analytics/speech analytics (64%)
- Predictive dialler (69%)
- ChatGPT (78%)
Then there are the new Generative AI solutions. While 94% of organizational leaders are at least exploring employee-facing virtual assistants, the digital labor platforms that provide them, such as Agentforce, are new. Many contact centers are still sorting out the very technology that their agents may need to succeed in this environment.
Takeaway: On the one hand, contact center teams must remain measured with respect to adopting AI. Repeatedly asking agents to learn new tech and platforms, even those designed to help them succeed, can contribute to a pressure environment. Rolling these solutions out requires a plan for implementation, change management, training, and other aspects.
At the same time, agents can’t be left a step behind in such a rapidly changing environment—especially one in which many wonder if the technology they need might replace them altogether.
3. Continued workforce disruption
Recently, the head of India’s second-largest company suggested that Generative AI (GenAI) will soon render contact centers unnecessary. We’re not so sure it’s as extreme as that, though there’s no question that workforce disruptions—AI-related and otherwise—will continue in the contact center.
Already, we’re seeing robotic process automation (RPA) chatbots capable of handling much of what the frontline support tiers used to do with humans. Some contact centers are using GenAI to expand that automation to deeper support levels, mostly through humanlike conversational solutions.
Can you blame a support agent for wondering whether the technology they’re asked to adapt will one day replace them? What about the leadership teams wondering if it should?
Maybe this conundrum helps explain the shrinking labor pool within the contact center industry. In the United States, employment in the contact center industry will decrease by 5% by 2033. Then, of course, there’s the age-old problem of attrition: the average customer contact organization shells out $600,000 annually on agent attrition alone. Ultimately, there’s a world in which AI helps to alleviate some of these workforce disruptions; to what extent remains to be seen.
Takeaway: It’s not all so grim. Research indicates that 45% of contact centers have actually increased their workforce budget. There’s an opportunity to double down on employee experience (see Agentforce, for example) and further enable contact center managers (only 47% of agents are satisfied with their manager, according to CMP Research). Some agents may even consider moving into adjacent or related roles in customer success, quality assurance, or benchmarking.
4. Conversational data (or lack thereof)
One of the most effective ways to automate “with a human touch,” as so many customers now expect, is to make better use of conversational data. Supplied with this data, agents operate with a more complete picture of whom they’re helping and what actions are most likely to help. Without it, support agents often remain a step or two behind.
Given the aforementioned changes in demand, customer behavior, channels of choice, and so on, you’ll be able to quickly see the contact centers most capable to see the signals that customers are sending them, listen to what they are saying, and respond.
Contact centers can use conversational AI to:
- Automate routine inquiries
- Reduce agent workload
- Provide 24/7 support
…among many other benefits. The market certainly sees the value in conversational data and AI: it’s expected to grow at a 21% CAGR through 2031. Every day seems to bring news of yet another company acquiring a conversational data solution.
Takeaway: When implemented correctly, conversational AI can equip agents with everything they need to respond quickly and accurately to customers. Yet many find themselves working for contact centers that have yet to unleash the full power of conversational AI, leaving agents to deal with the resulting (and mounting) pressure.
In turn, the companies that fail to invest in conversational AI are at risk of falling behind, or at least falling well short of modern customer expectations. Which leaves those agents to field inquiries in a subpar customer experience.
A way forward
Together, these four high-level agent challenges reflect a broader wave sweeping across the contact center industry, that of balancing the increased role of AI and automation with the remaining desire that people have for personalized, human-like interactions.
It’s a difficult line to walk, but many contact centers are finding innovative ways to overcome these challenges. For decades, we’ve helped enterprises navigate the volatility of the contact center space. And we’ve helped them build contact center solutions capable of empowering both customers and the agents that serve them.
Contact us today to see how we can help.
