The Contact Centre Beyond the Queue
*Updated 15th September 2026*
The modern contact centre is becoming much more than a place where customer calls are answered.
It now connects voice and digital conversations, AI, customer data, automation, outbound engagement and employees across the wider organisation.
The challenge is deciding where those capabilities genuinely improve service.
ContactBabel's 2026 UK Contact Centre Decision-Makers' Guide found that 78% of contact centre leaders rank AI among their five highest technology investment priorities for the next two years. It also puts the average inbound call at £6.17, 25% more expensive than email and 83% more than webchat.
At the same time, the Institute of Customer Service's July 2026 UKCSI found that being easy to deal with has become more important to customers.
The contact centre of the future therefore needs to achieve two things at once.
Reduce unnecessary effort while making important customer interactions more valuable.
What Defines A Next-Generation Contact Centre?
The short answer
A next-generation contact centre connects customer interactions across channels, uses AI selectively, gives employees better context and turns conversations into insight that improves the wider organisation.
That means moving beyond traditional measures such as call volumes and queue times.
The strongest contact centres combine:
- Omnichannel customer engagement
- AI and automation
- Human expertise
- Trusted outbound communication
- Multilingual and accessible service
- CRM and business system integration
- Conversation analytics
- Workforce management
- Continuous optimisation
Technology should support the customer journey rather than determine it.
Where Should AI Fit Into The Contact Centre?
AI should handle work that is predictable, repetitive or unnecessarily time-consuming.
Britannic's VoiceAI, for example, can understand spoken requests, collect information and either resolve an enquiry or route the customer to the appropriate team with context attached.
Platforms such as Five9 Intelligent CX also combine AI, intelligent virtual agents, automation, analytics and workforce capabilities alongside voice and digital engagement.
Useful applications include:
- Identifying customer intent
- Intelligent routing
- Self-service
- Transcription
- Interaction summaries
- Knowledge recommendations
- Agent assistance
- Quality management
- Conversation analytics
The objective should not be to remove people from customer service.
It should be to make sure employees spend more time on interactions where judgement, empathy and problem-solving add value.
Why Will Trust And Accessibility Matter More?
A contact centre cannot deliver a good experience if the customer never answers the call or cannot communicate effectively once the conversation begins.
This makes trust and accessibility part of the contact centre strategy.
Branded Calls can display verified business information such as the organisation's name, logo and reason for calling on supported devices. Britannic also provides call reputation monitoring and spam reduction services to help prevent legitimate numbers being incorrectly labelled.
Branded Messages extend that principle into verified, richer digital messaging with branded sender identities and interactive content.
Language also creates friction for many customer journeys. NetTranslate provides real-time AI translation across telephone calls, Microsoft Teams, messages and chat in more than 100 languages.
The contact centre of the future therefore needs to consider not only how customers make contact, but whether those interactions are recognised, trusted and accessible.
Does Omnichannel Still Matter?
Yes, but simply adding more channels is not enough.
Customers may move between voice, WhatsApp, email, webchat and other digital channels during the same journey.
The experience becomes omnichannel when relevant context moves with them.
Britannic's work with Plus Dane Housing demonstrates the operational impact. The organisation introduced an 8x8 omnichannel environment alongside WhatsApp, workforce management, analytics and quality management.
It increased the number of calls answered by more than 10% without increasing headcount, reduced average waiting times by almost 60 seconds, and 60% of surveyed WhatsApp users said they valued being able to contact Plus Dane at a suitable time.
The lesson is not that every organisation needs WhatsApp.
It is that customers should be able to use appropriate channels without creating disconnected operational silos.
How Can Contact Centres Become A Source Of Business Insight?
Every customer interaction contains information about what is happening elsewhere in the organisation.
Conversation analytics can reveal:
- Common reasons for contact
- Repeated customer problems
- Complaint themes
- Process failures
- Customer intent
- Sentiment
- Training requirements
- Automation opportunities
- Emerging operational risks
Britannic's work with Caxton shows the value of connecting contact centre technology with wider customer data.
Five9 was integrated with Zendesk, HubSpot and Microsoft Teams, helping Caxton use interaction data to improve service. Call handling time reduced by 21%, waiting time by 8%, while NPS remained above 70 during its busiest period.
This is where the contact centre becomes more strategically valuable.
Instead of only handling demand, it can help explain why that demand exists.
Britannic's Future Contact Centre Framework
| Capability | Key Question |
| Access | Can customers communicate through appropriate and accessible channels? |
| Orchestrate | Can interactions move between channels, teams and systems without losing context? |
| Assist | Can AI remove repetitive work while supporting employees where human expertise matters? |
| Trust | Can customers recognise and trust outbound communications? |
| Improve |
|
The technology should follow these requirements, not the other way around.
Contact Centre Readiness Checklist
Organisations reviewing their contact centre should consider:
- Which interactions create the most customer effort
- Whether voice and digital channels share context
- Where customers repeat information
- Which enquiries could be automated safely
- Whether AI has a defined operational or customer outcome
- Whether agents can access the information they need
- Whether important outbound calls are recognised
- Whether multilingual customers can communicate effectively
- How CRM and operational systems integrate
- Whether customer conversations are being analysed
- Which contact reasons create repeat demand
- Whether analytics influence wider business decisions
- How workforce requirements are forecast
- Whether CX improvements are measured after implementation
- How the contact centre will continue to be optimised
The Contact Centre Is Becoming A CX Intelligence Layer
The future contact centre will not be defined by how many AI tools, channels or applications it contains.
Its value will come from how effectively those capabilities work together.
Customers need accessible and trusted ways to communicate. Employees need context and support. AI should remove avoidable work. Interaction data should identify what the organisation needs to improve next.
Britannic combines contact centre platforms including 8x8 and Five9 with AI, automation, Branded Calls and Messages, NetTranslate and wider CX integration to help organisations build customer journeys around measurable outcomes. Britannic's current CX strategy focuses on connecting channels, people, processes, data and technology rather than treating individual interactions in isolation.
Organisations reviewing their contact centre strategy can book a complimentary meeting with a Britannic CX specialist to identify where AI, integration and customer engagement technology could deliver the greatest value.
