The Contact Centre Agent in the AI Era

*Updated 14 September 2026*

The contact centre agent role is changing, but it is not disappearing.

As AI and automation take on more repetitive enquiries, administration and information retrieval, agents are increasingly left with the interactions that require greater judgement, empathy and problem-solving.

That makes the human role more important in different ways.

ContactBabel's 2026 UK Contact Centre Decision-Makers' Guide found that 78% of contact centre leaders place AI among their five highest technology investment priorities for the next two years.

At the same time, the Institute of Customer Service's July 2026 UKCSI found that being easy to deal with has become increasingly important to customers. 

The opportunity is therefore not simply to automate more conversations.

It is to use technology to make agents better equipped for the conversations where people add the most value.

Which Tasks Should AI Take Away From Agents?

AI works particularly well where work is repetitive, predictable or information-heavy.

This can include:

• Identifying customer intent
• Routing enquiries
• Answering routine questions
• Finding relevant knowledge
• Transcribing conversations
• Producing interaction summaries
• Completing after-call work
• Analysing customer sentiment
• Reviewing interactions for quality
• Identifying coaching opportunities

For example, 8x8 Agent Assist can provide real-time transcription, summaries and knowledge recommendations during customer conversations, reducing the need for agents to manually search for information. 

The goal is not to replace human judgement.

It is to remove the work that prevents agents from using it.

How Is The Contact Centre Agent Role Changing?

Britannic sees five important shifts in the modern agent role.

Traditional Role	Modern Agent Role
Answer enquiries	Resolve more complex customer needs
Search for information	Use AI-supported knowledge and guidance
Complete repetitive administration	Focus on customer outcomes
Work within one service team	Collaborate with specialists across the organisation
Measured mainly on speed	Coached around quality, resolution and experience

This changes both the technology agents need and the way their performance should be managed.

A highly automated contact centre may actually require more skilled human agents, because a greater proportion of the interactions reaching them are likely to be complicated or sensitive.

How Can AI Support Agents During Customer Conversations?

Agent Assist technology is becoming an increasingly important part of the contact centre desktop.

Instead of expecting employees to remember every process or manually search large knowledge bases, AI can provide relevant information while the customer interaction is taking place.

Modern platforms can support agents with:

• Suggested knowledge articles
• Real-time transcription
• Conversation summaries
• Next-best actions
• Customer context
• Compliance prompts
• Sentiment indicators
• Automated after-call notes

Britannic works across platforms including 8x8, Five9, Mitel and Zoom Contact Centre, where AI can operate alongside voice and digital customer engagement.

The strongest use of AI should make the agent more capable without making the customer interaction feel more complicated.

Why Does Customer Context Matter More?

As routine interactions move into self-service, the enquiries reaching employees can become more complicated.

Agents therefore need more context, not less.

Britannic's work with Caxton integrated Five9 with Zendesk, HubSpot and Microsoft Teams so employees could see customer details and previous interaction history when calls arrived.

The resulting environment helped Caxton reduce call handling time by 21%, reduce waiting time by 8% and maintain an NPS above 70 during its busiest period.

The important point is that faster service did not come from asking agents to work faster.

It came from giving them better information and technology.

How Should Quality Management Change?

Traditional quality management often relies on supervisors manually listening to a small sample of calls.

AI-driven quality management can analyse a much larger proportion of interactions, helping organisations identify patterns, risks and coaching opportunities more consistently.

8x8's current contact centre capabilities, for example, include automated quality management and AI-driven scoring alongside workforce engagement tools. 

Britannic's work with Plus Dane Housing shows how quality management can support agent development in practice.

Team-specific scorecards allow calls to be reviewed and themes identified for training. Plus Dane uses those insights to give colleagues feedback and identify where processes could be made easier and more efficient.

This creates a better use of interaction data.

Rather than simply asking “Did the agent follow the process?”, organisations can also ask “What would help the agent resolve this interaction more effectively next time?”

How Can Technology Make Agents More Accessible?

The changing agent role also needs to account for increasingly diverse customer needs.

For example, NetTranslate can provide real-time translation across customer conversations, helping agents communicate with customers speaking different languages without requiring the employee to speak that language themselves.

Technology can therefore extend what an individual agent is capable of handling.

The same principle applies to knowledge management, AI guidance and collaboration with specialists elsewhere in the organisation.

An agent no longer needs to personally hold every piece of expertise required to solve the customer's problem. They need the technology and processes to access that expertise when they need it.

What Skills Will Contact Centre Agents Need?

Technology changes the emphasis of the role.

As more routine tasks become automated, agents increasingly need skills such as:

• Complex problem-solving
• Active listening
• Judgement
• Empathy
• Clear communication
• Digital confidence
• AI literacy
• Customer advocacy
• Collaboration
• Adaptability

Employees also need to understand when not to rely on AI.

AI-generated information still needs appropriate oversight, particularly where customer interactions involve financial decisions, vulnerability, complaints, healthcare, compliance or other sensitive issues.

What Should Contact Centre Leaders Review?

A practical agent experience review should consider:

• Which repetitive tasks agents still perform manually
• How much time is spent searching for information
• Whether AI could support agents in real time
• Whether customer history appears automatically
• How many applications agents need to use
• Whether after-call work can be reduced
• Which interactions genuinely require human judgement
• How easy it is to involve internal specialists
• Whether multilingual customers can be supported effectively
• How quality management is conducted
• Whether coaching uses real interaction insight
• Whether workforce scheduling gives employees appropriate flexibility
• Which metrics encourage the right behaviours
• Whether agents receive appropriate AI training
• How employee feedback influences contact centre development

The agent experience should be treated as part of the customer experience.

Making work unnecessarily difficult for employees will eventually make service unnecessarily difficult for customers.

From Call Handler To Customer Expert

The contact centre agent is moving away from being the person who simply answers the next interaction in a queue.

Routine work can increasingly be handled through self-service, automation and AI.

Human agents can then concentrate on the conversations that require understanding, reassurance, judgement and the ability to navigate complexity.

The contact centre technology supporting them should reflect that change.

Britannic combines contact centre platforms, AI, workforce engagement, quality management, analytics, automation and technologies such as NetTranslate to help organisations improve both agent and customer experience.

Organisations reviewing how AI could support their contact centre teams can book a complimentary meeting with a Britannic CX specialist to identify where technology could remove repetitive work and give agents more time for higher-value customer interactions.