With the surge of AI and automation, it’s never been easier for brands to invest in new ways of connecting with customers. But at what risk?
Every interaction is a chance to build or lose trust. Despite years of investment, many customers still walk away frustrated.
Our research found that more than half only resolve their issues on the first try if they reach human agents. At the same time, many say self-service fails them by not offering a clear path to a person.
The message is clear: technology alone won’t save the contact center. Customers expect both efficiency and empathy.
To meet those expectations, organizations must strike the right balance between automation and human connection. It is time to leverage the best of both to drive resolution, loyalty, and trust.
The Problem With Self-Service
Too often, brands launch self-service tools without considering how they work in real-world scenarios. Our findings show half of consumers avoid them when issues feel complex or urgent. And when they are stuck, escalation to a person often feels like hitting a wall. In fact, 66% of consumers actively avoid asking a human employee for help.
Technology should be a bridge, not a barrier. That means regularly auditing self-service journeys to ensure they’re intuitive and include seamless handoffs to people when needed. Customers should never have to start their story from scratch.
Self-service tools have certainly been evolving and gaining traction: when they work. When they don’t, customers are left even more frustrated, with some abandoning the brand entirely.
Every investment can and should be measured by how well it reduces friction for both customers and agents. If escalation isn’t fast and handoffs aren’t smooth, the technology isn’t working.
The digital brands we work with use data to drive personalization for consumers at scale through automated chat, speech-enabled IVR, or proactive contact center outreach when the frustration can’t be solved with self-service.
We’ve found the best natural language processing (NLP) solutions are informed by the customer’s history and remove endless loops of menu-based interactions. Instead, they short-circuit to fulfill needs directly.
Self-service journeys need to be reviewed and understood on a regular basis. Ask yourself:
- How do different customers reach out for help?
- Is our site missing information?
- What simple personalized questions can we answer?
Digging deeper to broaden beyond the standard FAQ can be the difference between a contact center overload and a more managed support system.
Why Human Empathy Still Wins
Customers interact with contact centers on average 14 times a year, according to our research. That should mean 14 chances to build relationships. Yet too often, it’s 14 chances for frustration: long waits, repeating the same stories, or chatbot loops that go nowhere.
The stakes are high. More than 60% of consumers have said they have stopped buying from a brand due to poor support. If a customer is calling, they want to feel heard, not rushed through a script. This is how brand loyalty and customer retention are built.
But too often, agents aren’t given the tools or incentives to deliver that. Empathy breaks down when an agent lacks visibility and contact center metrics are focused on those that measure performance, but which are not directly connected with custome outcomes.
It’s not that performance metrics like average handle time (AHT) and call volume (the number of calls per hour) aren’t important. But they lack an understanding of if the issue was resolved and how that issue impacts the business.
The issue isn’t a lack of data. It’s a lack of real-time visibility and incentives to do the right thing.
What if an agent knew a customer had already called five times and knew what issue they’d been having. How could that change the conversation?
It builds an experience that is less of the “press 1 for billing” and more of: “I see you’re having an issue paying your bill online. Let me transfer you to someone who can help with that,” which could de-escalate a customer’s frustration and improve outcomes overall.
On the measurement side, it opens up possibilities to focus on call resolution versus call time metrics and to connect cited issues back to other digital teams to quantify its impact and prioritize a fix to the digital experience, if needed.
AI is now being used to provide context across channels. For example, a customer service rep (either human or agent) can reach out by chat to intercept a frustrated customer struggling online and pull in account data to infer what they may be trying to do. One telecom company even developed agent-based troubleshooting guides to enhance self-service success.
...organizations must strike the right balance between automation and human connection.
When a customer reaches a live agent, however, there’s a huge opportunity to build loyalty and satisfaction. AI can surface key insights to make agents more empathetic and knowledgeable: not less.
Organizations taking this approach are already seeing shorter call times and higher satisfaction. Customers value resolution more than speed alone, and knowledge-empowered empathy makes resolution possible.
Becoming an Insights Engine
For too long, contact centers have been treated as cost centers. In reality, they are powerful sources of customer insight. Every unresolved digital task or confusing self-service path shows up in the contact center first.
In the past this valuable insight remained in a silo, with no way to connect back to actual digital fixes. The use of technologies like AI are helping to change that.
Take one healthcare provider. Call volume was spiking, but surveys didn’t explain why. Customers didn’t say, “your site is broken,” they just called out of frustration. But by connecting contact center data with digital behavior, the company discovered the real issue: a key web page wasn’t loading. Fixing the page reduced calls and boosted satisfaction.
When contact centers are treated as insight hubs, agents become frontline sensors for digital experience issues. Empowering them to flag recurring problems, and feeding those insights to digital teams, creates a cycle of continuous improvement that reduces call volume and strengthens customer journeys.
The Path Forward
The future of the contact center isn’t about choosing between people and technology. It’s about combining the best of both.
Automation without empathy leaves customers stranded. Agents without context feel ineffective. But when the two are integrated, customers feel seen, supported, and valued. And that kind of support isn’t just an upgrade. It’s the foundation of loyalty, trust, and growth.