Stuck wondering “will AI replace my call center agents?” or “will AI replace me?” The TL;DR is this: AI is starting to reduce the workload facing contact centres—and thus the number of agents needed to staff them—but it can never fully replace human agents or the human element.
AI is reshaping the contact center
It is well-documented that contact centers are adopting AI technologies to drive greater efficiencies, reduce the workload on contact center staff, and, ultimately, reduce the number of total agents required. The promise is clear: faster responses, lower costs, and the ability to handle routine inquiries at scale.
Many AI companies have been able to deliver on these promises. Success stories have started rolling in, even from Bandwidth’s own customers:
- Wyndham uses AI agents to create smarter, more personalized interactions and drive value for its franchises
- Salesforce’s AI agents resolve 85% of customer inquiries in web chat, cutting response times by 65%
With fewer tasks landing on human agents’ plates, companies are seeing their hiring needs shift. Metrigy found that more than half of businesses (55.7%) were able to cut back on hiring new agents after adding AI to their contact centers. In fact, they hired 89% fewer agents than companies that didn’t use AI the year before. In addition, 36.8% of companies went on to make layoffs once they onboarded AI in their contact center, reducing their contact center staff by an average of 24.1%.[1]
However, unless you’re an SMB or a wildly ambitious enterprise (call it optimism or madness), no one’s slashing contact center staff by 100%. You still need a human-in-the-loop for proper supervision, and people available for complex escalations that go outside what virtual agents or automations can handle.
Why would you want to replace any agents with AI?
To really answer the question of “replacement,” we need to look at the long-standing challenges that have plagued contact centers for years.
Staffing shortages
Burnout and turnover have led to consistent staffing shortages in the contact center. Attrition is notoriously high, as turnover is extremely common and higher than in other industries. This staffing shortage is especially salient in the healthcare industry, where contact center turnover was as high as 28.1% —or more than 1 in 4 roles—in 2023.[2]
Rising customer expectations
Customers expect personalized and on-demand availability, 24/7 and often 365. These are incredibly difficult (re: staffing shortages above) and costly expectations to meet without leveraging AI or automations.
Perception as a cost center
Even if you want to invest more heavily in service, contact centers are often seen as cost centers for their business and can struggle to secure budget. This is especially true in an economy where many enterprises are tightening their belts. Leadership wants better service at a lower cost… a difficult equation without new tools.
Where AI wins: AI vs call center agents
When staffing shortages collided with rising expectations (and stagnant budgets), contact centers had no choice but to get creative. And with today’s subscription-based economy and so many alternatives just a click away, the pressure is on. You have to keep earning your customers’ business, or they’ll switch to a competitor they think can serve them better.
AI and automation were the natural solutions to plugging these holes. While AI will not be able to fully replace agents, it is able to augment staff to handle simple requests and reduce the load on understaffed agencies.
Businesses are leaning into this approach top-down. Gartner found that 77% of service and support leaders feel pressure from other senior executives to deploy AI, with 75% reporting that they received increased budgets for AI initiatives compared to last year to pursue these enhancements (Gartner 2025).
Where call center agents win: AI vs call center agents
Despite this momentum behind CCAI technologies, as with many innovations, we are approaching a critical inflection point between enterprises’ drive for efficiency and what consumers will tolerate. And unfortunately, it appears this turning point will take many businesses by surprise.
While ‘improving customer experience’ is one of the top reasons leaders say they’re adopting AI[3], overall CX quality in the US and Canada has dropped to an all‑time low (Forrester). And, unfortunately, some of that decline may be tied to inconsistent or poorly designed AI experiences.
Inconsistent experiences
According to Metrigy’s AI for Business Success 2025-26 study, more than a quarter of consumers (26.4%) say they’ve experienced significant variability in AI agent interactions, and over half (55.3%) report at least some variability.
Preference informed by poor design
Customer preference is also split. Thirty-eight percent of consumers actively avoid AI text agents, while only 19.5% prefer them. For voice AI, 26.5% avoid it, while 30.5% prefer it. The biggest frustrations stem from AI’s inability to understand customer needs and from getting stuck in an AI loop with no clear path to a human.
AI has the potential to deliver significant value to customers. However, if it can’t reliably understand intent or provide an easy escape path to a live human agent, any efficiency gains risk turning into customer frustration.
The human element: Why AI won’t fully replace call center agents
Even with all the rapid advances in automation and AI, human agents are still at the heart of great customer service. AI is great at crunching data, spotting patterns, and taking on repetitive tasks—but it still falls short when it comes to emotional nuance, real empathy, and the kind of judgment calls that complex or sensitive situations need.
So, AI is here to work alongside human agents, not replace them. The real question now is: how far can AI go in augmenting staff while still delivering customer experiences people actually want?
Every business has to find its own balance—that sweet spot where customers get a smooth, low‑friction experience, but can still quickly reach a human when things get complicated. The goal is to build a support journey that handles the simple stuff effortlessly while giving customers an easy, intuitive path to an agent for issues that need empathy, creativity, judgment, or a real human touch.
