Traditionally, contact centers have relied on a familiar, if somewhat flawed, approach to quality assurance: sampling a handful of calls, completing scorecards, and hoping those few interactions represent the whole customer experience.
In reality, they rarely do. Manual QA has always been a small survey – a snapshot that can miss the bigger picture.
Now, that’s changing . The rise of automated interaction evaluation, powered by advanced speech analytics and natural language understanding, promises to finally give CX leaders the complete view they’ve long been missing.
“I think it’s the evolution of technology,” says Peter Fedarb, Senior Presales Consultant at Enghouse Interactive, who has spent more than 25 years in the contact center industry.
“We’ve gone from simple call transcription, which was pretty ropey at the start, to natural language engines that really understand the conversation, not just the words being said.”
That distinction – understanding meaning, not just speech – is critical. Five or ten years ago, the technology couldn’t accurately interpret tone, empathy, or process adherence.
Even speech on its own could be a challenge, with imperfect handling of different languages and accents.
Today, these capabilities have matured to the point where AI can reliably and at scale evaluate the majority of customer interactions.
“At last, you’re going to get a broad-spectrum picture of everything that’s happening there,” says Fedarb. “You’re going to get more accuracy and you’re going to save time. And now, you can be more productive with that saved time.”
From Problem Finding to Problem Solving
Automation doesn’t eliminate the human element; when done right, it elevates it. Fedarb recalls one team leader who told him that automated evaluation transformed their role:
“They said it changed their time from problem finding to problem solving. We’re seeing that as about an 80% shift – a vast saving for those currently manually evaluating 100 percent!”
Instead of spending hours listening to random five-minute clips and filling out scorecards, supervisors can now review AI-generated insights and act on them immediately.
That shift has real operational and emotional impact. Fedarb notes that “fixing problems makes people happier than finding problems.”
The ability to analyze every single interaction also removes the guesswork that used to define QA.
A single missed step on a call no longer triggers an unnecessary training cycle. Teams can now tell whether an issue is a one-off “hiccup” or a systemic pattern – leading to fairer feedback, more targeted coaching, and higher agent confidence.
Dispelling the Myths
Like any new technology, automated evaluation arrives with misconceptions. Some expect it to deliver perfection from day one; others fear what it might reveal.
“There’s quite a lot of hype that it’ll do everything,” Fedarb notes.
“You have to set expectations; aim for it to do most of the work, but recognize there’ll always be that extra 10 percent that needs a human eye.”
Another common concern is the “fear of the unknown.” When one organization switched from evaluating 0.5 percent of calls manually to analyzing 50,000 a month with AI, its leaders braced for bad news.
“They thought they’d be scoring 60 or 70 percent,” says Fedarb.
“They ended up at 87 percent. The technology actually gave them confidence in their performance.”
Beyond the Scorecard
Perhaps the biggest misconception is that automated evaluation only replaces traditional QA forms.
In practice, it’s a gateway to much broader value. Fedarb describes how one customer began using AI not just to assess conversations, but to automatically tag mentions of specific products, replacing manual wrap-up codes.
Others are using it to flag sensitive phrases – for example, “safeguarding” terms in government environments – that trigger immediate alerts to supervisors.
“We’ve always evaluated only what we were capable of evaluating, as dictated by time and resources,” Fedarb says. “Now we can evaluate everything, and even react in real time.”
The Road Ahead
Fedarb believes that the next frontier is automation that doesn’t just analyze interactions but acts on them.
“Right now, we’re saving the time spent evaluating calls,” he explains.
“The next step for contact centers will be automatically deciding what to do about it, recommending training programs, sending reminders, even prompting agents in real time.”
In other words, feedback loops that once took weeks could soon happen instantly, empowering agents in-the-moment and freeing supervisors to focus on development, not data gathering.
Automated evaluation’s timing couldn’t be better. The technology is mature, the business case is clear, and the opportunity cost of waiting is high.
As Fedarb concludes: “If you can get most of the work done by the AI systems, and bring the human in when it really matters, that’s the best of both worlds.”
See how AI is reshaping QA workflows in our interview with Peter Fedarb.
Learn more about Enghouse AI Quality Management and how it supports large-scale QA transformation, or view the company’s full suite of solutions and services at their website today.
