Contact Center Economics in the Age of Voice AI: An Inside Look

As AI starts to do more of the work, many contact centers are engaging in tricky conversations 

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Contact Center & Omnichannel​Insights

Published: October 20, 2025

Charlie Mitchell

Voice systems that sound too robotic, IVR structures that are too rigid, doom loops that offer no way out… almost every consumer can relate.  

Yet, the needle is starting to move. Soon, talking to AI will feel just like having a normal conversation, and success rates will continue to grow.  

Gartner even predicts that by year-end 2027, conversational AI applications will automate approximately 70 percent of customer support interactions within enterprises.  

“Voice AI is quickly approaching human parity, as it does adoption is going to accelerate quickly” said Jake Tyler, AI Market Lead at Glia, a leading Voice AI provider for banks and credit unions. “This pattern is playing out in other markets already, from translation services to driverless cars, and contact centers and customer service will be next.” 

The contact center economic model will shift with that change. Leaders will need to rethink who works there, how many people are required, and what they do. At Glia, Jake and his team are helping bank and credit union leaders reconfigure how their contact center and frontline teams are positioned to best support the communities they serve in the AI-era. 

It’s not an easy conversation, it’s downright uncomfortable sometimes, but it’s one many companies need to have. 

The Three Options Businesses Face 

Don’t skip ahead to 70 percent of customer support conversations. Consider: what if AI did half the work? If AI takes on this much labor, what happens next? 

In this scenario, a business would have three options (which they may blend). 

1. Reinvest

This is the crowd pleaser. In this scenario, the contact center would keep its headcount flat and reinvest the savings in its people.  

The classic example is to give agents more time to interact with high-value customers and graft away at meaty, complex issues.  

Yet, there are other ways in which a fully-staffed contact center can add value.  

For instance, leaders could rearchitect customer journeys. Here, a contact center may pass an issue that is possible to automate over to a human representative, if it’s particularly emotive. The rep could then offer warm, firm reassurance to boost loyalty. Similarly, they can have humans answer contacts that have high upsell or cross-sell potential.  

In addition, the contact center could expand its customer and community outreach. 

Consider a financial institution. It could contact customers to explore new opportunities to grow loans and deposits. Meanwhile, it may reach out to the community to promote financial literacy programs and other initiatives. 

Case Study 

Busey Bank has expanded its customer base by 25 percent. Yet, because of voice AI, it managed to keep its headcount steady.  

In fact, it even managed to reskill two frontline employees, placing them into more strategic research roles.  

As its AI exploits continue it even plans to offer career advancement for other reps into areas like career advancement in areas like treasury and commercial. 

As Caitlin Drake, SVP and Director of CX & Support, said: 

“By investing in technology, we can put our people on a career path that opens more doors for them and allows them to serve the company at a higher level.”

2. Right-Size

From the crowd pleaser to the town villain. Right-sizing is not an easy conversation to have, but it’s a realistic one.  

After all, a business may sense the opportunity to significantly reduce or even eliminate costly overflow and after-hours contact centers.  

Perhaps a more sensitive approach, however, is to stop backfilling agents who churn, aligning the strategy with forecasts and AI performance insights. 

Alternatively, for brands experiencing high growth, there’s the option to simply stop adding headcount. Whatever the case, the workforce management team will be busy!  

Case Study 

Service 1st Federal Credit Union implemented its virtual agent, “Scout”, to interact with customers across voice. But, it didn’t stop there. It also provided real-time conversation transcription, automated agents’ post-call processing, and streamlined managers’ quality assurance (QA) tasks to eliminate busy work.   

Since it has decreased human-handled monthly contact volumes by 29 percent, it has also cut average wait times by 71 percent, slashed average speed of answer times from three minutes to 18 seconds, and cut call abandonment from 25 to 1 percent. 

That’s all while its service headcount has dropped. However, Service 1st didn’t dramatically cut employees; it reduced its headcount with natural attrition and continues to work with Glia to unlock new efficiencies as staff trickle out of the business, as they inevitably do in contact centers. 

3. Reallocate 

Finally, the contact center could reallocate reps, starting with those wanting to try something new or those looking for a long-term career path.  

In doing so, the business could grow its other customer-facing functions. At a bank or credit union, this could include fraud prevention, financial planning, or proactive outreach. 

Alternatively, the firm may assign personnel to lead business development projects within the community or invest in branch modernization. There are options aplenty! 

Case Study 

Sticking to finance, Granite Credit Union is a successful credit union out of Utah. After implementing a virtual agent, it achieved a 60 percent containment rate while saving 1,400 hours of manual work in only four months.  

Like the other examples, Granite also implemented agent assist tools to boost that reduction in manual work, again lowering its labor requirement.  

So, it invested in reskilling its excess staff and started training employees to work in branches, collections, and fraud prevention. 

As Cindy Clark, CIO of Granite Credit Union, summarized:  

“With Responsible AI, we can keep pace with the industry, while still doing it right.”

Don’t Skip Too Far Ahead…  

The contact centers furthest ahead are thinking about how to reinvest AI’s efficiency gains into innovation and human potential. 

For many, that’s going to be a struggle. As Justin Robbins, Founder & Principal Analyst at Metric Sherpa, said:  

“AI is becoming table stakes, but too many leaders are still running old playbooks. Until contact centers both measure their strategic impact and have a stronger hand in AI decisions, they’ll leave enormous value on the table.” 

Capturing that “enormous value” requires a fundamental shift in how businesses align people, processes, and measurement. 

For more on how brands can do that, check out Robbins’ latest whitepaper: The New Equation: Redefining Value, Effort, and Impact in the AI-Era Contact Center 

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Brands mentioned in this article.

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