31% of contact center agents say they're likely to quit within six months, a Verint report reveals.
Having recently released its State of Agent Experience 2026 report, the workforce is now reportedly under pressure, driven not by fear of AI, but by the absence of where it matters most.
This places CX directly at risk, with customers likely to see longer wait times, less experienced agents, lower quality conversations, and ultimately more churn on the customer side too.
In conversation with CX Today, Anna Convery, CMO at Verint, highlights that failing to deploy AI in agent workflows directly drives frustration and disengagement.
"Those who are not using AI have a higher chance of that increased frustration with the employees, because what they're doing is those manual tasks, they're spending three minutes in wrap-up after a call when AI can do it for them,” she explained.
“Where we see contact centers with agents where they are applying AI to remove those manual tasks, we do see an increased level of employee satisfaction and employee engagement."
The Retention Crisis in CX
With contact centers losing nearly a third of their workforce, this becomes a direct threat to customer experience quality.
Every human agent who walks out the door takes with them institutional knowledge, customer relationships, and hard-won product expertise that is difficult to replicate with a new agent without customer service being affected.
For the customer, speaking to an agent with less experience, confidence, and equipped to resolve an issue the first time can result in longer handle times, more escalations, and lower CSAT scores, creating a fast-moving ripple effect.
But what’s driving these agents out? Customer-facing teams are reporting an increase in feeling overwhelmed rather than feeling supported by their contact center.
Currently, nearly almost half of agents are already working across multiple channels simultaneously, meaning if enterprises don’t address these problems soon
These customer team losses can also create significant financial stress on an enterprise, as the report reveals that replacing a single contact center agent costs an average of $20,000, including recruitment, training, and lost productivity.
For a contact center with 1,000 agents at a 31% turnover rate, that could likely result in an annual bill of $6.2MN, all before enterprises can account for a single point of customer churn.
"Agents are the face of the brand,” Convery continued.
"When they feel empowered, when they feel knowledgeable, when they have the tools and technologies at their fingertips to do their job, they will represent that brand much better."
With 61% of agents anticipating more complex, technical work as routine tasks get automated, the tools and support structures haven't kept pace, resulting in a workforce that feels stretched thin, underequipped, and undervalued.
Agents are therefore demanding higher flexibility in their workforce, with 9 out 10 agents saying schedule flexibility is a critical factor in choosing a job, making it one of the most important qualities a brand can offer to reduce attrition, despite many still remaining rigid in how they treat agents’ schedules.
The Tasks Nobody Should Be Doing Manually
The daily reality of the workforce is also a significant driver in agent retention loss, with many experiencing high volumes of low-value, repetitive work.
In 45% of calls, agents will spend an average of nearly three minutes simply searching for the right answer, and 57% spend time gathering context and customer history at the start of a conversation, adding on another three minutes.
