Harnessing the power of AI in contact centres

Cracking the Code: Why emotionally intelligent CX needs artificial intelligence

In an era where customers can switch brand allegiance with a single swipe, businesses face an existential challenge: how to combine the convenience of digital automation with the warmth of human interaction.

The contact centre, once seen as a cost centre, now sits at the heart of this transformation. It has become a brand’s frontline, reputation manager, and increasingly, its engine for commercial growth. But the tools required to deliver this level of experience have changed. And they’re changing fast.

At the forefront of this shift is artificial intelligence (AI). But not just AI in the abstract – it’s AI that is deeply integrated into the contact centre, reshaping how businesses listen, respond, and engage with their customers. It’s also a test of strategic maturity: not every organisation is ready to harness the full potential of AI. Those that are, will find themselves setting the pace. Those that aren’t, risk being left behind.

Beyond efficiency: redefining the purpose of customer service

Traditionally, customer service has been seen as a reactive discipline. Something customers reach for when something goes wrong. But this model is fast becoming outdated.

Today’s contact centre must do more than resolve issues – it must enhance the customer’s emotional connection with the brand. It must be anticipatory, seamless, and intelligent. It must create what Ventrica calls Emotive CX: the ability to foster deeper connections through every customer interaction.

As highlighted in Ventrica’s latest white paper, Harnessing the Power of AI in Contact Centres, the real promise of AI is not in replacing people, but in enabling brands to deliver this kind of emotive experience at scale. This is not about automating empathy out of the customer journey – it’s about augmenting it with intelligence.

The paradox? To make customer experience more human, businesses must embrace the machine.

Why now?

AI isn’t new. Chatbots, recommendation engines and self-service portals have been around for years. So why has the conversation accelerated now?

Two reasons stand out. First, technological maturity. The emergence of large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, has introduced conversational capabilities that can mirror human dialogue to a degree never previously seen. Second, operational necessity. Businesses are under pressure from all sides: rising costs, workforce constraints, and escalating customer expectations.

Contact centres have become the pressure valves for these competing demands. AI offers relief by enhancing self-service, automating routine enquiries, and providing agents with real-time support.

According to the white paper, AI is already delivering tangible benefits:

• AI-powered proactive chat can boost conversion rates by 15%
• Agent-assist tools can save 5.3 hours per agent per week
• Chatbots have reduced live agent contact by up to 33%

But the implications go beyond cost savings. When AI is applied with precision and purpose, it can create personalised, emotionally resonant experiences that drive loyalty and lifetime value.

Getting the foundations right

The temptation to rush into AI adoption is understandable. But this is a journey that requires preparation. As Ventrica argues, the most successful transformations begin with strong foundational work – built around four key pillars:

1. Data integration and readiness

Contact centres sit on vast reservoirs of customer data – most of it unstructured. AI models require clean, unified, and accessible data to function effectively. The first step is to break down silos and build a platform that can ingest, analyse, and act on data from every touchpoint.

2. Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)

These systems create a single view of the customer by merging data from CRM systems, digital channels, transaction history, and more. This enables true hyper-personalisation – where AI can recommend actions or responses tailored to each individual, in real time.

3. Customer listening

AI-powered tools can now monitor every conversation, across every channel, to detect sentiment, classify intent, and escalate issues. This shifts service from reactive to proactive, giving brands the ability to intervene before frustration festers.

4. Advanced customer satisfaction measurement

AI-enhanced CSAT tools offer more than star ratings. They provide granular insight into what’s driving satisfaction – or dissatisfaction – at a journey and persona level. This closes the loop between feedback and action.

With these building blocks in place, AI ceases to be an abstract goal and becomes a practical tool for continuous improvement.

From pilot to scale: making AI stick

One of the most overlooked aspects of AI transformation is the how. It’s easy to get caught up in the technology; harder to execute a strategy that delivers lasting value.

Ventrica recommends a phased, pilot-first approach. This minimises risk, creates learning opportunities, and ensures stakeholder alignment.

Common early use cases include:

• Agent assist: providing real-time prompts, content suggestions, or sentiment cues to enhance agent performance
• Auto-summarisation: generating call summaries that save time and improve data accuracy
• Conversational AI: deploying bots to handle routine queries and escalate complex cases to human agents with full context
• Quality management: using AI to analyse conversations and highlight training opportunities or compliance issues

The aim isn’t just to automate – it’s to improve decision-making and customer outcomes.

Crucially, AI must be introduced in a way that supports, not threatens, human staff. In one case study shared in the white paper, a telecoms company found that clear communication and strong change management helped agents embrace the new tools once they saw how it could make their jobs easier and more fulfilling.

Cultural readiness is critical

Technology implementation is easy compared to cultural transformation. To embed AI, organisations need more than pilots and proof points—they need mindset shifts.

This requires:

• Reskilling and upskilling: equipping agents with the technical literacy to use AI tools confidently, alongside soft skills like empathy and critical thinking
• Leadership alignment: ensuring that senior leaders understand the role of AI and model openness to change
• Continuous learning: creating an environment where agents can provide feedback, suggest improvements, and take ownership of performance

As the paper notes, contact centres must move away from rigid scripts and towards adaptable, insight-driven engagement. This requires trust, collaboration, and a strong learning culture.

Balancing machine logic with human magic

Despite all the promise of automation, the most successful customer experiences remain deeply personal. AI is a tool – a powerful one – but it cannot replace the human touch where it matters most.

For example, emotional empathy during a bereavement-related call, or nuanced judgement in a high-stakes financial dispute, cannot (and arguably should not) be left to machines. But AI can prepare agents for these moments – by providing relevant context, reducing admin burden, and surfacing insights that empower them to act with confidence.

The goal is not to make humans act more like machines. It’s to free them from robotic work, so they can bring more of their humanity to the role.

Strategic, not tactical

Perhaps the most important insight from Ventrica’s research is that AI should not be treated as a bolt-on initiative. It is a strategic enabler that cuts across functions, disciplines, and KPIs. It influences customer experience, employee engagement, operational efficiency, and ultimately, brand equity.

To succeed, organisations must ask themselves:

• What do we want AI to do for our customers and colleagues?
• Where can it reduce friction, increase relevance, or accelerate response?
• How do we align our processes, technology, and people around a unified vision of success?

These are not IT questions. They are leadership questions.

The cost of hesitation

It is tempting to wait. To see what others do. To give the technology more time to “mature.”

But according to recent surveys, 80% of contact centre leaders believe AI is essential to the future of their operations. Waiting may feel cautious – but it increasingly looks like a gamble.

As the contact centre evolves into a growth engine, the businesses that lead will be those that act – deliberately, intelligently, and with empathy.

In the end, it’s not about man vs. machine. It’s about the organisations that can combine human empathy with digital capability, and those that can’t.

And that difference will define the customer experience leaders of the next decade.

• Download now

Download the free white paper discover a strategic approach to transforming customer experience.

• ​Why adopt AI now?
• Piloting and implementing AI solutions
• Hyper-personalisation through customer data platforms
• Better customer satisfaction measurement
• Customer Listening

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