AI and humans will share the call centre floor in 2027, vendor says

Absolute Intelligence MD Ged Ryan argues 2027 will bring AI-human collaboration in contact centres, not wholesale automation of agent roles.

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The contact centre industry is heading into a period of deeper AI integration in 2027, but the direction of travel is augmentation rather than replacement, according to Ged Ryan, Managing Director of Absolute Intelligence, a UK-based outsourced customer service provider. Ryan says the coming year will see a decisive shift away from basic chatbots and interactive voice response systems and towards what he describes as intelligent customer service operations capable of handling more complex interactions.

His comments come alongside recent data from the UK's Office for National Statistics suggesting that 53% of consumers believe AI will worsen customer service, and 73% say they do not trust the technology to handle support interactions. Ryan argues that those numbers reflect accumulated frustration with poorly implemented automation rather than a settled verdict on the technology's potential.

AI takes the volume, agents take the value

Ryan's central argument is a division of labour: AI handles routine, structured interactions such as order tracking, appointment scheduling, account enquiries and information requests, while human agents concentrate on sensitive or high-complexity matters, including vulnerable customer management, complaints and escalations that require emotional intelligence or discretion.

"The most effective contact centres over the next 12 months will utilise AI to take care of volume, repetition and routine processes," Ryan said. "It is a real opportunity to stop thinking of AI as a chatbot or cost-cutting exercise, which is perhaps where the trust issues among the public are coming from."

Beyond autonomous resolution, Ryan points to AI-assisted agents as an emerging standard: systems that take notes, navigate databases and surface suggested next actions in real time, reducing hold times and improving first-contact resolution rates. He also expects deeper integration with CRM platforms and business workflows, so that AI can better interpret customer intent and context before routing to the appropriate specialist, removing the repeated-explanation friction that currently drives dissatisfaction.

Market context and competitive dynamics

The framing of AI as a complement to human agents rather than a replacement is increasingly common across the contact-centre-as-a-service (CCaaS) market. Established platforms from vendors including Salesforce, Genesys, NICE and Five9 have all launched or expanded AI-layer products in the past 18 months, targeting precisely the routing, summarisation and real-time agent-assist use cases Ryan describes. The market is consequently crowded, and the competitive differentiator for smaller, outsourced operators like Absolute Intelligence is likely to be implementation quality and sector-specific expertise rather than proprietary AI capability.

There is also a regulatory dimension that Ryan does not address. The UK's AI Opportunities Action Plan and the ICO's existing guidance on automated decision-making both apply to customer-facing AI, particularly in scenarios involving vulnerable consumers. For contact centres operating in financial services, utilities or healthcare, compliance with sector-specific conduct rules adds another layer of complexity to deployment decisions. Operators that get the governance right alongside the technology integration are likely to generate more durable client relationships than those optimising purely for cost reduction.

What to watch in 2027

Ryan's prediction that contact centres will become "intelligence hubs", analysing interaction data at scale to identify operational bottlenecks and monitor customer sentiment, points to a longer-term shift in how the function is valued within businesses. If contact-centre data feeds product and operations teams in a structured way, the function moves from cost centre to feedback loop, which has implications for how buyers procure and contract for outsourced services.

The practical test of these predictions will arrive in customer satisfaction and resolution-rate metrics over the next 12 months. Vendors in the space will need to demonstrate measurable improvements against those indicators, rather than relying on capability claims alone, if they are to shift the consumer sentiment numbers the ONS survey recorded.

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