For our 10th anniversary, we’ve unpacked our crystal ball and come up with 10 predictions for the future of Contact Centres. Our 9th prediction considers a significant reshaping of human roles in CX.

Two-thirds of seats will disappear

By 2036, AI and Automation will rewrite the contact centre script, with around two-thirds of UK and Western European seats gone; replaced by synthetic voice and agentic AI, or cheaper locations, supported by AI.

But this isn’t an apocalypse. It’s about job redistribution: as AI takes on volume, human roles will shift to design, governance, and empathy. BPOs will absorb much of the transition, evolving into mixed human-AI delivery engines (see prediction 10).

Essentially, contact centres will shrink, but customer experience will grow stronger.

The shift explained

For decades, contact centres were built on scale, with hundreds or thousands of people connected by process, headsets, and KPIs. A global pandemic followed by advancement of AI has changed the physics forever.

Right now, AI is elevating the agent: assistive tools that handle after-call work, summarised conversations, and real-time prompts. The first generation of Super Agent has arrived – faster, smarter, more informed than ever before. The shift from humans delivering scale and volume to complex and premium has begun.

But the next decade will see both their ascent and their decline, as technology begins to assume much of what made them exceptional.

The rise and fall of the Super Agent

The Super Agent is still on the rise. Super Agent 2.0 will have faster access to knowledge, real-time coaching, intelligent workflow support and more – giving them the tools to perform with superhuman speed and accuracy. Across the industry, they’re emerging as the embodiment of what happens when empathy meets intelligence.

But the same technology that fuels their rise will also define their fall. As AI learns the playbook, more interactions will move to autonomous resolution. You’ll no longer need multi-lingual agents with the ability to knit together disparate systems. Synthetic agents will speak all the languages, in the right accents. AI will have joined up the things that don’t work (see prediction 5). And AI agents will replicate tone, recall, and judgement of both customer sentiment and execution with astonishing fidelity, so long as you can evidence their decision-making and rationale (see prediction 4).

By 2035, the Super Agent will have peaked – a brief golden age where human capability and machine augmentation were perfectly aligned – before the curve turns toward the ultimate delivery of end-to-end process automation and the consolidation of tasks only the brightest humans could previously perform.

What remains will be fewer, rarer human roles: those who handle the high-emotion, high-stakes, and high-value interactions that AI cannot and should not touch. The Super Agent will not vanish overnight, but their era as the dominant model of service will be over.

The next decade will be remembered as both their rise and their fall – a time when the best of humanity taught machines what great service really feels like.

What it means for CX leaders

Plan for a smaller, smarter workforce. Workforce management will shift from rostering to resource orchestration – balancing people, AI, and virtual capacity.
Redefine human value. The new differentiator isn’t scale; it’s emotional range, contextual judgement, and brand empathy.
Upskill with purpose. Train for hybrid work – collaboration with AI, ethical decision-making, and creative problem-solving.
Be transparent. The conversation about automation and workforce change must happen early, with clarity and respect.

Our perspective

We help organisations and BPO partners prepare for this rebalanced future, to match the efficiency of automation with the empathy of expertise. To design operating models where technology takes the strain and people take the stage – responsibly, transparently, and sustainably.

Because while two-thirds of seats may disappear, the need for human wisdom won’t. It will simply move to where it matters most.

Closing thoughts

Automation isn’t the villain of the story, but it will rewrite the script. The Super Agent’s final act isn’t disappearance, it’s direction. Their legacy will guide how the next generation of service learns to care.

Sources & further reading

Everest Group CXM Workforce Transformation Report 2025 | Gartner AI in Service Operations 2030 | Forrester Future of Work in CX 2035 | ContactBabel UK Contact Centre Forecast 2025

Our most contentious prediction yet that certainly caused debate! What do you think?

Let us know in 50 words or less and we’ll publish the most interesting and thought-provoking perspectives below.

Here’s what others had to say about this prediction:

“Two-thirds of seats will disappear. I strongly disagree with this. One of the big messages we’re hearing even from the tech companies now is that CX is a human-based dynamic. As long as I can remember being an analyst in this space, every time some new form of automation comes out…10 to 15% of workstations are going to disappear. And I tend to think that that’s a good number to play with…most [BPOs] are not anticipating [a two-thirds reduction]. In fact, a lot of them are increasing their capacity. So I think that this prediction is very much an ambitious one, but it’s not one that I see coming to fruition.”

Peter Ryan
President and Principal Analyst, Ryan Strategic Advisory

“Entirely possible but bold in numbers. Prediction 3 would need to be true for this to happen and as above I’m not sure they are ready. I’d say 40-50%”

Mark Gait
Consultant & Interim Commercial Director, Former Director of Customer Service, Virgin Media O2

“This would mean the loss of 533,000 agent positions, and 843,000 jobs. If this is true, it would make AI in contact centres a massive political and economic issue. To put this into perspective, If it happened overnight – which it won’t – it would mean an increase of 50% on the current unemployment rate.

“I agree with the last sentence [of the short introduction prediction – see predictions page], but I think a more gradual drop in employment is likely, with natural wastage accounting for more than dramatic headline-creating sackings. For many companies, halving the cost of their customer contact operations (which is quite a stretch target) but losing 10-20% of sales in the process through customer disapproval or system failures would more than wipe out any gain in profitability. Is it a risk worth taking?”

Steve Morrell
Managing Director, ContactBabel

“[This] faces the reality of a much-reduced need for human support in the service side of contact centers and along with that the supporting roles within contact centres.
Nerys Corfield
Director, Injection Consulting Ltd

“Predictions that two-thirds of contact centre roles will vanish miss the bigger picture.
Yes, automation and synthetic voice will handle the transactional. But the human role will evolve — from reactive problem-solving to proactive growth creation.

“By 2035, the most successful agents will be brand ambassadors and commercial advisors, equipped with data-driven insights and emotional intelligence.

“They’ll drive measurable Return on Involvement and Return on Improvement — blending empathy with enterprise.”

Martin Newman
Board Advisor, Ambassador and part-time Chair CXA