For our 10th anniversary, we’ve unpacked our crystal ball and come up with 10 predictions for the future of Contact Centres. In this final prediction, we see geography giving way to networks and the true birth of the ‘contact centre’ as a driver of revenue, value and ROI.

Geography won’t matter – cost and revenue will

By the mid-2030s, location will no longer define delivery. Contact centres will dissolve into distributed networks – part human, part synthetic. These networks will operate seamlessly across time zones and technologies to optimise service and drive opportunities by placing the emphasis on skills and meeting customer needs.

The competitive edge won’t come from where you are, but from how efficiently you turn experience into value. Network capability and contribution to revenue KPIs will become more important than the need to find all of the skills in once place or person and the likes of average handling time.

For brands, this isn’t about chasing cheaper seats. It’s about designing smarter ecosystems that turn the Contact Centre into Customer Contact, refocusing service delivery from cost-to-serve to opportunity realisation, revenue generation and ROI. For agents, this means developing their own value and auctioning it across multiple brands.

The shift explained

The era of fixed facilities and national service hubs is ending. AI translation, multilingual voice synthesis, and hyper-automation will make geography largely irrelevant. Customer contact will be delivered by a mesh of digital workers, specialist humans, and intelligent routing that connects demand to the best available capability in real time.

Cost models will follow this shift too. Instead of paying for occupancy or headcount, organisations will pay for experience and loyalty outcomes, such as resolution quality, and revenue influence. The economic logic of “where” will be replaced by the performance logic of “why” and “how”.

What began as outsourcing will become borderless orchestration: capacity that flexes by hour, channel and language, with specific human skills layered on top to deliver the right type of empathy, personality or support skillset. All unconstrained by postcodes or payrolls.

We’ll see greater emergence of the gig economy, with human agent skills categorised and measured to determine their value. They’ll make themselves available at times that suit them but earn more at times when demand for their skills is highest. And they won’t work just for one brand, as AI supports the knowledge base, they’ll be valued for their humanity.

What it means for CX leaders

• Design without borders. Build hybrid networks of people, partners, and AI that operate as one ecosystem.
• Prioritise trust and culture. When geography dissolves and agents are guns for hire, culture becomes your guiding principle.
• Lead globally. Distributed work demands new skills: digital empathy, asynchronous leadership, and unified brand voice.
• Follow value, not volume. Measure success by cost efficiency and customer lifetime value (CLV) contribution, not seat count.

Customers don’t really care where service sits, but they very much care how it feels.

Our perspective

At Customer Contact Panel, we see this as the natural destination of everything we’ve predicted: AI-first operations, outcome-based outsourcing, memory-driven insight, and the rise (and fall) of the Super Agent all converge here. The market will no longer be defined by finding all of the skills in a single place, but in how you bring all of the skills you need together across the map.

We’re here to help organisations design for this borderless future. To identify partners, technologies, and delivery models that combine global reach with local relevance. To finally realise a vision where strategy is the anchor, and the rest is just logistics.

The brands that thrive won’t be the ones that operate everywhere, but the ones that feel personal anywhere.

Closing thoughts

Geography no longer defines delivery. The world is your Contact Centre.

Sources & further reading

Everest Group CXM Global Delivery Report 2035 | Forrester Future of Workforce Location 2030 | Gartner Anywhere Operations Framework 2028 | CCP Future Fit Framework 2025

Do you think contact centres will become revenue driving ‘contact networks’ over the next decade?

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