Customer
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In 2025, AI dominated CX conversations but a key challenge emerged: a growing disconnect between business ambition, technology momentum, and real customer needs. While some organisations accelerate successfully, others struggle as AI scales weak foundations. This whitepaper explores the gaps in governance, metrics, and alignment, sharing practical steps CX leaders can take to make AI work for both customers and business outcomes.

While AI and automation dominate the conversation about the future of customer contact, most organisations struggle not with technology, but with execution. The real gap sits in the people layer, outdated roles, legacy metrics, and leadership models that no longer reflect the work agents are actually doing. Becoming Future Fit means aligning technology, culture, and measurement around human value.

BPO leaders are under constant pressure to scale quickly, remain compliant, and protect margins. One often overlooked challenge is how devices are onboarded, managed, and retired at scale, and how a circular IT approach can reduce cost, risk, and complexity while supporting workforce volatility.

This Location Watch report shows a clear shift in UK outsourcing: from cost-driven offshoring to value-led, tech-enabled delivery. With budgets flat and service expectations rising, UK brands are turning to AI, automation, and selective onshoring to improve quality, resilience, and customer trust. As AI narrows the offshore cost gap, the UK is re-emerging as a competitive, future-ready CX hub.

AI regulation has become a boardroom priority. As the US and UK hesitate, the EU surges ahead with the world’s first comprehensive AI law, the EU AI Act, set to shape global standards just as GDPR did for data privacy.

Customers in 2025 want their problems solved quickly but also with care. According to MaxContact’s latest Voice of the UK Consumer report, 70% of people want to speak to a human when explaining specific situations, and 42% have switched providers due to poor contact centre experiences. At the same time, 45% are comfortable with AI but nearly 36% remain uncomfortable, especially older demographics.

Research from Stanford, MIT, and NUS shows people disclose more openly to AI than to humans on sensitive issues like money, health, and relationships. The reason is simple: AI doesn’t judge. For CX leaders, judgment-free AI agents can unlock trust, accuracy, and more honest customer interactions.

Six months on from our “Year of Difficult Conversations” whitepaper, a clear paradox has emerged. AI in contact centres delivers rapid wins, but without careful planning, those gains risk eroding into burnout, attrition, and declining customer satisfaction. This ‘AI Paradox’ shows why sustainable transformation depends on balancing efficiency with agent wellbeing.

In health & wellbeing, every interaction matters. As digital healthtech and rising expectations put pressure on contact centres, leading brands are turning cost centres into care hubs. By blending automation with empathy, they scale securely while protecting the trust and human connection that define the wellbeing experience.

AI boosts contact centre efficiency fast but without safeguarding agents, early gains collapse into burnout, turnover, and falling CSAT. The answer is agentic AI: systems that handle tasks while empowering humans, sustaining productivity and long-term ROI.

Pure Voice AI is the most disruptive contact centre use case yet, replacing agents for certain interactions with fully autonomous, human-like conversations. Beyond efficiency, it promises 24/7 service, smoother demand, and seamless multilingual support, making it a transformative shift for customer experience.

AI-powered hands-free conversations remove admin tasks, letting agents focus fully on the customer for faster, smarter, and more human interactions