What Contact Center Success Looks Like in an AI‑Driven World

The contact center industry is currently undergoing a transformation unlike anything we’ve seen before. While change has always been part of the landscape, this current wave, driven by AI and automation, is reshaping not just technology but the structure and purpose of contact centers.

In a recent webinar, David Singer, Verint’s Global Vice President, GTM Strategy, and Keith Dawson, ISG Research’s Director of Research, Customer Experience, explored what defines contact center success today and what will matter most moving forward.

Read the key takeaways from this insightful conversation.

Contact Center Evolution: From Cost Centers to Strategic Data Hubs

Earlier, contact centers evolved through technological improvements that primarily affected infrastructure. Innovations such as interactive voice response (IVR), customer relationship management (CRM), and the move to the cloud helped improve efficiency, but they didn’t fundamentally change how contact centers operated or how agents engaged with customers.

Today, AI marks a true turning point, redefining the very structure of contact centers. With AI-powered intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs), intelligent call routing, and predictive analytics, organizations are no longer just optimizing operations but rethinking the role of the contact center altogether.

Routine interactions are increasingly automated, allowing human agents to focus on complex, emotionally charged interactions. As a result, the agent role is becoming more specialized, requiring skills such as empathy, negotiation, and problem-solving.

At the same time, the perception of the contact center is shifting too. Once viewed primarily as a cost center, it’s now recognized as a strategic data hub that continuously adapts and drives better business outcomes. Every interaction generates insights into customer sentiment, intent, and behavior.

This evolution positions the contact center as a critical contributor to customer experience (CX) strategy, not just a reactive service function.

Why Leadership Must Focus on Outcomes Now

As contact centers rely more on IVAs and self-service, contact center leaders face new challenges and are rethinking what success looks like.

A key change is how automated interactions are measured. Traditional, activity-based metrics, such as handle time and abandonment rates, are giving way to key performance indicators (KPIs) tied to business outcomes, including customer loyalty, revenue generation, and CX scores.

It’s more than change in terminology; it reshapes how decisions are made. When outcomes drive decisions, then your technology investments, staffing models, and process improvements will better align with business goals, creating greater value across the organization.

Contact Center Boundaries Are Dissolving

The form of the contact center is changing: its physical and conceptual boundaries are dissolving.

Today digital engagement spans across communication channels, including social media, chat, and self-service. This expansion flattened traditional hierarchies, moving organizations away from volume-driven call factories and toward digitally integrated, omnichannel engagement hubs.

This shift requires orchestration and insight, not just management. Customers don’t want their journey to be managed from above; they want freedom to interact on their preferred terms.

Organizations must orchestrate both human and digital resources, so they’re ready for customers wherever and however they engage. That requires continual and immediate access to contextual data.

Seamless transitions between self-service and agent-assisted channels require unified knowledge systems powering both IVAs and human agents.

Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is emerging as the cornerstone of this new contact center model. No longer just a supporting function, it’s now part of the core contact center infrastructure, powering both bots and agents.

Bots can’t rely on institutional memory, and human agents can’t depend on outdated training. A robust, AI-powered knowledge management system ensures accurate, consistent answers across every channel. It also creates a virtuous cycle: as interactions refine knowledge, bots improve, agents perform better, and customer experience rises.

Customer Experience Management

The next phase of contact center evolution goes beyond Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) and toward Customer Experience Management (CXM). CXM brings together interaction handling and customer lifecycle management, helping organizations move from simply resolving issues to intentionally shaping experiences.

Modern CXM platforms integrate interaction handling, resource management, customer analytics, workflow automations, and customer journey orchestration into a single, unified ecosystem.

By breaking down silos between teams and channels, CXM enables enterprises to understand, manage, and measure customer behavior across the entire lifecycle. At the core of this approach is shared data, which is a common foundation connecting every interaction.

Evolve Your Contact Center with Verint

Ultimately, contact center success starts with a shift in leadership mindset. It’s time to move away from traditional contact center thinking (focused on cost control, reactive service, and isolated interactions) and adopt CX-centric, management lens.

This CX-first approach is value-driven, revenue-centric, proactive, and focused on faster, stronger, measurable business outcomes.

The contact center is no longer a cost to manage. It’s a powerful CX engine that delivers business impact today while generating insights that can shape smarter decisions for the future.

Learn how Verint’s AI-powered CX Automation platform can help contact centers drive AI-business outcomes now here.

Watch the full webinar featuring David Singer, Verint’s Global Vice President, GTM Strategy, here.