For years, most people have thought of contact centers as the place you call when something goes wrong, like a delayed order, a service glitch, a billing question. They've been reactive by design, with the goal of solving the problem and closing the ticket. Technology helped speed things up over time with self-service portals, chatbots, and automation. But even with those advances, the interactions often felt mechanical.
Generative artificial intelligence is changing that. It's bringing a layer of intelligence that goes beyond scripts and rules, allowing every interaction to feel more like a real conversation than a transaction.
This shift isn't about replacing people. It's about helping humans do their jobs better, making service feel effortless for customers while giving agents the tools and insights to focus on what they do best: building trust.
Think back to the early chatbot days. They worked fine for simple, straightforward questions like checking a balance or tracking a shipment, but the moment you went off-script, the experience could get clunky. GenAI flips that dynamic as well. It can understand context, pick up on tone, and connect dots from past interactions. If, for example, you mention you've been a loyal customer for five years while asking about a delay, genAI can recognize the sentiment, acknowledge your loyalty, and offer solutions that make sense for you, not just the default response.
It's the difference between talking to someone who's reading from a manual and talking to someone who knows your history and cares about your experience.
The real magic happens when genAI and human agents work side by side. GenAI can do the following:
- Take on repetitive, low-value tasks& like filling forms or looking up information so agents aren't bogged down.
- Summarize long customer histories in seconds so the agent starts every call with the necessary information.
- Suggest the following best action or even prompt empathetic phrasing during a live interaction.
Agents, freed from the tedious stuff, can focus on complex or sensitive situations that truly benefit from human judgment and empathy. The result? Customers get faster resolutions and more personalized care. Agents feel less stressed and more empowered. Everyone wins.
One of the most exciting aspects of genAI is how it can help contact centers be proactive instead of reactive. By spotting patterns across thousands or millions of interactions, genAI can flag issues before they snowball. A bank could identify early signs of payment trouble and reach out with tailored options. A retailer could anticipate demand surges and pre-emptively update customers on product availability. Instead of waiting for the customer to call frustrated, you meet them with solutions before they even ask. That's how you turn a potential problem into a joyous brand moment.
Making Personalization Real
Personalization has been a buzzword in CX for years, but doing it well at scale has always been tough. GenAI can pull together details from different systems, like what customers bought, the issues they've raised before, or how they prefer to communicate and use that to adapt the conversation on the fly. It's not just about knowing their names. It's about suggesting products that complement their last purchases, following up on an earlier issue to check if it's truly resolved, or matching the tone of the conversation to their style. Done right, this makes every customer feel remembered and valued.
With all this capability, there's also a responsibility to get it right. Companies need to be transparent, and customers should know when they're talking to AI. They must ensure responses are accurate, avoid bias, and have humans step in when needed.
There's also the people side within the organization. As AI takes over the routine work, agents need training to handle higher-value, emotionally complex interactions. Upskilling isn't just nice to have; it's critical to making the human-AI partnership work.
Success is more than cost savings. It's tempting to see genAI through the lens of efficiency: reducing call volume or shortening handle times. But the bigger story is in the quality of relationships it helps build. Leaders should measure success through metrics like customer loyalty, reduced effort, and the frequency of issue resolution. Those are the moments that make customers stay and recommend your brand to others.
What's next for genAI in the contact center? Looking ahead, we'll see genAI extend beyond the frontline into every part of the customer journey, including the following:
- Real-time translation so language is never a barrier.
- Emotion detection to route frustrated customers to the right kind of support.
- Unified customer journeys that make voice, chat, email, and social interactions feel like one continuous conversation.
In this future, customers won't have to repeat themselves, agents won't have to dig for information, and every interaction, whether with AI or a human, will feel like part of the same experience.
Generative AI isn't the end of human-led service; it's the evolution of it. It allows contact centers to shift from being problem-solvers to experience creators. By blending the speed and insight of AI with the empathy and judgment of human agents, we're entering an era where every customer interaction can be faster, smarter, and more human than ever before.
Abhinandan Jain is chief digital officer and head of global strategy at Startek.