AI reshapes call centers, but humans remain essential: report
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES — Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly taking over routine tasks in call centers, speeding workflows and improving customer experiences. Yet, lawmakers, companies, and industry experts emphasize that human agents remain crucial for more complex, sensitive issues, according to a report from the Associated Press.
AI streamlines customer service tasks
Armen Kirakosian, a Global Senior Manager at TTEC in Athens, recalls how agents once wrote notes manually and navigated clumsy menus before each call. Now, AI provides full customer profiles and predictive insights even before the greeting.
He tells the Associated Press, “AI has taken the robot out of us,” allowing agents to spend more energy on truly helping people.
Roughly 3 million Americans work in call centers, and agents worldwide field billions of inquiries annually. With AI, repetitive tasks such as billing questions or password resets are increasingly handled by automated systems. Companies such as TTEC and Bank of America, among others, are utilizing this technology to automate tedious tasks, allowing human agents to focus on value-driven problem-solving.
Job cuts and legislative pushback
AI adoption has caused employment losses, even though it has made things more efficient. In 2024, the Swedish banking company Klarna cut 700 customer support jobs after using chatbots but then hired some of those workers back to work on more complicated issues like identity theft investigations. The business admitted that not all jobs are good candidates for automation.
The concept of an “AI-first” contact center, where AI handles most inquiries and highly skilled human agents intervene only when needed, is gaining traction. Gadi Shamia of Replicant describes it as a future already unfolding.
Still, U.S. lawmakers are raising concerns about over-automation. The proposed Keep Call Centers in America Act would legislate clear access to live human support and offer incentives to companies that maintain domestic customer-service jobs.
Critics warn that excessive reliance on AI could erode customer trust and lead to the offshoring of employment internationally.
Industry leaders note that voice remains the dominant channel for complex or emotional cases, where empathy and discretion matter.
AI is positioned less as a replacement for human interaction and more as a tool to empower agents to reduce errors, speed up data retrieval, and enhance personalization. As technology evolves, the ideal model appears to be a hybrid: efficient automation combined with human empathy and judgment.
