AI won’t cut call center jobs but make agents ‘superheroes,’ CEO says
ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM — Call center employees around the world are unlikely to be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI), according to Vasili Triant, CEO of UJET, a cloud-based platform that integrates AI and automation into customer service workflows.
In a report from The Register, Triant believed that AI is being used to streamline operations and make human agents more effective at solving customer issues.
“The problem actually is the systems themselves, not the humans. It’s what the humans have to deal with,” Triant said.
“So we believe AI has a huge, huge implication and impact on the customer experience base… Instead of the ROI being ‘I’m going to remove humans,’ your ROI becomes ‘I’m not spending money on a legacy application that doesn’t need to be there anymore,” Triant added.
AI vs. replacement: Enhancing agent capabilities and ROI
UJET works with clients including wellness brand GNC, shoemaker Alto, cookware brand Lodge, and point-of-sale platform Zettle, helping call centers reduce friction in workflows and improve customer experience.
Triant emphasized that automation over the past 30 years has already handled routine tasks like billing, reservations, and password resets, and attempts to fully replace human agents with AI have not delivered the expected returns.
“There’s a lot of companies that have already tried doing the body replacement… It does some good simple things, but it’s not replacing the body, like the ROI is not panning out on that stuff,” Triant said.
A recent Gartner report supports this perspective, warning that by 2030, the cost per resolution for generative AI in customer service could exceed US$3, higher than many offshore human agents.
“Customer service leaders are determined to use AI to reduce costs, but return on those investments is far from guaranteed,” said Patrick Quinlan, senior director analyst in the Gartner customer service and support practice.
“Full automation will be prohibitively expensive for most organizations; instead, leading organizations will use AI to drive customer engagement rather than to cut costs,” Quinlan added.
Streamlining workflows to boost customer experience
Triant said the next wave of efficiency in call centers will come from curating the applications employees use to resolve complaints, not cutting staff.
“The people that are talking to you and I… have way too many tools, and it’s so complex… The problem is they have so many different things that they have to deal with to get the information they need to solve your problem,” he said.
As AI continues to evolve, call centers and outsourcing providers are reconsidering how technology complements human talent rather than replacing it.
Triant notes that the goal is to “take those… real good knowledge workers and agents, and… make them superheroes.”
In an industry driven by customer experience, this approach signals a broader shift: companies can optimize AI to boost productivity while preserving employment, a model that could redefine global call center outsourcing in the coming decade.
