Contact Centre Trends & Transformations in 2026: Navigating the Need for Scale and Efficiency in an Era of Technological Disruption
2026 marks the year AI becomes fully operational in contact centres, which continue evolving from cost centres into strategic assets. With 98% of ANZ contact centres now using some form of AI, it remains the industry’s biggest disruptor — and 64% of Australian contact centres say it’s meeting or exceeding expectations, with tools like chatbots, speech analytics and Agent Assist cutting wait times and enabling scale.
Gartner predicts agentic AI will autonomously resolve 80% of common service issues by 2029. Early adopters like Pandora are already seeing results, with its agentic AI driving a 10.5-point NPS improvement on after-sales enquiries — though many pilots are still stalling at full deployment due to data and trust issues. Organisations are also broadening how they measure ROI, moving beyond single metrics to assess contact centre impact across the whole business.
On the people side, the picture is more complicated. Agents face mounting stress from shifting roles and job uncertainty, with more than half of contact centre leaders expecting headcounts to fall and attrition continuing to rise. AI is clearly a critical enabler — but the organisations that will truly succeed are those pairing it with human-centred strategies that prioritise agent development and wellbeing. We spoke with contact centre leaders across a range of industries to understand how they’re navigating this era.
This report is brought to you by the Contact Centre Symposium 2026 – which kicks off in the Hunter Valley on Tuesday, 12 May.
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