The gap between adoption and impact

AI is already embedded in the contact center. The bigger question is what happens after the technology produces a score, an insight or an automated interaction.

Our latest research finds that headcount is changing even while end-to-end automation remains relatively shallow. Managers and agents do not trust AI-generated QA scores equally. And while AI insight is increasingly available, it does not always make its way into the coaching conversations where performance can actually change.

The technology is in place. The governance, trust and feedback loops around it are still catching up.

This report shows where the gaps are.

What’s inside the report

Get the full findings from the second edition of the Quarterly QA & CX Intelligence Pulse, based on responses from 600 contact center professionals across the UK and US, and see what the findings mean for your own AI, QA and CX strategy.

• The headcount and automation gap: 46% say AI has reduced frontline headcount, while AI fully resolves just 19% of customer queries on average.

• The trust gap: 76% of managers trust AI-generated QA scores, compared with 57% of agents.

• The oversight gap: only 14% always have AI-generated scores reviewed or challenged by a human.

• The manager-agent perception gap: 71% of managers say AI has made agents’ work easier, compared with 56% of agents.

• The insight-to-coaching gap: 15% of contact centers generating AI insight get no coaching from it at all.

• A benchmark for your own operation: compare your approach to AI adoption, governance, trust and coaching with the wider market.

Why this matters now

AI adoption is no longer the difficult part.

The challenge is proving that the technology is producing reliable outcomes, that the people affected by it trust how it is being used, and that the insights it creates lead to meaningful action.

For QA, CX and contact center leaders, that means looking beyond how much AI has been deployed and asking what happens next.

The AI Reality Check gives you an independent benchmark for those conversations, grounded in the experience of 600 people working inside contact centers today.

Who this report is for

• QA Managers and Directors

• CX Managers and Directors

• Contact Center and Operations Managers and Directors

• COOs and Chief Customer Officers

• Team Leaders and Supervisors

• Risk and Compliance teams

• Voice of the Customer and Customer Insights teams

Why ScorebuddyCX

ScorebuddyCX commissioned this independent research to better understand how AI is changing quality assurance and customer experience in practice.

The findings reinforce a principle at the heart of our approach: automation creates the greatest value when it is combined with clear governance, human oversight and a direct route from insight to action.

ScorebuddyCX brings quality assurance, AI Auto Scoring, Conversation Analytics, Business Intelligence, Coaching and Learning Management together so teams can move from evaluating individual interactions to understanding the customer experience at scale.