5 trends redefining contact center KPIs

As someone who partners with customer experience leaders every day, I see firsthand how quickly expectations are shifting—and how much pressure there is to deliver consistently high-quality service across every channel.

The evolution of contact centers over the last few years has been remarkable. Automated channels, self-service, and AI-powered assistants have delivered major gains in speed and efficiency, helping customers resolve routine issues seamlessly and at scale.

But even as automation succeeds, voice remains essential to the customer experience strategy. Rather than replacing one channel with another, businesses should focus on offering customers flexible options to engage how they want, ensuring each channel delivers fast, reliable, and personalized service.

Drawing on benchmarking data from nearly 3,000 companies worldwide, I want to share five trends I believe every CX leader should understand. These trends don’t just describe where the industry is—they reveal what organizations need to prioritize to deliver real value, build loyalty, and stay competitive.

Trend 1: Voice remains an important choice in an omnichannel world.

Help is available to customers through more channels than ever, from automated chats to self-service portals to AI-powered agents. And these channels are working well, handling massive interaction volumes and freeing human agents for other tasks. Yet voice continues to see high levels of use. Last year, U.S. contact centers handled over 1.5 billion inbound voice calls, significantly more than fully automated interactions. It’s not that automation can’t handle complex or emotional interactions, because it can.

The point is that customers want choice. They want the convenience of automation for many needs and the option to speak to someone directly when it suits them. Leading organizations understand this. Instead of neglecting voice, they’re investing in modern routing, better workforce planning, and AI-powered tools that make agents faster, more knowledgeable, and more effective. The best strategies don’t force customers into one channel. They optimize every channel for its strengths.

Trend 2: Instant service is the norm.

Regardless of channel, speed is a critical factor in customer satisfaction. Our benchmarking data shows that leading organizations are prioritizing it. Average speed of answer improved by 39% over two years, dropping to just 8 seconds. Waiting times and hold times also fell by more than 20%.
These improvements reflect a combination of factors, such as investments in AI-powered routing, smarter forecasting, and real-time workforce management that align resources with demand. Speed is no longer a differentiator but the baseline. Whether customers choose voice, chat, or self-service, they want quick, seamless access to the right solution.
Apple Federal Credit Union, for example, reimagined its legacy phone system to align staffing and routing intelligently, cutting average answer times by 62%. That kind of improvement doesn’t just make operations leaner. It also makes customers feel heard and valued.

For organizations still relying on outdated systems or static staffing models, modernization will help improve efficiency and meet rising customer expectations.

Trend 3: AI is moving from hype to practical impact.

Artificial intelligence has been a major topic in the industry for years. Many organizations are exploring ways to boost speed and consistency, reduce transfers, improve first-contact resolution, and help agents handle calls more confidently and resolve issues faster.

Containment rates, the percentage of interactions resolved without needing a live agent, remain stable. The Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study found that a modeled composite organization could contain or deflect up to 60% of calls using Talkdesk CX Cloud.

Quadient, one of our customers, identified routine call types that could be automated, boosting containment from 33% to 60%. Rather than replacing agents, the focus is on reserving human agents’ time and empathy for the interactions that need them.

What stands out in our conversations with CX leaders is that successful AI adoption isn’t just a tech upgrade. It requires rethinking workflows, investing in training, and ensuring your agents see AI as a partner, not a threat. The best organizations aren’t asking “How do we replace people?” but rather “How do we empower people to deliver their best work?”

Trend 4: Customer expectations are higher than ever.

Customers don’t just want fast interactions; they want personalized, seamless, and empathetic experiences across every channel.

Our benchmarking data shows customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) improving by 12.5%, rising from 4.0 to 4.5 on average. This improvement reflects a meaningful shift in how customers perceive the value of their interactions. Contact centers are getting faster, more responsive, and better at delivering personalized interactions.

As digital channels mature and self-service becomes more effective, customers will increasingly expect live interactions, especially voice, to deliver even more value. They’ll want agents who know their history, understand their preferences, and can solve their issues without transferring them multiple times.

Research from Deloitte suggests that AI, when deployed thoughtfully, can drive CSAT improvements of over 50%. But technology alone isn’t enough. It takes careful orchestration, data integration, and a genuine commitment to improving customer outcomes.

Trend 5: From cost center to strategic value center.

For decades, contact centers have been treated primarily as cost centers. The focus was on minimizing expenses—reducing handle times, cutting staffing, and outsourcing wherever possible. But that mindset is changing.

Our data shows that despite increasing complexity and higher call volumes, service levels have remained steady at around 75% answered within our clients’ defined wait time targets. Maintaining that performance takes careful planning. It requires investment in smarter forecasting, better workforce management, and technology that supports, not gets in the way of, contact center agents.

Leading organizations recognize that every customer interaction is a chance to build loyalty and are investing in technology, training, culture, and better workflows. They’re redesigning journeys to anticipate needs, not just react to them. In short, they’re treating customer experience not as an expense to be squeezed but as a strategic asset capable of driving long-term growth. It’s this shift from a cost center to value center that will drive meaningful differentiation.

Looking ahead.

As customer expectations continue to evolve, operational performance can’t be an afterthought. Whether it’s improving response times, maintaining quality under pressure, or strengthening customer satisfaction, success will come to organizations willing to measure honestly, adapt quickly, and invest wisely. The most effective contact centers won’t treat KPIs as static targets, but as part of a continuous effort to deliver better outcomes for customers and the business alike.

The insights from this Benchmarking help you think more critically about your own priorities and investments and act as a foundation for planning and decision-making to turn operational excellence into a real competitive advantage.

Ready to dive deeper? Download our full benchmarking report!