The AI Opportunity to Reshape Culture and Performance

Contact centers are infamous for being high-pressure environments with relentless focus on metrics like average handle time (AHT) and occupancy rates. This soul-crushing focus on efficiency has resulted in low morale, high turnover and poor experiences. Yet, the emergence of AI presents a rare opportunity to organically address the structural issues that have plagued customer service for decades.

As Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna says, “In a world of AI, nothing will be as valuable as humans.”

Here’s how to start thinking about it and what questions to ask.

The Cost of a Broken Culture

Customer service roles are usually defined by what’s wrong: constant stress, rigid rules, high call volumes and unrelenting micromanagement. That creates agents who feel disposable, emotionally drained and disengaged. It’s no surprise contact centers suffer attrition rates ranging from 30 to 100% per year.

Much of the pain stems from a legacy, human-and-phone-first model designed to minimize cost. When occupancy targets and call time thresholds rule, agents are treated more like factory workers than trusted professionals. This has cultivated cultures where burnout is the norm, not the exception.

AI as the Catalyst for Change

The shift toward AI-led customer service will be a cultural turning point.

Don’t fall into legacy thinking about cost reduction via lower headcount. You’ll need people and it’s the cost focus that got us here. Ask yourself:

• How many agents will I need in 3-5 years?
• How will the skillset change?
• How will my recruiting and training concept change?
• How will my organizational structure change
• What will be the automation impact on my human and financial resources?

Today, customer service is reactionary. But when fewer issues land with them, when agents aim for more engagement and even higher AHT — interactions start looking like opportunities to be welcomed.

Today, marketing, sales and customer service are three separate departments. Yet, the division between them is arbitrary.

Someone looking for the right jacket to climb Mount Rainier has a problem to solve. We could see that as a “sale” or alternatively, as a customer interaction to help someone solve a problem. Perhaps future “agents” should be measured on “resolutions” (which can be new sales, upsells, questions answered and product issues fixed)? After all, finding the right jacket is resolving a problem.

5 Quality Centered Metrics to Explore

AI does more than reduce workload, it redefines success. Instead of measuring every second of agent activity, AI-first contact centers can refocus on outcome-based KPIs tied to satisfaction, resolution quality and agent well-being.

How could your culture change without all the repetitive work, without the pressure to just be fast but with perhaps encouragement to “be effective”? You get a culture defined by excellence and engagement.

To seize this opportunity, contact centers should focus on:

1. Invest in AI that aligns with your strategy, not because C-level said “we have to use AI.”
2. Redesign performance metrics to emphasize quality and sustainability. Who cares if AHT with one customer is long if they remain a customer for life? Are those few extra minutes worth more than your customer acquisition cost?
3. Foster a culture of learning. That includes both learning and adapting to new technologies but also areas like emotional intelligence, conflict resolution and problem-solving.
4. Prioritize, measure and reward managers on employee well-being! If it’s not tracked and not tied to performance bonuses or evaluations, nothing will change.
5. Measure and iterate because you’re not going to get it right the first time, but above all, start listening to your employees.

This kind of culture fosters loyalty not just from employees, but from customers who sense the difference in every interaction.