Generative artificial intelligence will displace 100,000 front-line contact center agents at the top global customer service outsourcing organizations, according to a new report from Forrester Research.
That is significant for the entire CX field, given that an average of 62 percent of contact centers in consumer-facing industries are outsourced, according to Forrester. It also found that half of these outsourced centers employ cheaper offshore or nearshore labor, where genAI is poised to automate low-complexity issues and lessen the demand for human agents.
To address this shift, Forrester urges outsourcers to prioritize performance-based models that can enhance automation and shift human workers to other tasks with greater value. It also urges companies to build on the experiments they've already conducted with AI to improve processes going forward.
"Given genAI's potential to transform marketing and customer experience, many brands eagerly experimented with the technology in 2024," Sharyn Leaver, chief research officer at Forrester, said in the report. "But it soon became clear that this transformation is a long game. In 2025, B2C marketing, digital, and CX leaders must build on lessons learned from this experimentation and focus on improving their data infrastructure to gain better customer insights."
At the same time, Forrester predicts that one in five CX teams will join design, research, and delivery teams to improve impact. It found that 56 percent of CX leaders say they are not at all or slightly effective at connecting customer feedback with behavioral and product data. Embedded CX teams will infuse customer insights directly into products, services, and customer-facing processes while fully standalone teams will still struggle to make an impact.
This also comes as the research firm expects half of all accessibility efforts to have negligible CX impact. It found that 59 percent of global design pros say their companies have an exec-backed commitment to digital accessibility, and while the European Accessibility Act's June 2025 compliance deadline will increase this number, only half of companies with commitments will take substantive action. The other half will take performative action, turning to quick-fix products and reactive find-and-fix programs that don't materially improve accessibility, it said.