Your contact centre’s future is on the line. Will change be your downfall—or your breakthrough?

Key takeaways

• Organizations need to align contact centre transformation with overall business goals, using AI and human-centred design to boost customer loyalty, innovation, and measurable value.
• Traditional change management approaches are often too rigid and overlook the realities faced by frontline staff. To achieve better results, leaders should implement agile, ongoing, people-focused strategies.
• Achieving lasting impact requires leaders to set clear, measurable goals, encourage cross-functional collaboration, and embed continuous feedback.  

Contact centres have long been viewed as operational engines or cost centres. They are strategic hubs of customer engagement—the front line where brand promises meet customer expectations. Each interaction presents an opportunity to strengthen relationships, foster loyalty, and gather insights that can inform product development, financial results, and broader business strategy.

Traditionally, many contact centres focus on transactional efficiency instead strategic growth goals that reflect changing customer expectations, new technology, and competition. And to evolve into these goals, organizations often rely on outdated change management approaches.

Transforming the contact centre goes beyond internal efficiencies—it aligns with enterprise goals and market expectations. Adopting a modern, business-led change management approach can unlock even greater, measurable value for the organization.

With advancements like AI and hyper-personalization, leaders must adapt to stay competitive. By embracing change now, organizations can boost efficiency, innovation, and customer loyalty. This article offers practical strategies for leaders to transform contact centres into agile, innovative hubs—positioning their organizations for lasting success. We’ll break down specific elements of current change management approaches, ways to improve them, and how Deloitte helps organizations iterate fast, lead with purpose, and embed change at every level to support leaders making decisions to support their future contact centre modernizations.

The reality of today’s contact centres and why traditional change management falls short

The contact centre environment has transformed dramatically. Customer expectations have soared to include tailored, omnichannel experiences and hyper-personalization. Organizations must innovate their systems with AI and automation to compete. The workforce has higher expectations for empowerment and purpose, though turnover remains high.

When organizations ignore the realities faced by frontline staff and treat change as a one-time event, it often leads to resistance, poor adoption, and missed opportunities for improvement. On top of this, the challenge of integrating people and technology, combined with high staff turnover and rapid change, can make transformation efforts feel overwhelming.

Here’s where outdated change management falls short:

• Metrics over meaning: Agents are pressured by metrics like average handle time (AHT) and customer satisfaction score (CSAT), which can prioritize speed over quality, discourage meaningful engagement, and hurt morale. Change initiatives often overlook how these metrics affect agents’ daily work and emotional wellbeing.
• Insufficient learning support: Traditional training is slow and generic, leading to knowledge gaps and frustration, especially as agents are now expected to show emotional intelligence and advanced problem-solving.
• Competing priorities: Conventional change management often focuses on efficiency and compliance, but neglects frontline realities, which leads to misalignment, dissatisfaction, and higher turnover.
• High-pressure environment: The fast-paced, emotionally charged nature of contact centres—especially with remote and hybrid work—requires flexible support. Old methods like classroom training don’t fit, and agents may feel isolated or unsupported.
• Need for agility: Customers still prefer human interaction for complex issues, and agents must respond quickly to unpredictable events. Traditional approaches are too slow and rigid to meet these needs.

In short, many change management methods are too rigid and process-driven, resulting in resistance, disengagement, and poor outcomes. An adaptive, human-centric approach is essential for success.

5 steps toward agile, continuous, and human-centred change

Unlike traditional change management focused on “soft” value, the new approach targets tangible outcomes like higher customer satisfaction, reduced handling times, improved first-contact resolution, and better net promoter score (NPS)—metrics that directly impact and can be tracked at the enterprise level. Change management approaches must be flexible, human-centred, and ongoing, meaning they need to be embedded within day-to-day operations, and within an iterative process.

The following blueprint offers leaders a clear guide to create resilient, high-performing contact centres that provide excellent experiences for both customers and employees.

1. Elevate the contact centre from a cost centre to a value generator

Today’s contact centre is a strategic asset, but your culture needs to reflect that. Overarching values, goals, and processes must link back to brand reputation, agent engagement, and continuous improvement. For example, an organization might elevate their contact centre as a strategic asset by fostering a culture where continuous improvement and customer-centricity are core values.

Key practices include:

• Incorporating qualitative feedback from customers and peers
• Providing opportunities for agents to lead and participate in improvement initiatives
• Investing in AI microskilling and workshops

2. Double down on human connection and human-centred design

Human-centred design places the needs, experiences, and emotions of people (agents, supervisors, and leaders) at the heart of the change process. This might look like an organization that embeds two-way communication in their culture, with regular invitations to share feedback, and, similarly, regular responses and updates to that feedback.

Key practices include:

• Co-creation workshops with agents and supervisors
• Empathy mapping to understand the emotional journey of change
• Transparent, two-way communication channels
• Support resources for mental health and change resilience

3. Empower agents and supervisors as co-creators and change champions

Foster a culture where agents and supervisors are recognized as key contributors to innovation and improvement. For example, Deloitte worked with one client to implement an AI-powered contact centre agent assist capability. To ensure successful adoption, we launched a knowledge feedback exercise during the testing phase to engage contact centre agents across multiple teams.

We asked agents across all lines of business to evaluate the relevance, accuracy, and usefulness of the agent assist responses to help improve overall system performance and reliability, while fostering a culture of inclusion. The increased involvement from the agents increased their level of trust in the new capability, which in turn accelerated adoption time.

Key practices include:

• Regular feedback and two-way communication
• Early engagement and surveys before change initiatives

4. Adopt a continuous change mindset and operational agility into your culture

Traditional contact centre change programs are infrequent, large-scale projects with long stable periods between them. A continuous change mindset makes adaptation an ongoing part of the culture.

For example, an organization can conduct real-time monitoring of customer interactions. The platform might flag an opportunity for improvement for supervisors and leaders to analyze and incrementally adapt. This reduces the anxiety and resistance that often accompany big changes, as agents and supervisors learn to expect and embrace regular, manageable updates.

Key practices include:

• Real-time monitoring of customer interactions to identify improvement areas
• Small pilots and experiments to test changes before scaling
• Ongoing training and micro-learning opportunities
• Regular feedback sessions with agents and supervisors

5. Focus on measurable, holistic outcomes and future-ready capabilities

Metrics must go beyond traditional key performance indicators (KPIs) and focus on outcomes that matter to customers, agents, and the business.

For example, one of Deloitte’s clients in the health insurance industry implemented a process change initiative. We helped them identify ways to measure success beyond traditional transactional efficiency by establishing data dashboards to measure both customer-centric and agent-centric metrics:

Customer-Centric Metrics:

• First contact resolution rate: Measures the percentage of customer inquiries resolved in the first interaction to indicate effectiveness from the customer’s perspective
• Customer effort score (CES): Assesses how easy it is for customers to get their issues resolved, focusing on reducing friction in the customer journey
• Net promoter score (NPS) by Interaction Type: Tracks customer loyalty and likelihood to recommend after specific service touchpoints

Agent Experience Metrics:

• Agent satisfaction score: Surveys agents on their satisfaction with processes, tools, and support to ensure their needs are addressed
• Training effectiveness: Evaluates the impact of new training or process changes on agent confidence and performance
• Agent turnover rate: Monitors retention and helps identify areas for improvement in the agent experience. On top of that, we encouraged them and other clients to expand performance measures to include empathy, learning and development outcomes, customer experience, and team contributions.

Key practices include:

• Defining outcome-based metrics (e.g., customer satisfaction, agent engagement scores)
• Regularly reviewing and communicating progress against these metrics
• Using data to identify and prioritize areas for further improvement
• Recognizing and rewarding contributions to positive change

Transform your contact centre

The contact centre is no longer a standalone function; it is an extension of your brand and a direct line to your customers. By embedding a value-driven change approach, leaders ensure that every transformation initiative in the contact centre is strategically aligned with the broader business objectives—whether that’s market expansion, customer retention, or digital innovation.

This shift requires leaders to take an active role beyond delegating to change management teams. Leaders must set clear, outcome-based expectations, sponsor cross-functional collaboration, and foster a culture where feedback and data are continuously used to refine both customer and employee experiences. This top-down engagement is critical to realizing the full, measurable value of contact centre transformation.

Ready to change the way you change? Book a call with our contact centre leaders.