It’s a tough time to be in business. Geo-political tensions continue to disrupt supply chains, damage business confidence and throw forecasts and forward plans into abject disarray.
Customers, meanwhile, have never been more demanding – or disgruntled. Almost two-thirds of Australians have a moderate to high sense of grievance and believe governments and private enterprise alike make life harder and serve narrow interests, according to Edelman’s 2025 Trust Barometer.
Hard times and cost of living pressures are amplifying that negativity. Recent years have seen millions of Australians doing it tough: 3.5 million households experienced food insecurity in 2025, according to the latest Foodbank Hunger Report.
And, with house prices and rents continuing to skyrocket and the Middle East conflict threatening to send inflation spiking once again, the upcoming year promises no chance of a return to good times. Facing unprecedented uncertainty and intensifying economic pressure, consumers and commercial customers alike are in no mood to cut businesses and organisations any slack.
Karen wants to speak to the manager
Nowhere is the trust and goodwill deficit more evident than in contact centre complaints departments. Being sent the wrong or faulty items, waiting too long on the line or receiving sub-standard service from a staff member… Australians may once have had a reputation for being laidback but that’s no longer the reality when they’re interacting with businesses and organisations.
Instead, the latter are seeing even a fraction too much friction escalating into complaint and dispute territory on the daily.
How those complaints and disputes are handled matters – a lot. If an issue is simple, customers want it solved on the spot, stat.
And if it’s more complex, they expect to talk to someone knowledgeable who can supply them with correct information. Ultimately, what they’re seeking is transparency, fairness and clarity – clear explanations, next steps and time frames – so they’re not left wondering what’s going to happen and when.
That’s especially vital when customers are in vulnerable circumstances, whether that be as a result of domestic abuse, financial hardship, mental health challenges or a natural disaster.
Implementing AI to improve outcomes
While thousands of businesses have embarked on automation journeys in recent times – in many instances with a view to cutting contact centre costs – looking to AI-powered virtual agents to do the heavy lifting in the complaints department can be a short sighted and risky move.
Evidence suggests customers overwhelmingly prefer to deal with fellow human beings for complex enquiries, and they prefer to do so on the telephone – never more so than when something’s amiss.
What AI can do however, and extremely well too, is help those human agents arrive at a resolution faster.
From streamlining workflows and augmenting the escalation process, to producing comprehensive summaries of customers’ interaction histories and up-to-date knowledge articles and context-based suggestions on how their issues might be resolved, there exists a plethora of use cases for ‘internal AI’.
Businesses that take this tack – deploying digital workers to help their human counterparts do their jobs better, rather replacing them wholesale – stand the best chance of engaging with complainants in a positive, productive way.
Seeking expert assistance to elevate your complaints function
Improving customer experience and productivity in the complaints department is no straightforward exercise and every organisation is different.
Seeking professional advice at the outset will help you develop strategies and implement AI-powered capabilities and tools that support your team to build customer trust and loyalty by resolving issues swiftly and satisfactorily.
Elect to work with a partner that has a strong history of helping businesses transform their contact centres into high performing hubs and you’ll be on track to elevate your complaints function into a centre of excellence that boosts trust, loyalty and brand value.
Building customer trust and a stronger business in 2026 and beyond
Appeasing and impressing the sceptical majority of Australian customers is no easy feat but, in today’s challenging economic environment, organisations that don’t strive to do so will rapidly lose trust and market share.
That means optimising complaints handling is more than merely a sensible move; it’s an urgent imperative. Against that backdrop, investing in AI-driven tools and processes that support your contact centre team to do a better job of sorting things out is likely to prove an excellent move.