Emotional media headlines about AI replacing the jobs currently done by people may be common but they are not supported by history.
Technology and labor markets have been constantly changing since the 19th Century but “we’ve never had a tech revolution where there were fewer jobs at the end of it,” according to Martha Gimbel, Director of Yale University’s Budget Lab.
Modern administrative offices, for example, are so different to the workspaces of 50 years ago that a white-collar employee from half a century ago would not recognise the typical 2026 office and the tools and processes that make it so much more productive.
Despite the ongoing disruption that the internet and digital process automation have bought to workplaces and industries over the past two decades, the Australian unemployment rate in May 2026 was a below-trend 4.4% and unemployment across the OECD grouping of developed economies was averaging 5% – close to the lowest recorded average OECD unemployment rate.
David Autor, Professor of Economics at MIT, believes that the emergence of AI will change workforce dynamics in a number of ways. On both sides of the ledger. “In some cases, it will make work more expertise intensive and smaller in headcount but I don’t think we’re headed into a new world where human judgment, moral reasoning and empathy have no value.”
In the Australian CX market, Fran Southward, Chief Executive Office of the Australian Contact Centre Association (AusContact) estimates that between 20% and 30% of traditional higher volume transactional work has been absorbed by AI agents and process automation in recent years.
During the second quarter of 2026 new CX recruitment postings declined by around 50% across Australia and New Zealand, according to the Pointer Index, a market intelligence report that tracks newly listed customer success, Go To Market and revenue generating roles,.
“And July customer success postings are tracking lower again,” says Rick Pearl, co-founder of Pointer Strategy, the Melbourne-based firm which compiles the Pointer Index.The honest caveat is that we can only see the short term. Simple knowledge work like online ticket handling will keep moving to AI and it should. Where a human is still needed, the skill bar and the demand for those people are both rising,” Pearl says.
The majority of Australian contact centres are now running a hybrid operation with AI agents augmenting people and “we have seen some organisations really successfully reduce headcount, Southward says.”
AI tools are increasingly assisting human customer service agents by taking care of the repetitive and transactional parts of customer engagement processes. Minimising friction, saving time and increasing efficiency. Leaving human agents to concentrate on applying higher level emotional intelligence skills – critical thinking, problem solving and empathy in particular – and delivering more efficient and customer-satisfying CX outcomes.
Managing hybrid AI
The management imperative is shifting from implementing AI to managing and optimising complex hybrid-AI systems.
The contact centre businesses and managers that thrive over the coming decade will be those that recognise technology may power greater efficiency and ROI, but people will continue to create the trust and lasting customer relationships, deliver the compliance and regulatory accountability, that great businesses and brand equity are built upon, Southward and Pearl believe.
“AI integration is allowing CX managers to really think about emerging markets. Look at new markets that they’ve never had the capacity to service before, to consider what’s next, not just who is the customer in front of us today. And hybrid AI integration is creating the space and capacity to look at some of that differently,” Southward says.
Innovative Australian CX organisations, large and small, who are leading the way on hybrid AI capacity-building tend to be agile and closer to their customer’s needs.
Successful organisational transitions are strategically using AI to build more resilient teams and more intelligent operations that deliver customer experiences that are memorable for all the right reasons, according to Southward.,
“Insightful managers are bringing it all together in a really strategic manner. Their focus is on building trust, moving away from the traditional one- dimensional view of what high performance looks like. It’s now about asking who are we as an organisation? What are the outcomes that we’re after? What skills will I need in my people to maximise the potential the hybrid model offers? How do we tailor it to meet the varied needs of our customers?” Southward says.
“Rethinking how do I control an interaction? How do I get to the records really quickly? How do I look outside of technical problem solving techniques based on script to actually give the customer what they’re after?”
It’s easy enough to say ‘we will upskill our agents’ but the reality is this process is somewhat harder edged.
“Successful CX organisations recognise that hybrid AI integration is not about reducing the importance of human employees.”
Leaders operating a remote hybrid model need different skills. Attrition and disengagement, these things are still huge problems and middle managers are critical for building engagement and connecting with people. Creating an environment where people will buy in. Now, it’s about feedback, identifying new stress factors and coaching.,
“There’s a need to move away from the micro-management approach,” according to Southward. “Micro-management creates lower performance. If you micro-manage me, I will do what you ask me to but nothing more. What we need today are emotionally intelligent people to get the best out of the hybrid AI models. People who are questioning – people who are pushing boundaries and are curious. To deliver this paradigm shift requires leaders who can build trust and make their people feel safe to do these things,” Southward says.
High performance management today is about creating a workplace environment where people can thrive. This really matters because a critical thinking approach to problem solving, emotional intelligence, digital literacy, and situational awareness, these skills are now as important and desirable for human agents as the more traditional CX protocols and practices, according to both Pearl and Southward.
Because hybrid AI models cannot function without human oversight, a new class of tech-savvy and higher value CX roles with new titles like AI Orchestrator and Algorithmic Auditor, are being created to optimise fast-evolving models, specific AI tools and hybrid operations.
“The results of the latest Pointer Index report indicate that CX companies aren’t simply looking for people who can use AI tools. They need people who can explain AI to customers, integrate AI into their workflows, solve technical implementation issues and advise on governance, compliance and best practice,” Pearl notes.
The employers doing it well share a common approach. They will give agents supervision duties over the AI before changing any titles: reviewing bot transcripts, tagging failures, owning escalations. The AI’s quality assurance layer is the apprenticeship for the consultant role. They route people into onboarding and implementation, both hiring-active and AI-heavy, the natural bridge role. And they reprice as they retitle, moving people onto the manager band instead of holding them on the old one, according to Pearl.
“Empowering your best reps with AI tools is currently a better strategy than trying to replace them. The upside is asymmetric. Your best people can become dramatically more productive and they are the ones who will redesign the work for everyone else.”
Digitally literate talent with CX experience and analytical skills – the people who “step in” when an AI agent runs into a complex roadblock – will be in high demand and able to command more generous salary and benefits packages one day very soon, Pearl believes.
“Where a human is still needed, the skill bar and the demand for those people are both rising. My view is that the repricing has to come, because you cannot hold higher expectations and pay the same forever.”
“Whoever moves first on pay will hire the pick of a very deep buyer’s market,” Pearl says.
What are the risks for CX managers who see one of AI’s primary functions as a headcount reduction tool?
“The number nobody has settled yet is the headcount required to manage the AI. These are not simple deployments. Somebody has to own the workflows, supervise the output, catch the failures and handle the escalations, and the skills of the people you retain change substantially. You end up needing more technical managers than you had before,” according to Pearl.
Training leads directly to greater ROI
For both employers and employees, navigating the AI shift successfully requires moving towards value-driven human-AI collaboration, a greater willingness to experiment and ongoing training. Australian call centres are investing more in continuous learning programs to ensure their human agents have the skills to be AI-aligned and more productive in workplaces defined by constant change and technological innovation.
“We have some great examples of organisations that focus on coaching and driving performance and purpose. Organisations who are succeeding are really focused on what capability do I need to ensure customer satisfaction? Then how do I support it once it’s there?” Southward explains.
Customer lifetime value belongs in metrics for measuring the performance of individual agents and broader organisational operations, she says. “There is great AI utilisation that is doing 100% QA assessments based on the transcripts to identify what worked in a specific interaction.Rather than saying ‘that that call was 10 minutes’, relying on technology like this to be able to tell agents what they are doing well.”
“AHT does not matter, if the customer has to call back three times.”
“Where an agent might spend an extra 10 minutes preventing a customer from leaving, or covering their customer’s next requirement, or resolving a complaint before it becomes one, you want organisational metrics that can identify these high value outcomes from customer engagements,” she says.
Many organisations are shifting toward outcome-based performance models that focus more directly on customer satisfaction and business results, according to Matt McConnell, Chairman and CEO of Intradiem, a global tech firm specialising in workforce technology services that incorporate AI.
McConnell says that metrics like first-contact resolution, repeat interaction reduction and customer satisfaction provide a more accurate picture of whether customer needs are actually being addressed effectively.
“Successful organisations recognise that AI is not about reducing the importance of human employees. That importance is actually increasing.”
Organisations are also paying closer attention to response consistency across channels, unresolved interaction duration and the effectiveness of cross-channel follow-up processes that often shape the customer’s perception of the brand just as much as the initial interaction itself.
“This shift toward outcome-based measurement also creates healthier workforce dynamics. Employees are evaluated based on the quality and the effectiveness of their work rather than narrow productivity metrics in isolation. That contributes to more constructive coaching and training, more authentic customer interactions, and clearer organisational understanding of how service quality contributes to employee loyalty and retention,” McConnell says.