Every contact center leader is asking some version of the same question right now. How do you buy AI, deploy it well, and actually get value out of it in a way customers accept?
ChorusCX recently joined MaxContact for a joint webinar to answer exactly that, grounded in two new independent research studies rather than a product pitch. John Birchall from ChorusCX and Kaylee Tate from MaxContact walked through a Voice of UK Consumer report (1,000 UK adults surveyed by Censuswide in April 2026) alongside a KPI benchmarking report covering 300 UK contact center decision makers. Here is what came out of it.
The confidence gap between businesses and consumers
Businesses are moving fast on AI. Consumers are still catching up to what that means for them.
On the business side:
- 66% of businesses are already using or piloting AI
- 60% are increasing AI investment this year
- 99% of businesses using AI believe it will improve effectiveness within three years
On the consumer side:
- 87% believe they have already interacted with AI during a recent company contact
- 22% of those didn’t realize it at the time, since it wasn’t disclosed
- 88% say it’s important that companies disclose when AI is being used
That gap between eager deployment and consumer awareness is where a lot of AI projects run into trust problems that have nothing to do with the technology itself.
Consumers aren’t rejecting AI, they’re screening it
The research pointed to a deeper trust issue across the entire customer journey, not just around AI specifically:
- More than two thirds of consumers now manually screen calls before picking up
- Nearly half have switched providers after a poor contact center experience
- Over half have abandoned calls after being kept waiting
Trust in AI also varies sharply by sector. Banking, retail, and telecoms sit in the low to mid 90s for trust. Loans, credit, and debt management sectors see around 37% call avoidance, while water and public sector see far less. The sector a business operates in shapes how hard that business has to work to get a customer to engage at all, regardless of channel.
Where AI earns consumer approval, and where it doesn’t
The data drew a clear line:
- 71% of consumers are comfortable with AI as long as a human is available if needed
- 36% are happy to use AI for FAQs, routine transactions, and account updates
- 54% want a human for urgent or complex queries
- 49% prefer a human for finance conversations
- Interestingly, 51% are open to AI handling debt collection conversations, often because it feels less judgmental than talking to a person
The takeaway John and Kaylee kept returning to: AI works best on volume and routine, transactional interactions. It’s not a replacement for empathy in complex or emotionally charged conversations.
Three challenges blocking contact center transformation
Most contact centers are still in what the webinar called the “manual” stage, with a smaller group moving into “enabled,” and the goal being full “autonomous” AI-optimized journeys. Three recurring blockers came up:
- Routine query overload. Teams get buried in repetitive, low-complexity contact that slows the queue for everyone. AI agents and chatbots can contain or triage these before they reach a human.
- The data and insight blind spot. Regulated teams typically manually sample only 2% to 5% of calls, leaving most interactions unreviewed for compliance and coaching purposes. Conversation analytics and auto QA close that gap by scoring 100% of calls.
- Inconsistent team performance. Institutional knowledge tends to live with a handful of experienced agents. Real-time guidance tools replicate their best practices across the whole team instead of letting that knowledge stay locked in one person’s head.
Selling AI: the objections you’ll actually hear
For partners and sellers in the room, the webinar covered the objections that come up most often, and how to handle them:
- “AI isn’t ready for our regulated sector.” The opposite is true. A human agent can only review a fraction of calls in an 8-hour shift. AI reviews 100% of calls continuously, flags non-compliance automatically, and creates the audit trail regulators expect.
- “We can’t justify the spend.” Reframe the conversation around the cost of doing nothing. Manual QA sampling at 2% to 5% is already an expensive way to catch a fraction of compliance gaps and coaching opportunities.
- “We already have a tech stack.” The question isn’t whether a stack exists, it’s whether it’s working together. ChorusCX and MaxContact are built to complement and enhance existing platforms rather than force a rip and replace.
Building a defensible AI business case
The panel shared six tips for building ROI cases that hold up:
- Use the prospect’s own numbers (agent count, call volumes, handle times) to earn credibility fast
- Anchor to pain first, then map features to that pain rather than leading with capability
- Model both hard benefits (cost per contact, FTE efficiency, revenue uplift) and softer ones (risk reduction, agent experience, CSAT)
- Present conservative and expected scenarios rather than best-case projections
- Lead with time to value and payback timeline, not just the full contract term
- Address switching risk directly, since fear of change is often the real objection behind “we’ve already invested in this”
When stress-testing any AI ROI model, the webinar recommended asking about containment rate, adoption rate, how current the knowledge base is, any overage costs not visible on the initial quote, and what happens if automation underperforms.
Four takeaways to carry forward
- Consumers aren’t resisting AI. They’re resisting uncertainty, and transparency fixes that.
- Businesses that disclose AI use see higher acceptance, not lower.
- AI performs best on volume, not as a substitute for empathy.
- The gap between average and best-in-class contact centers is closable, and more organizations are making that shift than the hype suggests.
Want to see where your contact center sits against this benchmark data? Connect with ChorusCX to talk through an AI readiness assessment, or reach out to your account manager for the full Voice of UK Consumer report, the sales playbook, and ROI calculators referenced in the session. Watch the webinar recording to learn more.