Date: 20th May 2026 | 11am BST
Location: Virtual
UK contact centres are adopting AI at pace. But the customer verdict on AI-powered interactions is uncomfortable reading: 69% say AI understands their issue worse than a human agent, 59% say the resolution is worse, and 54% find the accuracy of information inferior. These aren’t opinions, they’re from ContactBabel’s newly published 2026 Inner Circle Guide to AI-Enabled Agent Assistance, drawn from surveys of 1,000 UK customers and 400+ contact centres.
AI-enabled agent assistance – the co-pilot tools sitting alongside agents in live interactions – is one of the fastest growing responses to this challenge, jumping from 14% to 21% of UK contact centres in a single year. The data raises an important question that most conversations in this space never reach: as agents rely more on real-time prompts and AI scaffolding, is independent thinking and judgement starting to erode, just as the interactions reaching human agents become more complex, emotional, and regulatory-sensitive?
Bringing together Martin Teasdale (Get Out of Wrap), Steve Morrell (ContactBabel) and Ben Scales (Elephants Don’t Forget), this session examines what the 2026 data is actually telling us, where AI agent assistance is delivering, where the gap between expectation and reality is widening, and what it takes to build agent competence that holds up when it matters most.
In this session you’ll gain:
- A data-grounded view of AI agent assistance adoption across UK contact centres and the gap between expectation and reality.
- An honest assessment of why the customer satisfaction gap persists despite rising investment.
- A practical case for building genuine agent competence alongside AI, and why it outperforms chasing short-term metrics.
Author: Elephants Dont Forget
Reviewed by: Jo Robinson
Published On: 5th May 2026
Read more about - Call and Contact Centre Events, Elephants Dont Forget
