The UK National Contact Centre Conference, hosted by the CCMA, brought together leaders from across the industry to discuss where the contact centre is heading. AI inevitably featured heavily, but one of the strongest themes from the day was the changing role of the contact centre itself.
Opening the conference, CCMA CEO Leigh Hopwood talked about the industry having earned a bigger seat at the table. Contact centres are closer than almost any other part of an organisation to changing customer needs, expectations and frustrations. The opportunity is to make more of that position.
During The Evolution of the Contact Centre, Stephen Yapp of the CCMA was joined by leaders from Cadent Gas, AJ Bell and Bulk to discuss how quickly events in the outside world translate into customer demand. A comment from Martin Lewis can have financial services contact centres feeling the impact almost before he has finished the sentence, while energy price-cap changes can quickly result in a surge of meter readings and calls. Rather than simply measuring how efficiently that demand is handled, contact centres can help the wider organisation understand what is driving it, where customers are struggling and what needs to change.
From cost centre to corporate compass
In an afternoon panel hosted by Kirk Bradley of Bupa, leaders from Sopra Steria, BT, Estée Lauder Companies and DHL Customer Service discussed the contact centre’s growing influence across the organisation. The contact centre was described as the organisation’s “smoke detector rather than its fire brigade”, although there’s probably still a fair amount of firefighting involved.
The bigger opportunity is what happens with that intelligence. When contact centre insight reaches product, digital, operations and senior leadership, the function moves beyond resolving individual customer issues and starts influencing the decisions, processes and journeys that create them.
AI changes what we need from people
Of course, no contact centre conference in 2026 would be complete without plenty of discussion about AI. Transcription, sentiment analysis and agent assistance are giving organisations access to customer intelligence on a scale that would previously have been difficult to achieve.
But more technology also changes what we ask of people. As simpler work is automated, the interactions left for the frontline are likely to require greater judgement, empathy and problem-solving. Employees also need to understand the information and tools available to them, including when something needs to be questioned or challenged.
That made capability one of the most interesting themes of the day. There is plenty of discussion about keeping humans in the loop as AI develops. We should be equally interested in how organisations are developing those humans for the work they are increasingly being asked to do.
The best teams don’t stand still
Professor Damian Hughes closed the conference with The Best Teams Don’t Stand Still. His message on continuous improvement fitted neatly with much of what had come before: understand what is already working, ask better questions and keep looking for opportunities to improve.
Overall, the day reinforced just how much the role of the contact centre is changing. It is becoming more insight-led, more connected to the wider organisation and more enabled by technology. At the same time, the work left for people is demanding more judgement, confidence and understanding.
If the contact centre is going to make the most of its bigger seat at the table, its people need the capability to recognise what matters, make good decisions and adapt as customers, processes and expectations change.
But how are organisations building those capabilities continuously and measurably?
There were several moments during the day when it was difficult not to think: this is exactly the problem Clever Nelly was built to solve. It gives leaders visibility of knowledge and confidence gaps and continuously works to close them as the demands placed on frontline teams evolve.
Our Customer Operations Case Study Pack shows what that can look like in practice, with organisations including AXA Retail, Allianz Partners, LV= and Phillips & Cohen Associates improving frontline capability alongside customer and operational outcomes.