Advice for CX in 2026: Keep Humans in the Loop while AI Agents Replace IVRs
Authored by Jamie Cooper, Chief Product Officer at Natterbox
Customers are entitled to a baseline standard of customer service: find the solution or information, as fast as possible. Put simply, the baseline is anchored in convenience: limited wait times and quick inquiry resolution. Achieving this today, especially as a company begins to scale, is getting much harder. One massive obstacle standing in the way of success is an antiquated Interactive Voice Response system (IVR).
For decades, IVRs were heralded as a breakthrough in customer service. They introduced automated call queues for specific departments, routing callers to the appropriate agent and playing pre-recorded messages and hold music. However, inconveniently, customers were met with frustratingly long hold times with the hope they were being routed correctly. They knew that if they weren’t, the process would start from the beginning again.
In 2026, this isn’t what strengthens customer trust and loyalty. Artificial intelligence in the contact center has introduced a more sophisticated service experience that exposes the significant limitations of IVRs. Incapable of open-ended, natural-language conversations, IVRs can’t respond to nuanced or sensitive issues commonly faced by some industries, such as healthcare. Nor can they handle multiple requests at once.
Failing to evolve your contact center with AI agents that can speak in natural-language conversation, detect sentiment shifts, and provide full, contextual hand-offs to human agents, affects how customers engage with your brand. Data highlights the damage that can be done: US businesses lose $1.6 trillion each year from subpar customer service.
Businesses operating with outdated services are due for a transformation, and AI Agents are delivering. Here’s how.
Conversations move from rigid to intuitive with AI
Contact centers that use menu-based systems force customers to choose between predefined options, like “Press 1 for billing.” Greeting a customer this way immediately limits the engagement capabilities and broadens the opportunity for error. Rigid, impersonal experiences turn customers away, while intuitive and user-friendly conversations encourage the touchpoint and provide real value. AI agents, communicating in a free-flowing natural language, provide engaging, immediate service, and can broaden conversational depth. Operating in an industry-specified manner, they understand and respond to customers who speak in their own words.
Communicating with customers in this way also enables personalization at the individual level by omnichannel integration. AI systems transcribe and retain spoken context across channels, so customers never need to repeat their inquiry when moving from WhatsApp to voice, for example. With older adults preferring the phone channel, and 70% of Gen Z gravitating to texting, consistency is key: no matter the channel, AI can resolve queries just the same.
How humans and AI agents perform in parallel
In 2026, AI agents and humans will increasingly work in parallel within customer service departments. Forrester predicts 30% of enterprises in 2026 will create AI agent workflows that mirror the roles of human agents. Employees will have a monumental opportunity to train and coach this technology, upskilling their knowledge and capacity within the business to work more strategically and focus on more complex problems.
It’s important that leadership sufficiently backs this integration, regularly checking in with employees and ensuring proper resources are available. Their success is what ultimately deepens trust and loyalty.
There’s also the irrefutable evidence that today, customers prefer an empathetic response from a human agent. This isn’t just theory; 76% of contact center leaders now reject full automation in favor of this hybrid model. They recognize that people should be reserved for high-stakes moments or when genuine empathy is required, leaving the repetitive, high-volume tasks to the AI.
When AI agents and humans work in a hybrid model, workloads are managed much more efficiently so employees can have the time needed to provide a thorough, thoughtful resolution to tricky customer issues. This balance improves operations that trickle benefits throughout an organization, for example, reducing turnover of contact center agents.
Contact centers have a reputation for high turnover, and it’s not exaggerated – the average turnover rate is 30-45%. The fatigue of high-volume cycles, the monotony of responding to inquiries that could be automated, and the pressure of demanding performance targets are driving agent churn.
This instability is costly, with replacement expenses reaching up to $20,000 per agent. This is why contact center leaders are now prioritizing a hybrid model; by shifting the 'grind' of repetitive tasks to AI, we allow human employees to reclaim more rewarding, strategic work.
AI-powered contact center departments are undeniably phasing out IVRs. They had a good run, but as customer expectations grow, intuitive omnichannel interactions that appeal to all age groups are necessary to succeed. Meeting 2026 expectations is hybrid by design, where humans are always in the loop and their value is never overlooked.