CONTACT CENTER OPTIMIZATION
AI Won’t Save Your Contact Center—Eliminate the Noise First
Before AI, automation, or optimization can deliver results, leaders must confront the preventable volume hiding inside their own operations.
By Jeff Sheehan
Every contact center leader feels pressure to modernize by adopting AI, digitizing everything, reducing costs, and improving customer experience (CX). But before you optimize, automate, or modernize anything, you need to confront a hard truth:
You cannot optimize a contact center until you eliminate unnecessary contacts.
This isn’t a technology problem. It’s a discipline problem. And it requires leaders at every level—supervisors, managers, directors, and VPs—to stop normalizing avoidable volume and start treating it as what it truly is:
A signal that something upstream is broken.
Across industries, 20% to 40% of inbound customer contacts are preventable. This range aligns with what I have seen for more than 25 years advising telecom, banking, retail, and technology organizations, and it mirrors patterns highlighted in research from Gartner, McKinsey, SQM Group, and COPC. The proportions vary by company and sector, but the theme remains consistent: a significant share of contact volume is driven by upstream friction, unclear processes, and preventable breakdowns.
FIGURE 1 illustrates the proportions of contact reductions I see most often when applying the Customer Contact Optimization (CCO) methodology. While the exact percentages vary by organization, the pattern is stable: roughly 40% of contacts can be eliminated, 30% can be simplified, 20% can be digitized or automated, and 10% should be elevated as high-value human conversations. This model helps leaders target unnecessary demand while strengthening the interactions customers value most.
These four strategic actions drive measurable CX management (CXM) ROI—but only when leaders first understand the root causes behind their volume.
And that’s where most organizations still struggle.
Root Cause Analysis: The New Frontier of CX Leadership
Industry has finally caught on that “tracking a score” or “sending a survey” isn’t telling leaders what’s actually broken. Businesses must stop flying blind and get to the fundamental drivers of customer frustration, cost, and churn by asking “Why?” at a deeper operational level.
The contact center is the only place in the business where customers tell you, in their own plain language, what’s not working.
But many organizations still bury those insights under hundreds of reason codes, legacy taxonomies, and inconsistent agent tagging.
If leaders want real change, they need a different lens:
Customer intent.
Not “billing-issue-37A.”
Not “workflow exception.”
Intent.
Ask: “What did the customer say about why they disrupted their day to contact you today?”
The answer, often revealed by customers within the first 30 seconds of a call, tells you whether the interaction should be:
- Eliminated
- Simplified
- Digitized
- Or elevated as a high-value human conversation
This is the heart of CCO, built directly on the Value–Irritant Matrix (VIM). This underused discipline separates what customers value from what irritates them, and what the business values from what irritates you.
When you analyze contact this way, patterns snap into focus. And those patterns reveal where your true ROI lives.
The Hidden Cost of “Invisible” Volume
Let’s start with a simple, painful truth:
Most contact centers absorb the mistakes of the business.
Consider telecommunications. Studies from J.D. Power, Deloitte, and the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) consistently show that billing issues are among the top drivers of inbound call volume for telecom providers. In my advisory work, these patterns commonly account for 30% to 40% of total demand, stemming from confusion, unexpected charges, expired promotions, or unclear fee presentation.
If the bills were clearer and easier to understand, many of those calls would disappear. Yet leaders still ask:
“Why is our handle time up?”
“Why are agents struggling?”
“Why is our digital self-service underused?”
Because the problem isn’t the contact center.
It’s the design of the bill.
And this pattern repeats in nearly every industry:
- Banking applications are too long.
- Retail makes checkout or returns too complex.
- Tech companies hide support options behind login requirements.
- SaaS platforms bury core features three menus deep.
- Deliveries arrive late or incomplete.
- Products ship with broken or missing parts.
Customers don’t want to call.
They call when the business makes something confusing, risky, or slow.
Digitization Without Discernment Will Backfire
Digital containment fails when leaders deploy it to reduce cost, not to improve customer success.
One large North American telecom I worked with invested millions in automation, calculated savings from reduced call volume, cut headcount before launch, and then watched volume rise as customers grew angrier.
Why?
Because they applied a one-size-fits-all solution to every customer intent.
They optimized the wrong work.
Your 85-year-old mother does not want a chatbot.
Your digitally fluent customer does not want a 20-minute phone call for a password reset.
Digitization succeeds only when leaders align specific intents with the channels customers will actually adopt.
Adoption is the ROI—not the technology.
Simplification: The Fastest Path to Revenue
Simplification may be the most undervalued strategic action. Industry case studies show that:
- Best Buy redesigned its checkout experience and added more than $300 million to its top line.
- Discover Financial Services cut a 14-question credit card application down to seven and saw application volume multiply several times over.
These examples show what happens when organizations challenge internal assumptions. When teams remove unnecessary steps and reduce friction, customer adoption increases—and revenue often rises with it.
But simplification requires leaders to challenge every field, form, policy, and approval chain. It means asking:
“Why do we need this step?”
“Who uses this data?”
“What happens if we remove it?”
Most organizations don’t do this work because it disrupts entrenched processes. When they avoid it, they shift complexity onto the contact center—and contact volume rises.
Simplification drives both cost reduction and revenue growth. And it is often the most powerful lever in the entire stack.
Investing in the Conversations That Matter
Elimination and simplification are not about removing humans from CX.
Far from it.
The most innovative companies double down on human conversation where empathy, trust, safety, or financial decisions are involved. American Express is a prime example. Despite significant investments in digital self-service and AI, Amex continues to differentiate by offering live-agent support for high-value situations where customers expect expertise and human judgment.
These interactions—fraud concerns, travel disruptions, financial guidance, complex account issues—are not candidates for automation. They are opportunities to strengthen loyalty.
The art is knowing which conversations to elevate, not eliminate.
High-value interactions deserve human expertise:
- Insurance claims
- Mortgage and lending decisions
- Travel planning
- Estate and legal guidance
- Complex financial service needs
- Medical treatments
If everything becomes automated, nothing feels personal—and differentiation disappears.
Your Contact Center Already Knows the Truth
Every unnecessary contact is a diagnostic clue.
Every preventable call is a cost driver.
Every repeated issue is a visible root cause the business hasn’t fixed.
Your contact center is not a cost center.
It is a strategic intelligence engine—and the earliest indicator of where your business creates friction.
If leaders are willing to listen.
CCO and VIM offer a disciplined way to see those signals, quantify value, eliminate the noise, and elevate what matters most.
But the first step is the most important:
Eliminate unnecessary contact, and your optimization strategy finally works.
Your contact center is already telling you the truth.
The question is whether you’re willing to hear it—and act on it.
The Four Strategic Actions: A Practical Sidebar for Leaders
This article, with its illustration (see Figure 1), examines how leaders can reduce unnecessary contact and strengthen high-value interactions.
Eliminate → Simplify → Digitize & Automate → Invest
Each action ties directly to ROI:
- Eliminate: Reduce preventable volume at its root causes.
- Simplify: Increase adoption, reduce friction, lift revenue.
- Digitize: Apply AI where customers value speed and predictability.
- Invest: Strengthen the conversations customers see as strategic.
This framework helps teams align their work with operational and financial outcomes without vendor bias or technology-first assumptions.
Bio
Jeff Sheehan is a CX Advisor and Customer Service Strategist who helps organizations turn their contact centers into strategic performance engines. Jeff specializes in root-cause-driven operational improvement using the Value–Irritant Methodology. He can be reached at jfs@jeffsheehan.net or www.cxjsconsulting.net.