A recent Forrester report has predicted that generative AI (GenAI) will “displace 100,000 frontline agents” in 2025.
The study surveyed voice of the customer (VoC) and customer experience professionals about the future of the CX industry, with the findings suggesting that the contact center outsourcing market is in danger of mass job cuts.
Described by Forrester as an “unseen behemoth,” on average, 62 percent of customer-facing industries outsource their contact center offerings, with the two largest providers in the sector employing almost one million people between them.
The current popularity of GenAI in the customer service space and its ability to automate basic queries will directly lead to job losses at these outsourcing enterprises, according to the report.
Despite what appear to be worrying signs for outsourcers, Forrester believes that those that act quickly will be able to use GenAI to their advantage.
Sharyn Leaver, Chief Research Officer at Forrester, explained how the explosion of GenAI led to businesses rushing to implement the tech without understanding how time-consuming the process would be.
“Given GenAI’s potential to transform marketing and customer experience, many brands eagerly experimented with the technology in 2024. But it soon became clear that this transformation is a long game,” she said.
In 2025, B2C marketing, digital, and CX leaders must build on lessons learned from this experimentation and focus on improving their data infrastructure to gain better customer insights.
As CX departments continue to get to grips with their GenAI transformations, the report advises outsourcers to prioritize performance-based models that can enhance automation and shift human workers to higher-value tasks.
While GenAI’s impact on the contact center outsourcing market was the major headline from the study, a number of other key predictions were also unearthed.
CX in 2025
The overall message from the report was the need for CX leaders and organizations to be bold.
While Forrester concedes that for the majority of brands, 2025 will be “another year of CX mediocrity,” those businesses that step forward instead of back will benefit from separating themselves from the pack.
However, as the below predictions illustrate, this is much easier said than done.
Cross Departmental Integration Will Grow
Respondents predict that one in five CX teams will integrate with design, research, and delivery teams to enhance their impact.
CX leaders recognize the need for deeper collaboration, with 41 percent citing interdepartmental cooperation as a top challenge, and 56 percent feeling ineffective at connecting customer feedback with behavioral and product data.
