AI in CX Readiness Report 2026
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How ready are CX teams for agentic transformation? Parloa surveyed CX professionals doing the operations, handling the calls and chats, and monitoring quality in customer experience to find out.
would be interested in, or curious about, a role that builds, monitors, and improves AI agents handling customer calls.
feel confident and skilled at any one of five core AI agent design and evaluation skills.
top reasons CX isn’t moving faster on AI agents are lack of skills within CX teams and lack of leadership prioritization.
CX operators can’t plan their careers around something they’re not ready for. With career development being the third biggest driver of frontline CX workers’ engagement and retention*, not showing them a career path in AI represents a big missed opportunity.
Which statement best reflects where you are with AI in your own career right now?
AI is central to how I think about my career.
Three moves to build an AI-powered CX org
Take these three actions to establish the foundation for your hybrid organization. Based on your organization's current state, you may be able to drill down to just one move. Work through the playbook below, and come away with a time-bound plan to drive meaningful change at your organization.
01
Assign ownership
Respondents were split on who should own AI agents. A specialized team (29%) and IT (27%) led, with no clear winner.
02
Train and tool up
Hands-on training and dedicated time for working with AI were rated the two most helpful ways for employees to better understand AI agents.
03
Enhance observability
56% of respondents believe managing and improving AI agents will become a mainstream job in CX, yet 78.5%* of CX operators say they don't track hallucinations or factual accuracy yet.
* Sourced from: 2026 CX Observability Study
Move 01 · Assign ownership
Nobody owns AI agents in CX
Unlike traditional software, AI agents carry a level of intelligence that positions them as a colleague rather than a tool. Because they actively contribute to outcomes, they should be managed with clearly defined goals and parameters on what they are and are not allowed to do.
Who do you think should be responsible for designing, updating, and improving AI agents that handle customer interactions day to day?
A dedicated AI center of excellence: a specialized team that includes employees from various departments.
IT or technology. They have the technical skills this requires.
Contact center or CX operations. They understand the customer and the business outcomes.
A shared model: IT owns the infrastructure, CX owns the agent behavior and performance.
I'm not sure.
In your current organization, how easy is it for CX or contact center teams to make changes to AI-powered customer tools without going through IT?
Very easy, we can make most changes ourselves.
Somewhat easy, we can make some changes, others require IT.
Difficult, almost all changes require IT involvement.
Not possible, IT controls everything and changes go through a formal queue.
Not applicable, we don't have AI-powered tools yet.
Key finding
When no one is held accountable, no governance happens.
AI can't be held accountable for its actions, humans need to be. Identify a clear leader for the transformation. Title is arbitrary. Pick a person and a team to own the agents and be goaled on their progress.
Workbook 01
Assign ownership
01 Ownership
How clearly defined do you think AI ownership is within your team?
Click on a box for some quick insight.
02 Think about it
Write down your initial thoughts around CX ownership. What's working well, what isn't?
03 Commit
Write one organizational design commitment you'll execute within the next quarter.
Move 02 · Train and tool up
Interest outpaces action.
Only 10% of respondents said they have hands-on experience designing, configuring, or improving AI-powered chatbots or voice agents. Yet 79% also said they see AI agents bringing business value to organizations. When taking the results in aggregate, less than 25% of all respondents feel confident in any of the core AI agent design skills.
How would you rate your current skills in designing and evaluating AI agents?
Designing conversation flows for an AI agent
Evaluating the quality of AI-generated interactions
Designing tests to improve how an AI agent performs
Translating a business requirement into AI agent behavior
Building or reading dashboards that track AI agent performance
1.6x
Across the five skills, people without a skill are 60% more likely to want to learn it than have no interest in it.
Employees see the value in using AI for what they do. They’re interested in the career opportunity it presents, but they haven’t been led in how to learn it.
Employees want more hands-on practice.
Which would be most helpful to you in improving your AI agent skills?
Hands-on training or sandbox access to practice with real AI tools
Manager support and dedicated time for working with AI
Short-form, self-paced learning content I can consume on my own schedule
A peer community or mentorship from someone already in this role
Playbooks, templates, and plain-language reference guides
Nothing, I'm not interested in developing these skills.
“I need more hands-on knowledge to best support and help my customers.”
– Virtual agent building competition attendee
AI can handle the most routine tasks. Most operators aren't taking full advantage.
AI agents excel at the tasks that often stack time on humans' calendars. Yet in large part, AI agents' roles have not been clearly defined at organizations.
Select the three responsibilities that take up the most time in your current role.
Managing day-to-day operations and escalations
Interacting with customers over the phone
Training or coaching team members
Monitoring or reviewing individual interactions
Interacting with customers by email
Managing workforce scheduling or capacity
Managing knowledge base content
Interacting with customers by live chat
How often do you personally use AI tools in work or personal life?
Key finding
Decide who you want your AI agent to be. Learn how to work with them.
When humans and AI are both contributors, it's important to understand who does what, and where the line gets drawn. Human roles are being rewritten to work with AI. Businesses must be clear in what humans are expected to deliver when working alongside AI. That's what on-site training can help explore.
Workbook 02
Training and tools
01 Career impact
How is AI impacting the roles within your team today, and what's your relationship with this change?
Click on a box for some quick insight.
02 Incentives
How does your organization reward AI adoption/usage today?
Select all that apply.
03 Learning style
What is your organization's approach to training today?
Click on a box for some quick insight.
04 Next steps
What is one training initiative you could either kick off or get involved in within your organization over the next half of the year?
Move 03 · Enhance observability
AI introduces new ways to measure impact.
Only 13.3% of respondents said they work with AI transparency regularly. That's 86.7% of CX operators not knowing how their AI is impacting business.
23.9%
of respondents said they felt confident and skilled in evaluating the quality of AI-generated customer interactions.
01 Pick a capability
What’s one observability capability you believe could enhance your overall CX strategy?
02 Blockers
What’s preventing you from observing this today?
Click on a box for some quick insight.
Don't have the right tech
Leadership hasn't made it a stated priority
Budget
Fear of customer backlash or privacy breaches
Bring to your team
Make agentic transformation a CX priority
For agentic CX to be successful anywhere, it requires a clear why. Why should employees care? What will they get from adopting the technology? How will they be rewarded?
When AI is woven into the career plans and business goals of a company, real change will happen.
Talk through your workbookTake action
Your agentic CX roadmap
Take the commitments you wrote and decide what happens now, what comes next, and what can wait.
Your commitments
When to tackle
Org design
Not written yet. Add it in the workbook step above.
Training
Not written yet. Add it in the workbook step above.
Metrics
Not written yet. Add it in the workbook step above.
Next quarter
What we'll do
Assign a commitment above
Next half
What we'll do
Assign a commitment above
This time next year
What we'll do
Assign a commitment above
Methodology
This report is based on a survey of 218 customer experience, contact center, and directly adjacent professionals, fielded via Centiment in August 2026. Respondents span front-line agents, team leads, operations managers, and senior CX leadership, working across retail/e-commerce, healthcare, financial services, technology, travel, government, telecommunications, and utilities. All figures cited are self-reported.