Retailers are under increasing pressure to meet customer demands for seamless, 24/7 service, as noted in a recent report by Mintel, “US Evolutions in Online Customer Service Report 2025”.
From instant order updates to personalized recommendations, customers expect fast interactions from retail employees, whether the salespeople are helping them in a store or when they’re calling a contact center for support.
However, the human cost of delivering this level of service is becoming a business risk for contact centers. These teams sometimes manage an overwhelming volume of inquiries while maintaining high customer satisfaction, which leads to high burnout rates.
The…cycle of hiring and training new agents is unsustainable. When more experienced employees leave, teams shoulder even heavier workloads.
Burnout is also a business challenge. With it as one of the top-cited reasons for customer care employees leaving their jobs, employers must grapple with the effects, including rising operational costs and declining service quality.
While this cited report was released in 2022, from what we’ve gathered in the contact center industry there is every reason to believe this reason for agent attrition continues to be strong.
The constant cycle of hiring and training new agents is unsustainable. When more experienced employees leave, teams shoulder even heavier workloads.
The industry needs a new approach that expands its focus to efficiency, sustainability, and employee wellbeing. But what does that look like in practice? Businesses must rethink how they deploy technology, support their employees, and optimize operations to create a more resilient workforce and maintain high-quality customer service.
The Wellbeing – Performance Link
Supporting employee wellbeing isn’t optional: it’s key to a successful workplace. From what we’ve seen and read, mental health concerns, stress, and burnout directly impact productivity and profitability. When employees feel overwhelmed, remaining patient, solutions-oriented, and meaningfully engaged can become more challenging. These struggles, in turn, affect customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Retailers that prioritize employee wellbeing see measurable benefits, including a loyal and productive workforce, according to this HR.com article. Creating a supportive workplace culture that includes manageable workloads, mental health resources, and tools that ease job-related stress is essential for sustaining a high-performing contact center.
How AI Can Help
Rather than expecting agents to handle every customer’s need manually, businesses can leverage AI-powered solutions to create a more streamlined work environment. Here are three key examples.
1. Lowering Burnout
To break the burnout cycle, retailers must consider how to make the most of their contact center resources.
One of the most significant contributors to burnout is increased agent workloads. Questions about order tracking, return policies, or store hours comprise a substantial portion of customer interactions. At the same time, these aren’t the types of conversations that always require human expertise.
AI-powered intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) have emerged as a solution, not by replacing human employees but by enhancing their roles and handling essential, repetitive tasks.
IVAs can step in to automate these types of straightforward interactions, giving customers immediate responses while allowing human agents to focus on more complex and high-touch issues.
By offloading repetitive work, AI will enable employees to dedicate their time to situations that require human insight, such as resolving disputes, guiding customers through high-value purchases, or assisting with loyalty program upgrades.
2. Supporting Human Agents
The power of AI in contact centers isn’t just about automation. It’s also about building a system that supports human agents in real-time.
For example, AI-driven tools such as IVAs and CRM integrations can auto-populate customer information, reducing the need for employees to comb through multiple databases.
Imagine a customer calling a support center to check their order status. Instead of the agent manually searching through multiple systems, an AI tool pulls up the customer’s details, recent purchases, and shipping updates. With real-time access to customer information, the agent can provide a quick, informed response, thus reducing wait times and improving efficiency and customer satisfaction.
In addition, AI-powered sentiment analysis applications can suggest responses, helping employees navigate complex customer interactions. AI-powered IVAs can also retrieve relevant retail policy details, allowing agents to provide faster, more accurate service. These enhancements empower them to work more efficiently and with less stress.
3. Training, Onboarding, and Mentoring
AI also plays a critical role in agent training and onboarding, which can be pain points in retail contact centers due to high staff turnover. New employees face a steep learning curve, but AI-powered training modules can provide interactive, adaptive learning experiences that help them ramp up quickly.
IVAs can also serve as on-the-job mentors, offering instant guidance on company policies, product information, or best practices for handling specific customer situations. Deploying IVAs reduces the pressure on new hires, making it easier for them to gain confidence in their roles while improving overall service quality.
How to Get Started
While the benefits of AI are clear, many contact center leaders wonder where to begin. Implementing AI doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It starts with identifying key areas where AI can provide the most impact and gradually integrating solutions that enhance efficiency without disrupting workflows.
1. Start Small with High-Impact Automation. Begin by automating the most repetitive customer inquiries, such as order tracking and return requests.
Tools like IVAs, AI-powered chatbots, and IVR systems can handle these routing tasks through natural language or menu-based interactions. Automated responses and service menus reduce call volume and allow agents to focus on more high-impact conversations.
2. Pilot an AI-Powered Agent Assist Tool. Instead of jumping straight into full automation, introduce an AI assistant that supports agents by suggesting responses, retrieving customer data, and providing real-time coaching during interactions.
Examples include agent assist platforms, real-time transcription and knowledge search tools, and AI-driven quality monitoring systems. These solutions help agents work more efficiently while improving accuracy and consistency across customer interactions.
3. Enhance Training with AI-Driven Learning Modules. AI-powered training tools can personalize the onboarding process, adapting to each agent’s learning style and offering guidance as they progress. These tools reduce stress for new hires and shorten the time they take to become fully productive.
4. Use AI to Optimize Workforce Management. AI-driven workforce optimization tools can predict high-demand periods, allowing for better staffing and scheduling to prevent agent overload.
5. Monitor Employee Wellbeing with AI Analytics. AI can help track agent sentiment and engagement using natural language processing (NLP), voice analysis, and behavioral analytics to assess emotional tone, stress levels, and engagement in real-time.
This capability allows managers to identify early signs of burnout and take proactive steps to support their teams before turnover becomes an issue.
By starting small and scaling strategically, contact center leaders can integrate AI to enhance efficiency while prioritizing the employee experience.
The Future of AI in Retail Contact Centers
AI in contact centers is just getting started. As the technology advances, tools like IVAs will become more sophisticated. It’s exciting to imagine how predictive AI will continue to evolve, allowing contact centers to anticipate customers’ needs before they even reach out.
With advanced AI, businesses will also have new opportunities to proactively address issues, reducing inbound volume while enhancing customer satisfaction.
The retail industry has already seen how AI can reduce costs and enhance customer experiences (CXs), but its greatest impact may be how it revolutionizes the employee experience. The future belongs to retailers that embrace AI as a tool for efficiency and as a critical partner in building resilient, engaged, and high-performing contact center teams.
…AI will continue to evolve, allowing contact centers to anticipate customers’ needs…
Retailers face a defining moment. They can continue to push employees past their limits, fueling an unsustainable cycle of burnout and turnover. Or they can rethink the contact center model by integrating AI to support business outcomes and employee wellbeing.
The future of retail isn’t just about faster service. It’s about building a more innovative, balanced workforce empowered to thrive.
