48 Contact Center Statistics & Benchmarks You Need to Know in 2025

Contact center industry overview

With increasing pressure to deliver faster and smarter support, many organizations are rethinking their contact center strategy from the ground up. 

Here’s  what you should know:

‍

1. The global call center AI market is projected to increase from $1.6 billion in 2022 to $4.1 billion by 2027, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.3% over this period (MarketsandMarkets)
2. North America is projected to lead the call center AI market, driven by the region’s early adoption of AI technologies in contact centers (MarketsandMarkets)
3. The healthcare and life sciences sector is expected to see the fastest growth in the call center AI market, fueled by the urgent need for streamlined patient communication and support services (MarketsandMarkets)
4. There are currently around 17 million contact center agents globally (Gartner)
5. Contact centers are increasingly focused on reducing the volume of assisted contacts and overall service demand by improving digital capabilities. In 2023, organizations reported achieving only 55% of their strategic goals. To close that gap, 30% are upgrading their contact center solutions in 2024, with another 42% planning updates in 2025 (Deloitte Digital)

Operational KPIs & efficiency metrics

From average handle time to occupancy and transfer rates, these benchmarks expose inefficiencies and guide staffing, training, and tech investments. 

Here’s a closer look at the latest performance metrics : 

‍

6. Traditionally, contact centers aim to answer 80% of calls within 20 seconds. But many are now pushing for higher standards, targeting 90% of calls answered within just 15 seconds (Call Centre Helper)
7. 45.7% of contact centers aren’t tracking customer emotion and missing valuable insights into customer sentiment and potential agent performance issues (Call Centre Helper)
8. A good first call resolution (FCR) rate falls between 70% and 79%. Anything below 70% signals a need for improvement. Only 5% of call centers reach a world-class FCR rate of 80% or higher, which is an elite benchmark in customer experience (SQM Group)
9. A good CSAT score in the call center industry ranges from 75% to 84%. Scores below 75% indicate room for improvement. Only 5% of call centers achieve a world-class CSAT score of 85% or higher. CSAT can vary by call type, industry, and customer touchpoint (SQM Group)
10. The industry standard for Average Handle Time (AHT) in customer service call centers is around 10 minutes, though some report it closer to 7 minutes. AHT varies widely depending on call type, line of business, and industry (SQM Group)
11. The standard call center occupancy rate ranges from 75% to 85%. Rates above 85% are often seen as unsustainable, leading to agent burnout and a high-stress work environment. Most leaders agree it’s not healthy to keep agents operating at that level for long (SQM Group)
12. The industry standard for call abandonment rate is around 6%. Rates below 5% are considered good, while anything above that is usually too high. Top-performing call centers with strong CSAT scores often keep abandon rates at 3% or lower. Abandon rates can also vary by industry, call reason, time of day, and day of the week (SQM Group)
13. The industry standard for call transfers in call centers is around 19%. However, a strong benchmark is 15% or less. Keeping transfer rates low helps improve first-call resolution and customer satisfaction (SQM Group)

Customer experience (CX) statistics

Customer expectations are higher than ever. People want speed, personalization, and empathy, often all at once. These numbers show how much these expectations are influencing loyalty, spending behavior, and overall satisfaction:

14. CX quality among brands in the US sits at an all-time low after declining for an unprecedented third year in a row (Forrester 2024 US Customer Experience Index)
15. Companies that prioritize CX see 41% faster revenue growth, 49% faster profit growth, and 51% better retention (Forrester 2024 US Customer Experience Index)
16. 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience, while 92% would completely abandon a company after two or three negative interactions (PwC)
17. In the U.S., even when people love a company or product, 59% will walk away after several bad experiences, 17% after just one bad experience (PwC)
18. 63% said they'd be more open to sharing their data for a product or service they say they truly valued (PwC) 
19. 65% of shoppers find a positive customer experience to be more influential than advertising (PwC)
20. Half of Americans believe loyalty programs matter more than ever. Support is strongest among six-figure earners (57%) and Millennials (56%), while only 43% of Gen Zers feel the same (LendingTree)
21. If it's a brand they really like, more than two out of three people in the U.S., Australia, and the UK would pay up to 25% extra. (UserTesting) 
22. 55% of consumers expect better customer service year-on-year (Microsoft Dynamics Global State of Customer Service)

Agent performance & workforce stats

A high-performing contact center starts with engaged, well-supported agents. But between burnout, high turnover, and remote work challenges, agent stability is under threat. 

These workforce data highlights just how critical it is to invest in training, tools, and career growth: 

23. Three out of four respondents in a 2024 Deloitte survey said agents are overwhelmed by too many systems and too much information, causing longer calls and weaker outcomes (Deloitte Digital)
24. Agent attrition averaged 52% annually in 2023, though the rate varied depending on the industry and region (Deloitte Digital)
25. Companies that actively invest in agent career progression achieved 23% more of their strategic goals compared to those that only plan to invest later (Deloitte Digital)
26. 69% of respondents in a survey said they’ve changed or considered changing careers in the past year. The top reasons driving this shift include remote work options (67%), better work-life balance (52%), more fulfilling roles (48%), and the chance to grow new skills (40%) (FlexJobs)
27. 45.5% of agents said their employer provided a cost-of-living pay raise. Another 38.3% received enhanced benefits, and 43.5% were offered paid overtime options  (Call Centre Helper)
28. Only 48.3% of agents said they don’t plan to leave their call center job within a year. The rest were either open to leaving (26.6%) or unsure (25.1%), signaling weak retention  (Call Centre Helper)
29. Attrition is a widespread issue in contact centers; only 23.4% said it’s not a problem. Of the rest, 30.2% are taking active steps to address it, 25.9% saw little impact from their efforts, and 20.5% lack the budget or resources to act (Call Centre Helper)

AI and automation in contact centers

AI-powered contact centers are now handling repetitive tasks, routing interactions more intelligently, and giving agents real-time support. These adoption trends show which use cases are gaining traction and which ones still need refinement:

30. Conversational AI will cut customer service costs by $80 billion by 2026 (Gartner)
31. By 2026, 1 in 10 agent interactions will be automated, up from just 1.6% in 2022, driven by the growing use of AI in contact centers (Gartner)
32. The cost of integrating conversational AI at $1,000 to $1,500 per agent, with some organizations reporting costs as high as $2,000. As a result, early adoption is expected mainly among enterprises with 2,500+ agents and the technical resources to support the investment (Gartner)
33. 56% of global business leaders believe generative AI will boost efficiency and productivity, making it the most expected benefit. Far fewer see it helping shift workers to higher-value tasks, uncover insights, or strengthen customer relationships (Deloitte Digital)
34. Early adopters of generative AI were 34% less likely to report that their agents feel overwhelmed by the information they need to manage (Deloitte Digital)
35. Over half of early adopters say they use generative AI tools to draft customer responses, support agents in real time, and summarize interactions for insights. Other leading use cases include enhancing virtual agent conversations, analyzing customer intent, and improving service quality with automated scoring and performance management  (Deloitte Digital)
36. Chatbot adoption in contact centers increased slightly from 36% in 2022 to 37.5% in 2023 (Call Centre Helper)
37. About a third (31.6%) of contact center professionals said they want to implement AI to improve customer satisfaction. However, most are driven by efficiency gains—33.2% aim to reduce contact volume, 20.4% want to cut costs, and 9.2% focus on revenue growth. Among the 5.6% who selected “other,” reasons included auto-quality monitoring, process improvement, automation, and saving time (Call Centre Helper)

Omnichannel & digital engagement stats

Customers want to interact with businesses on their terms—SMS, chat, voice, social, and more. But fragmented systems make that hard. As businesses work to unify channels, recent trends point to shifts in customer preferences and the contact center technologies rising to meet them:

‍

38. Companies with the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies enjoy a 10% Y-O-Y growth, a 10% increase in average order value and a 25% increase in close rates. (Adobe)
39. Successful right-channeling depends on next-gen tools that minimize friction across channels like digital omnichannel integration platforms. Among companies using these platforms, 71% reported significant business value, including an average 9% drop in cost per assisted contact. To maximize impact, organizations need up-to-date, accurate customer data available on demand (Deloitte Digital)
40. Most contact centers today use routing tools for agent-assisted chat (74%) and phone calls (51%). These single-channel solutions have helped achieve an average agent occupancy rate of 76% (Deloitte Digital)
41. Channel-specific tools fall short when it comes to quickly connecting customers with the right agent across multiple channels or managing fluctuating contact volumes. To address this, 25% of contact centers have adopted dedicated omnichannel routing tools (Deloitte Digital)
42. There’s been a clear shift in channel usage. From 2022 to 2023, video dropped from 0.6% to 0.4%, and email from 17.8% to 16.5%. Meanwhile, SMS rose from 1.3% to 1.6%, social media from 2.8% to 3%, and live chat from 7% to 7.2%. This trend suggests customers prefer faster, more convenient ways to get support (Call Centre Helper)
43. Inbound voice saw an increase from 53.5% in 2022 to 55.4% in 2023. This highlights rising customer needs during economic uncertainty, as people turn to service providers for both financial guidance and reassurance  (Call Centre Helper)

Quality assurance & monitoring

Modern centers are turning to automation, speech analytics, and real-time feedback to scale insight and improve service. The latest practices show how quality monitoring is evolving from manual scorecards to strategic enablers:

44. The use of interaction and speech analytics in contact centers rose from 28% in 2022 to 37.5% in 2023, indicating a clear sign of growing adoption (Call Centre Helper)
45. Asking customers to complete a post-contact survey is a standard practice in the industry, but 19.1% of contact centers never do so. While this may seem alarming, many of these centers likely rely on more advanced methods like interaction and speech analytics that reduce the need for a server  (Call Centre Helper)

Contact center future trends

Looking ahead, the contact center is set to become even more central to customer experience strategy. Emerging trends like predictive AI or hyper-personalized service signal a future where the contact center is less reactive and more proactive and revenue-aligned:

46. Service innovators are setting the standard. They’re 7x more likely than others to offer premium service tiers either for a fee or to high-value customers. These organizations also provide more service upgrades, including 24/7 availability (89% more likely), direct routing to experienced agents (50% more likely), and access to onshore agents (33% more likely) (Deloitte Digital)
47. The global cloud-based contact center market was valued at USD 14.5 billion in 2021 and is projected to grow to USD 82.43 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 21.3% from 2022 to 2030. North America is expected to lead the market in terms of share (GlobeNewswire)
48. The global omnichannel retail solutions market was valued at USD 5.96 billion in 2021 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 13.6% from 2022 to 2030. This approach integrates physical and digital channels to provide a seamless shopping experience across online and in-store touchpoints (Grand View Research)