April 28, 2026
UJET Research Finds Zero Agents Consider AI Essential to Their Daily Success
Every customer service agent surveyed in a new UJET study interacts with AI on a daily basis, yet not a single one considers it indispensable. The finding, drawn from the company’s report The Agent and AI Disconnect: A Blueprint for Futuristic CX, raises pointed questions about the value brands are extracting from their AI investments in the contact centre.
According to the research, 93% of agents said they could do their jobs without AI. Seventy-eight percent described their organisation’s AI tools as falling short of being transformative, while 54% said the technology is useful in principle but lacks the contextual depth needed to make a meaningful difference in live customer interactions.
Brands across the industry are accelerating AI deployment in customer service, often with headcount reduction as a primary goal. UJET’s findings suggest that the strategy is backfiring, because immature AI implementations are introducing friction into agent workflows and degrading the customer experience, rather than increasing efficiency. A separate Gartner projection reinforces the concern, estimating that by 2030, the cost per resolution for generative AI in customer service will exceed $3, a figure higher than the current average cost of many human-handled interactions.
Vasili Triant, CEO of UJET, said the industry has made a fundamental error by directing AI at front-end automation rather than the back-end complexity that genuinely slows agents down. He argued that brands need to rethink where AI sits in the workflow if they want to see genuine returns.
Customers Are Frustrated, Agents Are Stressed
On the customer side, 65% said they are frustrated by having to repeat information to an AI self-service system before reaching a human agent. The failure in self-service is not without consequences for agents. Fourteen percent reported handling more emotionally intense interactions as a result, contributing to higher stress and burnout. Previous research from Calabrio similarly found that 98% of contact centres use AI, but 61% are managing harder conversations because routine queries are being filtered out, leaving agents with a disproportionate share of difficult calls.
Trust in AI-generated outputs is also a problem, with 93% of agents saying they feel compelled to verify information from AI tools before passing it on to a customer, and 15% described real-time AI recommendations as unreliable or inaccurate.
Legacy Systems Are Making the Problem Worse
AI performance is not failing in isolation. The report identifies bloated, siloed tech stacks as a root cause. Eighty-one percent of agents are juggling more than four tools simultaneously during interactions, and nearly 20% are managing seven or more. When AI tools cannot operate across these fragmented systems, the result is disconnected outputs and duplicated effort rather than streamlined support.
Seventy-one percent of agents said they expect to look for a new job within the next 12 months, driven by concerns about AI-related job displacement. That anxiety echoes moves already underway elsewhere in the industry, with companies like Sky cutting 2,000 UK contact centre jobs as AI takes on a larger role in customer support.
Where Agents See the Upside
Despite the frustrations, agents are not uniformly negative about AI’s potential. Fifty-four percent said they are cautiously optimistic, expecting AI to change their roles rather than eliminate them. Every respondent agreed that properly deployed AI saves time, and the benefits of that time saving are already materialising for some. Sixty-six percent said they are able to handle more customer requests, while 20% reported taking on higher-value work such as upselling and complex issue resolution. Seventy-eight percent said AI-driven time savings have contributed to promotions, 24% reported earning more money, and 18% cited improved performance reviews.
Agents also reported gains in soft skills once administrative tasks were offloaded. Twenty-five percent noted improvements in empathy and active listening, and 22% cited better multitasking and time management alongside stronger technical troubleshooting capabilities.
Triant said the path forward requires brands to stop treating AI as a replacement for agents and instead use it to eliminate the operational friction that prevents human workers from delivering at their best. The competitive advantage, he added, lies in turning customer service agents into proactive brand ambassadors rather than minimising their involvement.
