Reflections From CCW Orlando: Navigating The AI Adoption Gap

The CCW Orlando Conference in January 2025 brought together leaders and innovators in customer experience, all focused on optimizing operations through technology, particularly AI and GenAI. One overarching theme became clear: while AI holds transformational potential for the contact center industry, the gap between AI’s promise and its actual adoption remains significant.

Many contact centers, from industries like banking, insurance, retail, and logistics, are still in the early stages of AI deployment. Compliance hurdles—especially in highly regulated industries—and uncertain ROI expectations continue to block large-scale implementation.

Current AI Use Cases In Contact Centers
 

Despite these challenges, organizations are cautiously experimenting with GenAI tools designed to enhance productivity. Key use cases include:

• Automating call transcriptions
• Voice and data analysis
• Sentiment scoring to better understand customer interactions
• Agent Assist technologies that provide real-time support to customer service representatives

Although these tools show promise, the efficiency gains and cost savings realized so far are modest. Companies expect these benefits to accelerate as they broaden their deployments. However, for many, the ROI remains neutral to negative as early investments have yet to yield significant returns. Closing this ROI gap will be a crucial focus for the industry in 2025.

Industry Headwinds To AI Adoption
 

Several Key Challenges Are Preventing Faster Progress:

1. AI Fatigue

At CCW, GenAI adoption was discussed in nearly every session. While the technology is a hot topic, buyers are experiencing fatigue from the constant discussion. Many attendees expressed a sense of overload, which could be impacting their enthusiasm for new AI investments.

2. Tech Stack Limitations

Organizations are hesitant to bring in new technologies and instead aim to maximize existing tools in their current tech stack. Buyers showed a preference for working with core systems partners like Five9, Genesys, and Nice, making it difficult for startups to break into the market.

3. Lack Of A Clear AI Strategy

While companies understand that AI can drive cost efficiencies and savings, many don’t have a clear AI “North Star.” Without a long-term vision for how AI can transform their business, they are often stuck in a “wait-and-see” approach or merely testing small initiatives without a robust roadmap for success.

4. Uncertainty Around The Right Questions To Ask

This lack of a clear strategy creates uncertainty about which key questions buyers should ask to move forward with AI adoption. Without the ability to build a strong business case, decision-makers struggle to justify further investment or create comprehensive implementation plans.

What’s Next For AI In 2025?

To accelerate AI adoption and close the ROI gap, the contact center industry will need to address these challenges by:

• Developing clearer strategies that paint a vision of AI’s transformational potential
• Providing tailored guidance to help buyers ask the right questions
• Offering solutions that integrate seamlessly with existing tech stacks, easing adoption friction

As the industry evolves, companies will need to take a more strategic approach to AI implementation, focusing on both short-term wins and long-term transformation to fully unlock its potential. The challenge is ensuring agents and leaders have the critical thinking, adaptability, and problem-solving capabilities to maximize these tools.

At Pathstream, we work with organizations to close this gap—building teams that are equipped to embrace AI while thriving in customer-centric roles. To help leaders justify investment and define success metrics, we’ve also launched an AI ROI Calculator designed to provide a clear view of potential savings, productivity gains, and retention improvements.