January 27, 2026 • 5 min read
Gartner Warns New AI Regulations Could Hike Contact Center Demand by 30%
Director of Content & Market Research
January 27, 2026
Gartner predicts that regulations guaranteeing the right to speak to a human could drive a 30% rise in assisted contact center volumes over the next two years.
In July, the first of these regulations emerged, with the proposed Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025.
While the Act primarily aims to curb companies from offshoring customer service jobs, it will also, if passed, require brands to proactively inform customers they’re interacting with an AI agent.
With this knowledge, customers may opt to be routed through to a US-based human agent, who can handle their conversation.
“[If these regulations come into force], organizations will have to maintain or even rehire human agents, possibly at higher numbers or at a higher salary than they previously paid.”
“Failure to maintain appropriate staffing levels could lead to deterioration of the customer experience with customers waiting for long periods to speak to a human,” concluded Quinlan.
The proposed legislation has drawn accusations of prioritizing “America First” politics and fanning anti-offshoring sentiment rather than boosting customer protection.
Nevertheless, it also reflects backlash against poor AI-driven customer experiences, focused on “containing” the customer instead of improving their experience.
Our Take: Mandated Human Service Will Impact the Good & Bad Guys
The customer pain that sparked the Keep Call Centers in America Act stems from customers being given the runaround, particularly in high-stakes situations.
Crucially, the underlying issue is not AI, but broken processes and poor resolution design.
Unfortunately, even companies that have invested in effective self-service, unified data, and clear escalation paths may still feel the impact of such regulation, as many customers are likely to bypass the AI agent and go straight to a human rep.
Indeed, 2024 research from Five9 shows that 75% of consumers prefer speaking with a real human, either in person or over the phone, rather than interacting with AI for customer support.
Over time, however, more customers will give AI-assisted experiences a chance. As with the adoption of online banking, a single successful interaction can build confidence and encourage repeat use. As a result, the long-term impact of AI regulations on leading CX brands may lessen.
The greater burden will fall disproportionately on less mature, cost-cutting organizations, where aggressive containment strategies may quickly unravel.
Some could attempt to sidestep the regulation through technical loopholes, like number spoofing and routing through US entities.
However, all responsible organizations will be disrupted or made nervous by these compliance burdens, just to differing extents.
The EU AI Act Will Also Impact Contact Centers
In 2024, Gartner predicted that the EU would mandate a right to human customer support.
While that specific mandate has not yet materialized, the EU has introduced its AI Act.
Once the majority of the act comes into force on August 2, 2026, it will affect all contact centers that serve EU citizens in the following three ways.
1. Sentiment Analysis Requires Reevaluation
Chapter 2, Article 5 of the act bans the use of sentiment analysis in the workplace, except when applied for medical or safety purposes.
Given this, solutions that detect customer mood, rep frustration, and score for empathy - including those built into quality assurance (QA) - may fall under its scope.
2. AI-Generated Performance Insights Face Tight Controls
QA tools that provide coaching recommendations or highlight performance issues come within the remit of the EU AI Act, since these AI-generated insights could affect an employee’s job.
As a result, organizations must now document how each AI-generated conclusion is reached, verify the accuracy of the underlying data, allow managers to challenge performance recommendations, and ensure employees understand how the AI is being applied.
3. General-Purpose LLM Use Must Be Backed by Provider Guarantees
The EU AI Act restricts the use of general-purpose large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, which are trained on large quantities of public data.
As contact centers adopt AI models, they must ensure their providers have published training summaries, made technical documentation publicly available, complied with the Copyright Directive, and tested the models for bias and safety.
More Contact Center Predictions from Gartner
In another surprise prediction, Gartner suggested the cost per resolution for generative AI (GenAI) will exceed $3 by 2030. That’s higher than the cost of many offshore human reps.
The research firm attributes the spike in AI pricing to rising data center costs and vendors shifting from a subsidized growth model to a drive for profitability.
Also, as resolution flows start to cross multiple systems, where AI agents will collaborate with one another, brands will consume more tokens, and costs will rise accordingly.
“Customer service leaders are determined to use AI to reduce costs, but return on those investments is far from guaranteed.”
“Full automation will be prohibitively expensive for most organizations; instead, leading organizations will use AI to drive customer engagement rather than to cut costs,” he concluded.
While AI costs are likely to increase, Gartner also predicts that 10% of Fortune 500 companies will double their customer service budgets over the next four years to differentiate their experiences from brands that primarily leverage AI for automation.
That may involve greater investment in customer journey orchestration and human agents who specialize in emotionally sensitive interactions, deliver genuine empathy, and protect the customer relationship.
Meanwhile, more brands are likely to transform the traditional contact center into a customer experience hub where live reps engage in more customer success initiatives, in addition to handling inbound interactions.