For most customers, the call centre or contact centre is where a brand’s promise is tested in real time. It is the moment a delivery has gone wrong, a payment has failed, a policy needs explaining, or a query simply needs a human answer. How that moment is handled shapes whether a customer stays or leaves, and it does so more directly than almost any other part of the business.
Contact centres have also changed enormously in the past few years. They are no longer just a cost centre answering phones. They are omnichannel hubs spanning voice, chat, WhatsApp, social media and self-service, increasingly powered by AI and automation, and staffed by people who are being asked to do more complex, more emotionally demanding work than ever before. That combination of technology, pressure and human judgement is exactly why the contact centre sits at the heart of the CX conversation.
Few parts of a business generate as much hard data on customer experience as the contact centre. Globally, 88% of contact centres now use AI in some capacity, yet only around 25% have fully integrated automation into daily workflows, showing how much of the opportunity is still untapped. Where AI has been deployed well, the results are significant: some organisations report first response times falling from over six hours to under four minutes, and resolution times dropping from around 32 hours to 32 minutes. Companies investing in AI-enabled customer service are seeing an average return of $3.50 for every $1 spent, with some leading implementations reporting returns as high as eight times their investment.
At the same time, customer expectations keep rising. Around 74% of consumers now expect service to be available 24 hours a day, and a similar proportion expect faster responses than they did just a year ago. Meeting that expectation without breaking the people or the budget behind it is one of the defining operational challenges facing contact centres across Africa and globally.
Behind every one of those statistics is a workforce under real pressure. Industry research puts median attrition among customer service agents at around 25% with call centre turnover more broadly ranging from 30%-45% a year and average agent tenure sitting at just 14 to 15 months. Roughly seven in ten call centre workers report experiencing burnout at some point in their careers, driven by hostile interactions, unfair metrics, unpredictable scheduling and a lack of support from supervisors. The financial impact is significant too: replacing a single agent can cost between $10,000 and $21,000, meaning a mid-sized 100-agent operation can lose several million dollars a year to attrition alone.
This is precisely why the theme of CEM Africa 2026, Trust, Technology and the Human Future of CX in Africa, matters so directly to the contact centre sector. Automation and AI can absorb repetitive volume and free agents for higher-value conversations, but trust, resilience and employee experience remain stubbornly human problems that technology alone cannot solve.
This conversation is not theoretical for South Africa. The country’s business process outsourcing and global business services sector has nearly tripled in size in five years, growing from around 65,000 jobs in 2019 to an estimated 150,000 by 2024, with close to 100,000 of those roles concentrated in Cape Town alone. More broadly, the sector already supports more than 270,000 jobs and is projected to reach roughly 775,000 by 2030, with close to two-thirds of those roles serving international clients. In 2024 alone, the sector created more than 20,500 new jobs and generated around R6 billion in export revenue, and the Business Process Enabling South Africa (BPESA) association, together with government, has set a target of 500,000 cumulative jobs by 2030.
For international brands, this makes South Africa, and Africa more broadly, an increasingly important source of contact centre capability, not just cost efficiency. It also means the quality of the customer experience delivered from African contact centres carries growing commercial and reputational weight, both locally and for the global businesses they serve.
Contact centre technology and BPO providers are not a peripheral presence at CEM Africa 2026, they are woven into its core. NiCE, a global leader in contact centre and AI-driven CX software, is the event’s Lead Sponsor. Verint and Infobip, both established names in customer engagement and workforce analytics, join 1Stream, Southern Africa’s own cloud-based omnichannel contact centre platform, as Gold Sponsors. 2Ring and Shadow Global feature as Silver Sponsors, XMwize Solutions and Boomerang BPO, one of South Africa’s established BPO destinations, are Innovation Sponsors, and BPESA, the industry body for the country’s business process outsourcing and global business services sector, is the event’s Association Partner.
That line-up reflects a summit where the people building and running contact centre technology sit alongside the CX, service and operations leaders who rely on it every day, covering everything from workforce engagement and AI-driven automation to omnichannel platforms, agent experience and BPO delivery at scale.
Contact centres may be a distinct discipline, but the questions they face are shared across the whole CX industry. How do we deploy AI without losing the human judgement customers still rely on? How do we protect employee wellbeing while managing cost and service levels? How do we measure the return on new technology honestly? How do we build trust when so much of the interaction is now automated? These questions are being worked through in contact centres first, which is exactly why the sector belongs at the centre of the CEM Africa 2026 conversation.
CEM Africa 2026, now in its 14th year, takes place from 18 to 20 August 2026 at the Century City Convention Centre in Cape Town, under the theme Trust, Technology and the Human Future of CX in Africa. The summit brings together senior CX leaders, enterprise decision-makers and solution providers from financial services, retail, telecoms, insurance, healthcare, logistics and the public sector for three days of strategic sessions, practical workshops and an expanded exhibition floor.
Contact centres sit right at the intersection of that theme: the place where trust is won or lost, where technology is applied most intensively, and where the human future of CX is being shaped in practice, one conversation at a time.
📍 Century City Conference Centre, Cape Town | 18 – 20 August 2026
ℹ️ More info: https://wearevuka.com/retail/cem-africa/cape-town-edition/
🎟️ Book your ticket: https://wearevuka.com/retail/cem-africa/tickets-options/
CEM Africa connects CX industry professionals and organisations to information and each other in a carefully curated live and online environment. It's purpose, to help shape the future of CX in Africa.
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