In an insightful session at the 2026 ICMI Digital Event, Todd Piccuillo, Sr. Director of HDI/ICMI Consulting, and Steve Campbell, ICMI Sr. Consultant and Co-founder of Summit Trails, Informa TechTarget, addressed one of the most pressing challenges facing contact center leaders today: how to prepare for AI implementation in a way that's both strategic and human-centered.
Why AI Readiness Matters Now
The time for sitting on the sidelines has passed. As Campbell emphasized, AI has advanced exponentially over the past three years, with dramatically improved accuracy levels and reduced hallucination rates. Contact center leaders can no longer afford to wait—customers expect it, employees want to engage with it, and competitors are already moving forward.
However, many leaders struggle with uncertainty. They know AI is important but aren't sure where to begin. Questions about expected value, potential risks, vendor selection, and data requirements can make AI initiatives feel like scattered experiments without structure.
A People-First Approach
The session introduced a proven methodology built on three foundational pillars: listening, learning, and building.
Listening: Giving Employees a Voice
The first—and often overlooked—step is listening to your people. Employees are already forming opinions about AI based on news coverage, personal experiences, and workplace conversations. By engaging them early through one-on-one conversations, leaders can:
- Reduce fear and anxiety
- Surface practical insights from those closest to the work
- Create engagement and buy-in
- Help employees feel valued and appreciated
Key questions to ask include: What makes you nervous? What excites you? If AI could fix one thing in the contact center, what would it be?
Learning: Building a Shared Foundation
Campbell outlined a series of three interactive workshops designed to educate teams and gather input:
Workshop 1: AI 101 – Building a Shared Foundation (60-90 minutes) This educational session cuts through the hype and misinformation, covering practical applications and use cases while exploring challenges, fears, and aspirations.
Workshop 2: Shaping Use Cases (60-90 minutes) Participants learn about AI applications across three key buckets:
- Agent Assist: Post-call notes automation, knowledge article suggestions, live transcription, real-time translation
- Supervisor Assist: Automated quality monitoring, coaching insights
- Customer Self-Service: Intelligent virtual assistants, chatbots
Teams then engage in a mapping exercise, plotting use cases on a 2x2 matrix of impact versus feasibility, and submit their top five picks for the roadmap.
Workshop 3: Establishing Guardrails (60-90 minutes) This session focuses on responsible AI implementation, exploring common pitfalls and working through real-world scenarios to build the guardrails that will protect both the organization and its customers.
Building: From Ideas to Action
Through this collaborative process, employees move from expressing concerns to actively contributing to roadmap development and establishing governance frameworks.
The Business Case: Grounding AI in Reality
While the people-focused approach is critical, feasibility matters as much as enthusiasm. Piccuillo and Campbell emphasized the importance of rigorous analysis using Activity-Based Management principles.
Understanding the Work
The foundation of any AI readiness assessment is the activity summary—a comprehensive breakdown of all activities performed in the contact center, including volumes and task times. This creates an objective view of the work and helps leaders:
- Identify realistic automation opportunities
- Evaluate risk across customer experience, compliance, and brand impact
- Quantify the potential impact of different use cases
- Avoid costly missteps
Campbell shared a cautionary tale of an organization that invested hundreds of thousands of dollars automating a complex activity—only to discover it represented just 0.2 FTE of work. The lesson: do the math before making the investment.
Financial Validation
A successful AI roadmap must be financially defensible. Leaders need to demonstrate:
- Clear understanding of investment requirements
- Quantified benefits and efficiency gains
- Realistic payback periods
- Proper sequencing of initiatives
The key is balancing automation potential with actual resource allocation. An 80% efficiency gain on a small activity may deliver less ROI than a 20% gain on a high-volume process.
Key Elements of a Successful AI Roadmap
The session concluded with essential characteristics of an effective AI roadmap:
- Grounded in Reality: Based on real work and real data
- Shaped by Employee Input: Collaborative and transparent
- Supported by Frontline Leaders: Building consensus without requiring universal agreement
- Financially Defensible: Clear ROI and payback analysis
- Practically Sequenced: Starting with quick wins and internally-facing applications before moving to customer-facing solutions
The Path Forward
As Brad Cleveland, founder of ICMI, often says, "This is the most exciting time to be in contact centers." With the right approach—one that balances technological innovation with human engagement—contact centers can successfully navigate their AI journey without leaving their most valuable asset behind: their people.
Session Title: Preparing the Contact Center for AI Without Leaving People Behind
Speakers: Todd Piccuillo, Sr. Director, HDI/ICMI Consulting & Steve Campbell, ICMI Sr. Consultant and Co-founder of Summit Trails, Informa TechTarget
Event: ICMI Digital Event 2026
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