Contact Center AI: Why Agent Assist, Quality Monitoring and Coaching Need the Same Feedback Loop
- In contact center AI, the recommendation an agent sees is not the most important asset. The key asset is the record of what agents accept, ignore, or change and whether anyone acts on it after go-live.
- Agent assist surfaces the specific answer inside a live conversation, drawn from the company 's knowledge base, and stays useful only if it keeps learning from real calls.
- Automated quality monitoring reviews every interaction instead of a sample, scoring both hard skills (compliance, accuracy) and soft skills (empathy, de-escalation).
- Coaching and training optimization turns that quality signal into targeted practice aimed at the specific gaps the data surfaced.
- CX insights aggregate what every interaction reveals and feed it back into the knowledge base, routing and training, so the operation compounds instead of drifting.
Vancouver, BC, Oct. 01, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In the context of contact center AI, a recommendation engine is only as good as what happens to it over time, as products change, policies shift and the reasons customers call evolve. The value lies in the record of what agents do with each recommendation, including what they accept, ignore and modify, and whether anyone owns that loop once the launch team has moved on. TELUS Digital operates the full AI value chain with enterprises, helping them train, build, run and protect AI, and, distinctly, operates AI-powered contact center solutions. The company has outlined the four AI capabilities that support agents across a contact center interaction, and why the connections between them determine whether the customer experience delivery is effective.
Erin Walker, Global Vice President of CX AI, Business & Delivery at TELUS Digital, said, "Agents do their best work when the technology around them removes friction and feeds them accurate information at the moment they need it, instead of adding another screen to watch. When live guidance, quality review and coaching all run as separate systems, agents end up managing the tools instead of the conversation. The goal is for those systems to share what they know about an interaction, so an agent isn 't re-explaining context the technology already captured three steps earlier. "
KEY FACTS
- TELUS Digital operates the full AI value chain with enterprises, spanning training, building, running and protecting AI, through its products and a deep technology-partner ecosystem.
- TELUS Digital both operates contact centers and builds enterprise AI, including the Fuel iX™ platform.
- Fuel iX™ is TELUS Digital 's proprietary enterprise AI platform and suite of products for clients to manage, monitor, and maintain generative AI across the enterprise.
- Fuel iX Agent Trainer has helped accelerate agent proficiency by up to 50%.
- In a TELUS Digital deployment of Fuel iX Agent Trainer and Agent Quality Insights, 100% of contact center interactions were automatically analyzed to identify coaching opportunities, improving coaching efficiency by 26%.
The Four Capabilities That Support Agents
Four AI capabilities support agents across a contact center interaction: agent assist that guides a live call, automated quality monitoring across every interaction, coaching that acts on what monitoring surfaces and CX insights that feed the whole operation.
1. Agent Assist Puts the Right Answer in Front of the Agent
Real-time agent assist listens to a live conversation and surfaces the specific answer an agent needs at that moment, drawn from the organization 's knowledge base. Agent assist does this in place of traditional search that returns a wall of articles for the agent to read mid-call. That means the customer gets an answer right away instead of a hold while the agent reads. But "the right answer " is not fixed at launch. It has to stay accurate as products and policies change, which depends on capturing what agents accept, ignore and modify, and updating the underlying knowledge on that signal. Without updates, an agent assist tool might surface a promotion that has already ended or an outdated return policy, and the agent passes that wrong information to the customer with full confidence.
2. Automated Quality Monitoring Reviews Every Call, on Hard Skills and Soft Skills
Traditional quality programs sample a small percentage of calls and score them after the fact. Automated quality monitoring reviews every interaction instead of a fraction and it evaluates both dimensions of a call that are important. This includes hard skills like compliance and accuracy, and soft skills like empathy, tone and de-escalation. Reviewing full-coverage data instead of a sample means a coaching pattern that shows up in a small share of calls that stays visible rather than disappearing into a rounding error. The result is a specific, evidence-based picture of where each agent is strong and where they need support to optimize coaching and training opportunities.
3. Coaching and Training Optimization Turns the Signal Into Targeted Practice
A quality signal only creates value if someone or something acts on it. Coaching and training optimization takes the skill gaps that quality monitoring surfaces and turns them into targeted practice, so agents work on the specific weaknesses the data identifies rather than sitting through a blanket refresher. Fuel iX Agent Trainer supports this with AI-driven voice and chat simulations that let agents rehearse the exact scenarios they struggle with in a risk-free practice environment with immediate feedback. In a TELUS deployment of Agent Trainer, that approach accelerated agent proficiency by up to 50% and improved CSAT by 18%. A quality score turns into a better customer conversation when coaching is guided by data.
4. CX Insights Turn Every Interaction Into Fuel for the Whole Operation
The final stage closes the loop. Individually, each capability improves one moment in the agent 's day. Aggregated, every interaction reveals information about what customers are asking, where answers are missing and where agents are getting stuck. Fed back into the system, those insights update the knowledge base that the agent assist draws from, refine how calls are routed and sharpen what coaching prioritizes next. When insights flow back to the start of the loop, the answer an agent surfaces next month improves on the one they surfaced today because the operation is continuously learning.
Connecting these four capabilities so they share what each one learns is a continuous delivery task that runs for the life of the deployment.
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: Why does real-time agent assist need to keep learning after go-live?
Answer: Products launch, policies change and the reasons customers call shift month to month. An agent assist tool that was accurate at launch falls behind as the business changes around it. Keeping it accurate means capturing what agents do with its suggestions and updating on that signal, so that it continues to evolve with the business and ensures the answer it surfaces stays current.
Question: What is the difference between automated quality monitoring on hard skills and soft skills?
Answer: Hard skills are the objective, verifiable parts of a call, such as compliance steps and factual accuracy. Soft skills are the human dimensions, such as empathy, tone and how well an agent de-escalates a frustrated customer. Reviewing both across every interaction, rather than a sampling, gives supervisors a complete picture of agent performance and surfaces coaching moments that a compliance-only score would miss.
Question: Can one partner connect live-call support, quality monitoring and coaching so they work together?
Answer: Connecting these capabilities so they share interaction data is an orchestration and delivery challenge rather than a single-product one. TELUS Digital works with contact center teams on that integration across its products, including the Fuel iX™ platform, and its technology-partner ecosystem.
Question: Where does an implementation partner add value in connecting these AI capabilities?
Answer: The value is less in any single tool and more in making the capabilities work as one system. TELUS Digital operates the full AI value chain with enterprises, training, building, running and protecting AI, which means helping brands deploy, implement, optimize and orchestrate these capabilities and stand behind the result, rather than handing over a set of disconnected tools.
About TELUS Digital
TELUS Digital crafts unique and enduring experiences for customers and employees and creates future-focused digital transformations that deliver value for our clients. We are the brand behind the brands. Our global team members are both passionate ambassadors of our clients’ products and services and technology experts resolute in our pursuit to elevate their end customer journeys, solve business challenges, mitigate risks, and drive continuous innovation. Our portfolio of end-to-end, integrated capabilities include customer experience management, digital solutions, such as cloud solutions, AI-fueled automation, front-end digital design and consulting services, AI & data solutions, including computer vision, and trust, safety and security services. Fuel iXTM is TELUS Digital’s proprietary platform and suite of products for clients to manage, monitor and maintain generative AI across the enterprise, offering both standardized AI capabilities and custom application development tools for creating tailored enterprise solutions.
Powered by purpose, TELUS Digital leverages technology, human ingenuity and compassion to serve customers and create inclusive, thriving communities in the regions where we operate around the world. Guided by our Humanity-in-the-Loop principles, we take a responsible approach to the transformational technologies we develop and deploy by proactively considering and addressing the broader impacts of our work. Learn more at: telusdigital.com.
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