Banks are pouring AI investment into their contact centers, but new Deloitte research suggests many institutions could be automating their way into a customer experience problem rather than out of one.
Deloitte’s 2026 Global Contact Center Survey found a persistent perception gap between how executives rate their service operations and how customers actually experience them. While 93% of executives rated their institutions’ customer support experience as excellent or good, only 68% of customers agreed. Similar gaps appeared in self-service capabilities, transparency, follow-up, and response times.
The stakes are significant for any organization that fields inbound calls. After repeated negative contact center experiences, 28% of customers said they reduced spending with their bank, and 31% stopped doing business with the institution entirely. Yet 40% of surveyed executives did not rank improving customer experience among their top three contact center priorities.
The research offers a roadmap that should resonate with collection operations wrestling with the same questions. Deloitte recommends starting with high-volume, high-friction problem areas such as fraud alerts, disputes, and payment issues, then fixing the channel handoffs where customers are forced to re-explain their situation. The firm also urges companies to rethink metrics, measuring first-contact resolution, repeat contacts, and customer retention rather than just handle time and cost per contact.
On task delegation, the survey found customers remain skeptical of full automation. About 70% used self-service in the past year, but only 25% said it resolved half or more of their issues without a human agent. Deloitte’s framework routes simple requests to AI-led self-service, moderately complex needs to agentic AI with human oversight, and high-stakes interactions involving fraud, disputes, hardship, and complaints to human agents supported by AI tools.
Adoption is accelerating regardless. Thirty-seven percent of banking executives said they currently use generative AI in contact centers, with another 37% planning deployment in 2026. Integration with legacy systems remains the top modernization challenge, cited by 77% of executives.
The research also points to proactive outreach as an untapped opportunity. Ninety-one percent of customers expressed interest in proactive support, such as payment reminders and dispute updates, but only 37% said they had ever received it.
