Human agents were once the center of the contact center. Every interaction had to be handled by a human. This was costly and put a finite limit on the scalability of the number of customers that could be helped.

The rise of technology shifted this model to rely less on human agents, but still needed a human for the interaction to be completed. Because humans were still needed for every conversation, the cost-saving and customer-facing benefits were not realized. 

Once self-service technology entered the arena, humans were not needed for every task. Technology could be used to handle simple, repetitive tasks that did not require human decision-making skills. However, the technology’s inability to understand intent and carry context across the conversation led to frustration for customers.