From Auditor to Value Generator

Author: Layne Haaksma, Senior Research Analyst

How automated quality management is elevating the supervisor’s role

For many contact center operations, automated quality management (AQM) has moved from novelty to expectation. AQM uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to monitor, evaluate, and surface insights on customer interactions across every channel—compliance checks, performance coaching, and best-practice identification that once consumed hours of supervisor time. In Metrigy’s global Workforce Engagement Management: 2025-26 study of 316 companies, 98.2% of organizations now rate AQM as important to some degree, and most expect at least half of their interactions to be scored automatically. AQM is, in fact, the single-most-common way companies are applying AI to workforce engagement, cited by 51.7% of participants, ahead of every other use case.

Yet, a pattern emerges across Metrigy’s research: Organizations adopting AQM aggressively are not using it to replace human evaluation. They are using it to augment it. A large majority of companies, 78.5%, say they feel the need for supervisor evaluations even as AQM scores a growing number of interactions. This report examines why contact centers, even with capable AQM in hand, deliberately keep humans in the quality loop, and what the most successful organizations are doing differently.

Table of Contents

• The Augmentation Era: AQM’s Rapid Rise
• Finding the Optimal Blend
  • Why Humans Stay in the Loop
  • Trust is Earned, Not Assumed
• The Reallocation Dividend
• The Economics of Good Enough Automation
• The Bottom Line: Designing the Hybrid QM Program
• Working With Metrigy