USAN Releases New Guide Showing Why Traditional Agentic AI Bot Metrics Mislead Contact Center Leaders

27-page research report introduces a bot health scorecard and a framework for building AI bots customers actually like

ATLANTA, GA - October 1, 2026 – USAN released Your Contact Center Agentic Bot Metrics Are Lying to You, a new guide for CX leaders. It argues that a bot can hit every target on a dashboard and still fail the customers it serves.

As contact centers deploy agentic AI bots, many teams still judge them by traditional measures such as containment and average handle time (AHT). The guide says these metrics can hide poor experiences. It calls out two pitfalls, the AHT Paradox and the Containment Trap, where a bot looks efficient on paper while customers get stuck, give up, or go elsewhere for help.

The 27-page report draws on industry research from Zendesk, Qualtrics, Gartner, AWS, and others. Among the findings it highlights:

• 40% of agentic AI projects are expected to be cancelled in 2027 because of escalating costs, unclear business value, or inadequate risk controls.
• 79% of customers prefer speaking to a human, and 89% believe they should always have the option to do so.
• 74% of organizations have had to roll back AI agents or shut them down completely because of governance failures and poor performance.

"Too many contact centers are celebrating bots that look great on a dashboard while customers quietly give up," said Steve Herlocher, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing at USAN. "Containment tells you a customer didn't reach an agent. It doesn't tell you whether their problem was solved. We wrote this guide to help leaders measure what customers actually experience."

What's Inside the Guide

The report gives CX leaders a practical roadmap for moving from fragmented AI tools to integrated ecosystems where technology and human expertise work together. It covers:

• Why common metrics mislead: the most widely used contact center measurements, and why they can hide more than they reveal.
• The true cost of bad bots: how poor bot performance and bad data drive up costs, the impact on human agents, the governance and fraud risks, and why $3 trillion is at risk from poor customer experience.
• Warning signs: hidden indicators that a bot needs attention.
• A new bot health scorecard: a way to benchmark performance beyond containment.
• The anatomy of a healthy bot: what good looks like, how to validate a bot before launch, and how to monitor and improve it continuously.

"The goal isn't to deploy AI for its own sake. It's to build bots your customers will actually like," said Farid Shenassa, Chief Technology Officer at USAN. "That takes validating a bot before launch and monitoring and tuning it continuously afterward. A healthy bot is never finished."

Get the Guide

Your Contact Center Agentic Bot Metrics Are Lying to You is available now as a free download at https://usan.com/your-contact-center-agentic-bot-metrics-are-lying-to-you.

About USAN

USAN helps organizations build contact centers that customers actually want to use. As an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Generative AI Competency holder and strategic collaboration partner, USAN delivers AI-powered customer experience solutions that combine cloud technology, agentic AI, and human expertise. Its portfolio includes Amazon Connect solutions and CX Evolve Managed Services, along with AI Contact Analytics and AI Contact Explorer (ACE), which work across platforms including Genesys, NICE CXone, and Five9 to categorize customer interactions and monitor and tune voice and digital bots. USAN serves clients in financial services, healthcare and HealthTech, energy and utilities, travel and hospitality, and retail. To learn more, visit usan.com