The program cuts new agent onboarding time by 30% and doubles first-contact resolution readiness, arriving as global contact centers face a projected AI rehiring wave
Simply Contact, a multilingual customer support provider managing more than 10 million customer interactions annually, recently launched an AI-powered call simulation training program designed to prepare contact center agents for complex, high-stakes customer interactions before they handle live calls. The program runs simulated scenarios across multiple languages and is now available across Simply Contact’s agent onboarding operations.
The launch addresses a gap that industry data has made increasingly difficult to ignore. A February 2026 forecast from Gartner projects that 50% of companies that reduced customer service headcount due to AI will rehire staff by 2027. A separate Gartner survey of 321 customer service and support leaders conducted in October 2025 found that only 20% of organizations actually reduced agent staffing because of AI, while 55% kept headcount stable and used automation to absorb rising interaction volumes. The findings point to a sector where automation has shifted the nature of human work rather than eliminated it, placing greater pressure on how agents are trained and deployed.
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Simply Contact’s new program responds to that shift directly. Agents complete AI-driven simulations covering a range of customer scenarios across multiple languages before entering the live environment. Internal results show a 30% reduction in onboarding time and doubled first-contact resolution readiness compared to the previous training model. The program also screens incoming agents for critical thinking, data literacy, and emotional adaptability, capabilities that have become central to handling the more complex interactions that reach human agents after automated systems have managed routine queries.
“The biggest threat to customer loyalty right now is AI deployed with the wrong objective,” said Konstantin Ryzhov, Co-Founder and CEO of Simply Contact. “Systems built to deflect contact create a convincing surface of service while delivering none of the substance. This program is built on the opposite principle. Agents who train on real complexity before their first live call are better equipped to handle the interactions that actually determine whether a customer stays or leaves.”
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The program launches at a point when the cost of inadequate agent preparation is measurable. Servion reports that 74% of contact center agents are currently at risk of burnout, with annual attrition rates ranging from 30 to 45%. Frost and Sullivan estimates replacing a single agent costs between $30,000 and $40,000, amounting to $16 million per year for a 1,000-agent operation at 40% attrition. By reducing the onboarding cycle, Simply Contact’s program lowers the compounding cost of that turnover at the entry point.
“Agents using AI as a copilot, not a replacement, consistently outperform fully automated flows on both resolution rate and customer satisfaction,” Ryzhov said. “Slow support loses you the interaction. Bad AI loses you the account.”
