Contact centre workers are continuing with hybrid working despite a predicted return to the office.
The 2025 Hybrid Working in the Contact Centre market survey is the latest in the research series which has surveyed UK customer contact centre professionals about their opinions and experiences of home and hybrid working since 2016.
The 2025 study was conducted by Pitch Market Surveys in partnership with trade associations The Forum and Cnect Wales, as well as specialist hybrid working consultancy Spacial.
A total of 100 UK customer contact centre directors, managers and other professionals took part in the 2025 study. Participants came from a broad range of different industries. 69% of people who responded work in large contact centres with 100 or more seats.
71% of respondents stated that three-quarters or more of their contact centre advisers currently work full or part time from home. By the end of 2027, 65% of respondents think that three-quarters or more of their contact centre advisers will be working full or part time from home. While that shows that industry professionals expect a significant number of people to return to the office over the next two to three years that movement is perhaps not as great as some industry analysts have recently predicted, the researchers said.
The most popular hybrid model employed in UK contact centres is one where people work flexibly between the home and the office (i.e. not the same days each week) and where employees decide where they work on any given day (39% of respondents).
The set days at home and set days in the office model (including anchor days) is also popular (28%), while the ‘flexible working between the home and office where employers decide where people work on any given day’ model was used by just 14% of organisations. Of those organisations that embrace homeworking, just 6% employ a model where people either work 100% in the office or 100% at home.
Workplace culture (63% of organisations) and pastoral care (53%) are the top two issues cited by respondents as key hybrid working issues followed by communicating effectively (48%) and managing remotely (40%).
The main benefits of hybrid working were given as happier and more productive employees (75% of organisations), a lower carbon footprint (55%), reduced attrition/absenteeism (53%), additional business continuity (50%) and lower operating costs (48%).
The majority of respondents say that the performance of their homeworking teams is comparable to that of office-based teams against all the criteria given within the questionnaire (including attrition, absenteeism, customer experience, and quality of service).
Significantly, 58% of contact centre professionals said that it is easier to recruit homeworkers than office workers; while 52% said that it is easier to retain homeworkers. Conversely, 63% of respondents said that it is more difficult to train homeworkers than office workers; and 47% said that it is more difficult to manage the performance of their homeworkers.
60% of respondents felt that their organisation provides managers and supervisors with sufficient training and advice to support home/hybrid workers (47%); while just 12.5% consider that it doesn’t.
Voice calls (used by 95% of organisations), email (90%) and webchat (75%) are the most commonly used communications channels within customer contact centres. Automated Voice/ IVR (used by 60% of organisations) and social channels (53%) are the next most popular. This indicates the reliance on people-delivered service within the industry in 2025 – albeit AI is now being used in 24% of contact centres.
Despite the massive efforts of organisations over recent years to digitise and move away from phone-based communications, under a third of respondents (32%) believe that digitised communications will be the most common form of customer contact by the end of 2027.
And when asked about the impact of self-service and AI on the service industry, a little over a third of people (36%) expect the majority of customer contacts to be handled by AI and automation by 2030. A much larger percentage (64%) were either ‘not sure’ or felt that human contact would still dominate the contact centre industry in 2030.
84% of respondents agreed that flexible working gives its employees the opportunity to enjoy a better work-life-balance. Despite this, just 8% of respondents said that their organisation gives its contact centre employees the ability to self-select their work schedules……. a capability often associated with achieving a better work-life-balance through flexible working.
“The 2025 survey shows just how popular hybrid working has become with employees and employers alike,” said Michael Gray, Director, Pitch Market Surveys.
“While organisations are reporting business challenges in areas such as workplace culture, pastoral care, internal communications and management, they are benefitting hugely in areas such as employee engagement, recruitment and absenteeism/attrition. The message to businesses is clear: the key imperative must be to optimise hybrid working models and strategies. Take hybrid working away from people at your peril.”
