AI and Australian call centre jobs: what survives

Jobs and Skills Australia gives Call or Contact Centre Workers (ANZSCO 5411) a higher automation exposure score than General Clerks. CBA, Telstra, Optus, Westpac and Wesfarmers have all named call centre work as the first place they are deploying agentic AI in 2025-2026. The work AI is taking is tier-1: balance checks, plan changes, password resets, FAQ deflection. What's left for humans is more complex and more emotional, and there are fewer seats. If you are in a contact centre seat now, you have 12 to 24 months to decide where you land next.

The headline number, with a source

There are about 29,400 people in Australia doing call or contact centre work (ANZSCO 5411). They earn around A$1,414 per week full-time, and 70% are women. The average age is 34. Five-year employment growth is 3.2%, well below the national average (Will AI Take My Job?, 3 April 2026; JobOutlook).

Automation exposure score: 75 out of 100, Jobs and Skills Australia, Our Gen AI Transition (2025). General Clerks have an automation exposure score of 71 out of 100 in the same study. The exposure score does not promise an exact timeline, but the order matters. JSA's 2025 Gen AI Capacity Study put it plainly: "many clerical tasks that were not affected by previous waves of automation could now be undertaken in large part by Gen AI" (Jobs and Skills Australia, 2025).

What's actually happening at the named employers

This is not a 2027 forecast. It is happening now.

Commonwealth Bank, July 2025. CBA announced 45 customer service roles redundant after rolling out a voice bot, part of a wider 90-role round. It was the first time an Australian bank publicly attributed job cuts directly to AI (Information Age, 2025).

Commonwealth Bank, 21 August 2025. CBA reversed those cuts. The bank admitted in writing that "CBA's initial assessment that the 45 roles in our Customer Service Direct business were not required did not adequately consider all relevant business considerations and this error meant the roles were not redundant." Call volumes had gone up, not down. Managers and team leaders were being pulled onto phones (Information Age, 21 August 2025).

Commonwealth Bank, April 2026. A further 120 roles cut as part of an AI-driven restructure (Bloomberg via Metaintro, April 2026).

Telstra. 2,356 jobs cut in calendar 2025. Another 1,000 plus in the first half of FY26. Telstra disclosed 380 internal AI use cases, with about 9,000 staff completing an internal Data and AI Academy course. A separate 200 roles sit inside a data and AI joint venture with Accenture, with work moving offshore to India (Information Age, 2026).

Optus. Its AI Concierge, built on Google generative AI, has cut monthly human-assisted enquiries by about 15%. Optus is also testing a "Sally AI" digital-human agent (Information Age, 2025). Optus is expanding total headcount post the triple-zero outage, but the new seats are network ops, not tier-1 voice (iTnews, 2025).

Qantas, February 2026. 30 admin and customer-facing roles terminated at Mascot. The ASU alleges the roles were replaced by AI. Angus McFarland, ASU NSW/ACT Secretary: "Our members turned up for work on Wednesday, were taken aside and told effectively that their job had been replaced by AI and they have four weeks to find another job" (Cyber Daily, February 2026).

Westpac, February 2026. Completed the largest Microsoft 365 Copilot deployment in APAC financial services. Westpac NZ rolled out Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Centre AI for live call assist (Westpac media release, 5 February 2026).

Wesfarmers (Bunnings, Kmart, Officeworks, Priceline). Group-wide agentic AI rollout via Google Cloud and Microsoft, including conversational cross-brand customer support (iTnews, 2026).

Woolworths. First APAC company to deploy Gemini Enterprise CX, upgrading the Olive chatbot (Google announcements, January 2026).

If you work in customer service at any of those companies, your employer is on the public record about it.

What AI is actually doing in the seat

The vendors are real. Salesforce Agentforce committed A$2.5 billion to Australia over five years. Telstra is roughly nine months into an Agentforce build and "about six weeks away from piloting in production" (Salesforce AU, 26 February 2025; iTnews, 2026). Microsoft Copilot is the toolset at Westpac and Wesfarmers. Google Gemini is at Woolworths and Optus.

The work they handle today is well-defined: identity verification, balance checks, password resets, plan changes, and FAQ deflection. CBA's voice bot was claimed to be cutting around 2,000 calls per week before the August 2025 reversal (Information Age, 21 August 2025).

The Australian Customer Experience Professionals Association (ACXPA) tracks the deployment data. Its 2025 Best Practice Report says 64% of AU contact centres report AI is meeting or exceeding expectations, up from 47% in 2024. Only 9% have no AI plans. The fastest-growing AI use is Agent Assist, up from 15% to 24%. That is the live channel where AI sits behind the human agent, drafting responses, surfacing scripts, and flagging escalations. The majority of centres still expect agent headcount to fall over the next three years (ACXPA, 2025).

The CBA U-turn, in one box

CBA's July 2025 voice bot launch was meant to cut 2,000 calls per week. Six weeks later the bank publicly reversed the redundancies because real call volumes rose. The Finance Sector Union (FSU) said managers were pulled onto phones, and overtime was offered. The lesson is not that AI doesn't work in contact centres. The lesson is that AI deflects the easy 60% and leaves the hard 40% for a smaller pool of humans. The seats that survive will be the seats that handle the hard 40%.

What survives, and where the destination roles are

If AI is taking tier-1, the seats that survive are the ones handling complaints, policy exceptions, vulnerable customer calls, and regulated escalations. There are fewer of these seats per centre and they need more training. The honest read is that a centre of 300 today is a centre of 90 to 150 in three to five years, with the remaining staff doing more complex work for a slightly higher wage.

So the move is not to stay in the seat. The move is to use the customer skills you already have to land a destination role that is less AI-exposed. Three options for AU call centre workers:

Customer success at a SaaS firm. Median around A$119,700 nationally, A$128,200 in Sydney for a Customer Success Manager (WorldSalaries AU, 2025, indicative). Demand varies by employer and city, so check current job ads before you commit. The skills overlap is high: account ownership, escalation handling, renewal conversations. Read more on our call centre to customer success pathway.
Claims officer at an insurer. Claims work spans motor, property, CTP, and personal injury. Jobs and Skills Australia publishes national demand data for this occupation, not live vacancies, so check current job ads too. Median salary lands at A$75,000 to A$90,000 (SEEK Salary Guide, 2025-2026). The certification path is RG 146 Tier 2 General Insurance, which is six months to a year. Read more on our call centre to claims officer pathway.
NDIS coordination. Worth a look, but flag the headwind: NDIS reform is cutting intermediary spend by around 30% and folding support coordination into a new Navigator function, which is expected to eliminate roles (HR Director AU, 2025). Possible move, but the policy risk is real. Treat this as a 12 month window, not a 5 year one.

If you are over 45, claims is the better pick than customer success. The age profile of customer success teams skews younger; claims teams skew older.

What does the union say

The FSU and the ASU are the two unions most active in this fight. The FSU's national secretary, Julia Angrisano, on the CBA reversal: "CBA has been caught out trying to dress up job cuts as innovation. Using AI as a cover for slashing secure jobs is a cynical cost-cutting exercise, and workers know it" (Information Age, 21 August 2025).

You do not have to agree with every union position to take the practical point. If your employer is announcing AI deployments without announcing a workforce plan, that is a signal worth acting on.

What to do this week

You are not in crisis. You are in the early window where information beats panic. Three things, in order:

Take the Career Change Check. Three minutes, free. It shows roles you are already close to.
Talk to two people who left a contact centre seat in the last 18 months. One who is happy with where they landed. One who is not. Most of what you need to know is in those two conversations.
Bookmark our at-risk jobs hub and our call centre operator page. We update them when new AI deployments are announced.

You have 12 to 18 months. Use them.

FAQ

Is my call centre job going to be replaced by AI in 2026?

Probably not all of it in 2026. The pattern across CBA, Telstra, Optus and Wesfarmers is gradual: AI deflects tier-1 volume first, then headcount targets follow over two to three years. Roles handling complex complaints and vulnerable customers are surviving longer. Roles handling balance checks and plan changes are not.

Which AU employers have publicly announced AI is replacing call centre staff?

CBA (announced and partly reversed in 2025, more cuts in 2026), Telstra (over 3,000 jobs cut across 2025 and H1 FY26 with 380 AI use cases), Optus (AI Concierge cut human-assisted enquiries by 15%), Qantas (30 roles in February 2026, union alleges AI replacement), Westpac (large Copilot deployment), Wesfarmers and Woolworths (group-wide agentic AI).

What jobs should a call centre worker retrain into in Australia?

Customer success at a SaaS firm (median A$119,700), claims officer at an insurer (A$75,000 to A$90,000), NDIS coordination (with policy risk), and ops coordinator roles. The skills overlap is highest with customer success and claims.

Is customer success a realistic next step from call centre work?

Yes, particularly if you have handled escalations or worked in a B2B account or business banking team. The skills overlap is account ownership, retention conversations, and stakeholder management. The gap is product technical depth, which can be closed in three to six months on the job.

Should I join the FSU or ASU before any AI restructure is announced?

Joining a union does not stop a redundancy. It does mean you have legal support if your employer skips the consultation steps required by the Fair Work Act. If your employer has named AI as part of its strategy, it is worth knowing what your union covers before the announcement, not after.

Why call centre work is the first thing AI is absorbing in Australia