Contact centres are growing fast, with the CCaaS market set to triple by 2030. As a result, organizations are handling a rising number of customer conversations across more channels than ever before.
This surge is putting compliance teams under increasing pressure. “Contact centres are growing faster than compliance teams can scale their workforce globally,” says Goutam Nadella, Chief Strategy Officer at Smarsh. Organizations operating with this gap are at risk of regulatory fines if they miss issues buried in the thousands of calls happening every day.
With most teams still relying on manual spot checks, they can at best review 5–10% of calls and hope to catch compliance issues before regulators do. That still leaves 90–95% of conversations unmonitored, and the proportion will only increase as call volumes climb. Tackling this requires a solution that lets compliance teams understand every conversation without needing to listen to every call.
Why Manual Oversight Cracks Under Contact Centre Growth
Manual processes introduce problems that go beyond limited coverage. Even when compliance teams do review calls, the process itself introduces risks that can skew what gets monitored and what gets missed.
Relying solely on human review allows unconscious bias to creep in. Reviewers gravitate toward certain agents, times of day, or call types, skewing the sample and missing systemic issues.
Another layer complicated by manual review is language and dialect. A compliance officer reviewing conversations in a language not native to them may struggle to assess use of words or phrases, missing subtle signals in intent. Hiring native speakers for every language is neither scalable nor cost-effective, so nuanced breaches go unnoticed.
Some companies use keyword-based systems to offer partial automation and reduce the burden of manual checks, but they lack context. “A customer or agent might use this word, but the system isn’t able to tell how it was used,” Nadella explains. This means compliance teams still must manually piece together what was said to assess whether compliance was breached.
As the gap between call volumes and team capabilities grows, it is clear that manual approaches have reached their limit. Without a new model, compliance teams will continue falling further behind. AI-powered voice compliance offers that model, enabling organizations to monitor every conversation, detect nuance at scale, and shift from reactive audits to proactive risk management.
AI That Listens, Learns, and Flags Risk in Real Time
Smarsh’s AI-powered voice compliance platform addresses the shortcomings of manual reviews by applying checks to 100% of contact centre conversations. Instead of only relying on spot checks or keyword triggers, the system uses an understanding of context, intent, and sentiment to automatically flag issues.
This frees compliance teams from spending hours listening for samples or investigating alerts that pose no risk. They can instead focus on interactions that genuinely matter, restoring their capacity to act strategically rather than administratively.
Language-related issues also disappear. Smarsh’s AI handles multiple languages and dialects, ensuring that compliance standards apply consistently across global operations.
The same sentiment analysis that saves time for compliance teams can also be applied to customer quality control. By transcribing and analyzing calls, the AI detects customer frustration, dissatisfaction, or escalation risk, even when the words themselves seem neutral. For organizations, this address not just regulatory compliance but also the quality of the customer experience.
Crucially, Smarsh’s AI does not introduce new auditing issues while tackling old ones. The platform can show users and regulators alike how decisions were made. “We provide data governance, audit trails, PCI and PHI redaction, and explainable AI,” Nadella explains. Compliance officers can trust the system’s decisions, demonstrate accountability to regulators, and maintain the transparency required in highly regulated industries.
Scaling Compliance, Speeding Up Business
With Smarsh’s automated capabilities, growth no longer comes with a caveat. AI-powered voice compliance enables organizations to scale their contact centres without scaling their compliance teams. As call volumes increase, the AI continues to monitor 100% of interactions, maintaining consistent oversight without additional hiring costs.
The feedback created by AI also improves agent performance over time. When the system flags a compliance issue, it can be fed back into training programs, helping agents understand what went wrong and how to avoid similar mistakes. The same analytics that detect emerging compliance risks can unlock proactive insights for staffing, with Smarsh’s platform able to identify patterns that predict churn, highlight revenue opportunities.
With AI in the loop on all calls, compliance becomes less guesswork and more guarantee. With contact centres continuing to grow, organizations that adopt AI-powered compliance today will be best positioned to compete, scale, and lead tomorrow.
Read more: Future-Proofing Compliance: Why Your Voice and Text Belong on a Single System
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