September 2025: Myia and the EU AI Act: Building the Future of Quality With Responsibility at the Core
The first nine months of 2025 have been a defining period for Custom Connect. With seven new clients joining us across Suriname and South Africa, our growth is clear to see. But growth has never just been about size for us — it’s about doing things better, smarter, and in a way that empowers both our people and our customers.
And with growth comes new challenges. One of the most pressing was how to keep our quality assurance and performance model consistent across a global organisation. Different regions, different languages, and different customer expectations meant that our existing, largely manual way of monitoring quality was no longer sustainable.
It was clear we needed something new — something that could align QA efforts across borders, support agents in their development, and deliver actionable insights to clients. At the same time, we were conscious that the regulatory environment around AI was shifting rapidly, with the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) introducing the most comprehensive framework of its kind in the world.
So instead of buying an off-the-shelf tool, we built our own: Myia.
Why We Built Myia
The market is full of software that promises to measure and manage quality in contact centres. We looked at many of them. But too often, they were rigid, complex, or disconnected from the day-to-day reality of supporting customers. They didn’t fit how we work, or how we see the future of customer contact.
Our philosophy at Custom Connect has always been simple: people-first, powered by technology. We didn’t want just another monitoring system. We wanted something that truly supported growth — for agents, leaders, and clients alike.
So what began as a leadership workshop grew into months of planning, testing, and investment. From that journey, Myia was born: an AI-powered QA and coaching tool designed to make quality feedback faster, fairer, and more meaningful.
What Makes Myia Different
At its core, Myia is about empowerment. Using AI, it analyses customer interactions and translates them into clear, practical insights. But this isn’t about replacing human judgment — it’s about strengthening it.
- Agents receive personalised feedback that celebrates what they did well and pinpoints a few specific areas to improve.
- Team leaders can track their teams’ development with dynamic dashboards that update daily.
- Operations managers get a consistent, global view of performance across locations, enabling smarter, faster decision-making.
This clarity has transformed how feedback is received. Agents no longer see QA as something “done to them.” Instead, they see Myia as a coach that recognises their strengths and supports their growth.
The EU AI Act: Why Compliance Matters
While we were building Myia, the EU finalised the AI Act — the world’s first comprehensive AI regulation. Although much of the attention has focused on Big Tech and biometrics, the implications for contact centres are significant.
The Act uses a risk-based framework. AI used in workforce management and performance assessment — which includes most QA systems — is classified as high-risk. This means strict obligations around:
- Data governance – ensuring fairness and accuracy.
- Transparency – explaining how insights are generated.
- Human oversight – making sure decisions are reviewable.
- Traceability – keeping event logs and audit trails.
One red line is clear: emotion recognition is prohibited in the workplace. Systems that claim to detect stress, empathy, or customer emotions from tone of voice or facial expression are banned, unless used for very narrow medical or safety purposes.
For us, this reinforced a design principle we had already embraced. Myia focuses on observable quality — what was said, how processes were followed, what resolved the customer’s need — not speculative judgments about how someone “felt.” Our goal is coaching and continuous improvement, not digital surveillance.
Transparent by Design
High-risk AI must also be explainable. Any recommendation that could affect someone’s job must be open to human review. This is a direct challenge to black-box systems that deliver scores without context.
We built Myia with transparency at its core. Every insight is:
- Traceable – supported by event logs and context.
- Coachable – forming part of a transparent development journey.
- Non-punitive – aimed at growth, not discipline.
Feedback is anonymised, never live during a call, and delivered with a delay to protect both agents and customers. This approach not only complies with regulation but builds trust across our teams.
More Than Just QA
Traditional quality monitoring is slow, costly, and often backward-looking. Myia changes that dynamic. By automating transcription and analysis, it saves countless hours of manual effort and surfaces patterns that would otherwise remain hidden.
For example, Myia has revealed cases where a small set of issues accounted for a disproportionate share of call time. That kind of insight doesn’t just help agents — it enables clients to redesign processes, saving time and raising satisfaction across the board.
A Human-Centred Future
For contact centres, the EU AI Act is more than a compliance exercise. It’s a reminder that AI must serve people — not the other way around.
At Custom Connect, we see this as an opportunity. By building Myia ourselves, we’ve created a tool that not only fits our culture and our clients, but also aligns with the principles of trust, transparency, and accountability that the AI Act demands.
2025 is a year of growth, but more importantly, it’s a year of empowerment. For our agents, for our clients, and for the customers we serve around the world. Myia is just the beginning of how we’ll meet that future — responsibly, and with people at the heart of everything we do.
