No Humans Required? Agentic AI To Fix 80% Common Customer Service Issues; Costs To Plummet, Says Gartner
Agentic AI is poised to change the way service teams and customers engage. Know what customer service and support leaders must do to keep up or else be left behind.
Agentic artificial intelligence has the potential to completely change how people engage with services. In contrast to earlier AI models that could only generate text or summarise interactions, agentic AI enables AI systems to act independently to accomplish tasks. By using AI agents and bots to automate interactions, this technology will be used by both customers and organisations, changing the way service teams and customers engage.
So much so that by 2029, agentic AI will autonomously resolve 80% of common customer service issues without human intervention, leading to a 30% reduction in operational costs, according to new research by Gartner Inc.
Redefining Customer Experience Through Automation, Enhanced Interactions
To improve customer experiences through automated service requests and improved interactions, service teams must adapt to supporting both human customers and machine customers powered by advanced AI tools. For customer service teams accustomed to handling reactive demand from human customers, this transition presents a potential challenge.
Customers’ service experiences will change dramatically as a result of agentic AI. In addition to providing information, AI agents will perform tasks like navigating websites to cancel subscriptions or negotiating the best shipping prices. Agentic AI also has the potential to be used for proactive issue identification and resolution.
Service Teams Must Brace For Change
Service organisations must brace for changes in the nature and volume of interactions, which will change the relationship between service teams and customers, open new avenues for value delivery, and reform customer data collection. Here is what customer service and support leaders should do:
Prepare For Automation: Anticipate more automated interactions from AI agents and invest in scalable infrastructure and optimise self-service channels to manage bot traffic.
Revise Service Models: Update models to handle AI-driven service volume and implement dynamic routing to differentiate between human and AI interactions.
Set AI Interaction Policies: Develop guidelines for AI-led interactions, addressing data privacy, security, and escalation.
Collaborate With Product Teams: Partner to integrate agentic AI into products for proactive issue detection and reduced reliance on external AI.
