In an artificial intelligence-first-world, the value of customer service as a way to optimize costs and deliver experiences that drive customer retention and company revenue remains unchanged. Yet AI has fundamentally changed how customer service is delivered. Generative AI-powered conversational interfaces can now be embedded into every channel to automate simple interactions. AI agents using large language models and predictions can now automate more complex work. Human agents use AI assist tools to increase their productivity.
These forces conspire to change the balance of power. Very soon, AI will lead customer interactions, while humans will assist and augment automation, and ultimately become back-stage orchestrators. This represents an enormous shift, and contact centers in the future will look nothing like they do today.
Thankfully, the emerging workforce is well-poised to adapt to this change. Gen Z should account for 27 percent of the global workforce this year. This is the first generation of true digital natives. They have come of age with technology integrated into every aspect of their lives, making them comfortable with AI.
As AI penetrates the contact center to first offload routine tasks from agents, then take over a larger portion of more complex work, human agents will need to tackle the trickiest cases, specifically the exceptions, escalations, and engagements that nurture relationships. Eventually, they will morph into subject matter experts or relationship managers. The customer service agent or a contact center with cubicle farms and a captive workforce will be things of the past.
Zendesk at its latest Relate conference predicted that 100 percent of customer service agents will be AI-powered. The goal is that 20 percent will involve a human agent, while 80 percent will be fully automated. To get to these levels of automation, I expect jobs to change in the following three phases:
- First, organizations will use AI assist tools to enable customer service agents. In this phase, conversational AI handles a subset of customer inquiries. Those that are not handled via conversational AI are escalated to customer service agents. Agents use AI assist tools to enable faster and more effective resolutions. This is the world in which we live today.
- Second, AI will become the first touchpoint with customers. AI agents start to be effective in answering customer questions and resolving issues autonomously. When the AI get stuck, a customer service agent assists the AI in real time and captures the decision taken to resolve the inquiry and uses this information enable further automation. If the customer service agent can't take action or make a decision, the interaction will be escalated to a higher-tiered agent with subject matter skills. This phase will be temporary. The volume of inquiries requiring real-time unblocking will decline naturally as organizations invest in greater automation. Contact center supervisors will remain in a tactical role and pivot to managing quality, service-level agreements, and compliance of both human agents and AI.
- Third, AI will become truly effective for powering customer operations. As AI agents address a greater swath of more complex customer inquiries, the number of customer service agents that serve to unblock the bots decreases. Human expertise will still be required for some inquiries that fall into two distinct categories. The first category includes inquiries that are of consultative nature or need empathy. These will be handled by relationship managers who focus on customer outcomes such as retention. These relationship managers might also have a mix of sales and customer service skills. We already see this model emerging in retail banks. The second category includes inquiries needing real subject matter expertise. These will be increasingly handled by the employees who are more closely aligned to product or process operations instead of front-office customer operations. At this point, contact center supervisors will focus on optimizing AI agents working together to deliver on business goals.
Kate Leggett is a vice president and principal analyst for CRM and customer service at Forrester Research.