6 Articles on the Inextricably Tangled CX and AI Trends6 Articles on the Inextricably Tangled CX and AI Trends
This collection of recent articles digs into the role AI-powered tools and humans play in improving the customer experience.
April 8, 2025
Generative AI-powered customer service solutions, including the new AI agent category, can improve service and, potentially, the entire customer experience (CX). But there is a disconnect between what AI can currently do and how contact center agents and customers use it.
One survey of contact center agents found that while AI assistance is helpful, the AI tools didn’t fully grasp the complexity of some customer issues – and the human agents still had to deal with customer frustration during the interaction.
Another recent survey found that human contact center agents are dealing with more challenging customer interactions – both in terms of complexity and high emotions – because AI-powered tools handle comparatively simpler inquiries. These AI agents can both assist and/or replace humans in some of the routine tasks they perform, in the contact center as well as the larger universe of knowledge workers.
Some studies have shown that while AI-powered tools can provide self-service options (i.e., by "deflecting" or "containing" those interactions to self-service options) and perhaps CX more broadly, other studies highlight a disconnect: customers don’t always prefer self-service via bots, but many businesses prefer that automation in part because it keeps their costs down.
Others think that while AI tools may indeed replace most, if not all, of tier-one service/support, there will be an ongoing – and perhaps increased – demand for the human touch in more complex or nuanced customer-company interactions.
Here are six stories that illustrate the above trends.
How Human Agents Feel About AI
A survey of 152 customer service agents in the U.S. and U.K. found that 24% of agents ranked customer frustration as their top concern. Twenty-one percent of agents said that the AI tools they use cannot fully grasp complex customer issues, and struggle with nuanced or complex inquiries. But 18% of the surveyed agents said that AI did enable them to save time and quickly find answers to customers’ questions.
Addressing Agent Burnout
As AI is deployed to take over routine customer inquiries, human agents end up handling more complex and emotionally charged interactions. These more challenging calls are increasing agents' cognitive load and stress levels so much that 75% of North American contact center leaders expressed concern about their impact on agents' well-being, according to Omdia’s 2025 Digital CX Survey.
Delegating to AI Agents
Generative AI-powered AI agents can be used to work alongside human agents to make them more productive, according to Salesforce. These are not “simple” customer-facing chatbots or AI-powered assistants that human agents prompt for answers.
Instead, AI agents are given agency to query databases and act, via APIs, to autonomously address specific issues, such as product returns or appointment changes.
Showcase How AI Bots Improve CX
With only about 60% of customers willing to use voice/chatbots, companies need to spend time building, training, designing, and applying those bots to the problems they can handle. Businesses also need to educate customers on why the bots are beneficial.
This could come down to showcasing success: A system message that says, "The bot solved your issue in two minutes. Based on current volumes, it would have taken 14 minutes." This approach to showcasing value could help change customer willingness to use that option.
Humans and AI Both Key to CX
The vast majority (91.3%) of surveyed businesses believe they deliver excellent customer service on most interactions, according to a late 2024 Metrigy study. In contrast, an early January study from Metrigy found that only 14.7% of consumers deemed the customer service they received as excellent. Far more — 40.6% — gave companies a “good” nod, while only slightly fewer than that — 36.3% — handed out a “fair” rating. Businesses and consumers, however, agree on two fronts: AI, along with knowledgeable and friendly human agents, are both key to better CX.
Ongoing Need for Human Agents
Generative AI assistants and AI agents can indeed help make human agents better, faster, and more efficient. These AI agents may fully replace human agents, at least for many common issues, leading to more and more self-service.
But sometimes, human agents help customers diagnose their service/support issues before assisting them. Even if Tier 1 support becomes almost entirely a self-service channel, Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4 customer service may persist because it's fundamentally not the same thing as self-service – it’s more like human psychology.
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