Picture this. A family arrives at the airport, excited for their annual all-inclusive holiday. The information board tells them their flight has been cancelled. They’re desperate to get on the next flight, worried they’ll lose money on their hotel and dreading having to muddle through to speak to the airline’s customer service agents, with a plane load of people all doing the same.
But, instead of having to wait in an endless loop to talk to someone, they’re greeted by an intelligent and friendly AI agent which pulls up their booking information, listens to their concerns, understands the issue and gives them clear and simple options to get them put up in a hotel for the night and on the next flight out in the morning.
Welcome to agentic AI.
The face of customer service is transforming in front of our very eyes.
Traditional chatbots, famous for causing frustration, were only ever as good as the scripts they were fed and designed to automate very basic queries. Essentially, their purpose was to buy time before a human agent was available to step in. In just a few short years, we’ve found ourselves in an age where bots can act autonomously, make decisions without human input, problem solve and leave customers feeling valued.
This means that all of us as consumers have come to expect smart solutions in real-time. Solutions which are personalised to our specific situations and needs. It’s becoming a strategic imperative for businesses to invest in automation that delivers a premium service, while also driving efficiencies and results they can measure.
Agentic AI is set for a revolutionary 2025
According to MIT Technology Review, the AI agent market is set to grow by 44% in the next year as 69% of leaders expect AI agents to drive speed and efficiency.
Before the end of 2025, we’ll see the first end-to-end agentic AI systems managing customer experiences and making autonomous decisions. We’ve already seen Microsoft unveil autonomous AI agents for Dynamics 365, while Cisco’s Webex has introduced AI Agent and AI Agent Studio.
These agentic systems will not only transform customer service, but they will also transform how businesses make decisions. Gartner predicts that “by 2028, at least 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI, up from zero percent in 2024.”
For customer experience, this means multi-step reasoning, query reformulation and drawing from multiple sources to ensure customer experiences are personal, relevant and smooth.
How will agentic AI change the game?
Ultimately, agentic AI functions much like a well-trained specialist who has access to all company intelligence – the entire customer database, all historical interactions and an updated playbook for every product issue. It can digest all this information and come up with a response in the blink of an eye.
This technology’s ability to bridge decision-making and execution is what makes it truly game changing. And what sets it apart from previous generations of AI-enabled chatbots is that it can act independently to manage complex, multi-step workflows.
These systems take in vast amounts of data, ranging from user preferences and behaviour patterns to past interactions and system logs to tailor each response and solution to the customer. They not only understand the problem, but take initiative to solve it, in real-time. It’s inconceivable to imagine a human agent could take in this amount of information and make an informed decision before the customer gets frustrated and gives up.
Supporting conversational customer experience
As well as processing data at a scale and speed unimaginable to the human brain, agentic AI is supporting the trend towards conversational customer experiences.
Until recently, customer experiences were physical and conversational, you would ask an assistant to show you where the pasta was and leave with a nice feeling if they were friendly, having a chat while taking you to the correct aisle. This is something consumers value and that brands are striving to replicate in the digital space.
Moving away from fragmented communications channels and deploying the apps that we use to speak to friends and family, like WhatsApp and messenger to have two-way conversations with customers is a growing trend and something that agentic AI is primed to support. With the capability to react and respond in a conversational manner, this technology has the potential to offer that personal service in a digital world.
The advantages for businesses are clear
One of the challenges for large and scaling businesses is ensuring customer support capabilities grow in line with customer acquisition. This can be a significant cost and time drain, as each new agent must be hired, onboarded and trained before they’re delivering value to the customer. This is an area of concern for executives and investors alike. And a poor experience with a new brand can instantly lead to a loss of trust.
Agentic AI removes this concern. After the initial investment, costs remain relatively consistent, and scaling can be managed smoothly. Plus, employees have the opportunity to upskill and deliver value over and above the AI’s capabilities. There are many examples of businesses investing in training customer service specialists to in turn train AI agents, make incremental improvements to the service and solve more complex issues. A win for the business and for the staff.
As AI and employees increasingly collaborate, processes and services become more efficient as the technology beds into a business – receiving feedback and being fed new data.
What does the future of CX look like?
Agentic AI represents revolution, not evolution for customer experience. As the technology is adopted across the market, customers will struggle to tell if they’ve spoken to a bot or to a human. And ultimately, when they’re left feeling heard and satisfied, they’re unlikely to dwell on it for long.
But it’s not just in traditional customer support where the agentic revolution is happening – the technology is enabling businesses to intertwine marketing and support. From simple support cases there are often opportunities to upsell, and while previously marketing and support were separate customer flows and owned by different departments, agentic AI allows them to become united and flow organically from one to the other.
Self-optimising systems detect opportunities for up-selling and cross-selling during a conversation, they can identify patterns where customer engagement drops off, enabling team members to jump in and make tweaks to continuously optimise for more organic and fruitful customer journeys.
Ultimately, an agentic AI-fuelled future represents a blend of intelligence, autonomy and empathy at scale. It’ll become a strategic imperative for brands, because when customers experience the full potential of AI agents, they won’t be satisfied with taking a step back.
