Published on the 10/06/2025 | Written by Heather Wright
But don’t rule out the human factor…
Business leaders are bullish about the potential for agentic AI to take over much of the customer service workload in the coming years, but they won’t be giving up on the human element.
Nearly 8,000 enterprise business and technical decision makers globally, including in Australia and New Zealand, were surveyed for a Cisco report which says agentic AI will be handling 68 percent of all customer service and support interactions with tech vendors (note the emphasis here on tech vendors, those surveyed were interacting with tech service and support desks) within three years. Within the next 12 months, they’re expecting more than half – 56 percent – of their interactions with tech partners to be handled by agentic AI.
“Agentic AI will be handling 68 percent of all customer service and support interactions by 2028.”
In the future painted by Cisco, customers won’t have to reiterate their issues, issues will be resolved before they are experienced and every interaction will feel tailored to individual needs, preferences and business outcomes.
Respondents are buying in to that vision. Almost all (93 percent) of those decision makers believe AI will do a better job than human beings, making customer service more personalised, proactive and predictive. And they’re are expecting the benefits to flow to them as the customer too: 88 percent say AI-led customer experience provided by B2B tech businesses will help their own organisation achieve its goals such as making their IT more efficient, resilient and secure, accelerating the most important IT projects and maximising value from IT investments.
But, and it’s a big but, they’re also clear that human connection will still be required, with 89 percent of respondents saying human empathy and connection must be combined with agentic AI’s efficiency to optimise customer experience.
Customers value the human relationships and there are critical moments where human interaction is favoured, requiring organisations implementing agentic AI to ensure frictionless experiences where human and AI agents work ‘harmoniously’ alongside each other.
Among those time when customer service can’t be outsourced to agentic AI are cases involving complex problem solving, tasks requiring a high level of customisation, regulatory compliance oversight and issues requiring ‘serious ethical consideration’.
Unsurprisingly, more than three-quarters of respondents believe agentic AI is currently unable to replicate human empathy in customer experience – though respondents do believe the balance between agentic AI-led support and services and human engagement will change over time with human action diminishing as AI advances.
“There is now an overwhelming sense of optimism surrounding agentic AI and its potential to set a new standard for customer experience,” The Race to an Agentic Future: How Agentic AI Will Transform Customer Experiences says.
“Businesses and technical decision makers around the world recognise how this emerging technology can dramatically enhance the support and services they receive from their technology partners and, in turn, deliver tangible benefits to their own organisations.”
The report notes that across the tech lifecycle, from strategy and planning, to design and deployment, adoption, operations and contract renewals there is a ‘seemingly endless’ set of use cases and workflows where agentic AI is expected to improve productivity, drive time and cost savings and deliver more personalised, proactive and predictive experiences.
Liz Centoni, Cisco EVP and chief customer experience officer, says with agentic AI reaching a new level of maturity, we’re closer than ever to solving some of the most persistent customer pain points in enterprise environments.
While customer and technical support, technology strategy and planning and operations were viewed as the greatest opportunities for agentic AI to deliver value, significant numbers of respondents also pointed to design and deployment, contract renewals and adoption as areas of opportunity.
The top five use cases for agentic AI-led customer experiences to provide value for customers include enhanced data analytics and insights for smarter decision making and accelerating troubleshooting and issue resolution.
Aligning tech investment strategy with digital transformation goals, supporting adoption and training for new rollouts and optimising the use of product features round out the list.
“IT productivity is seen as the number one benefit for customers across the board, followed closely by time savings and cost savings.”
And for those partners providing the agentic AI-led customer service, the benefits include improved operational efficiency, greater data-driven insights, the ability to scale up support and services and greater customer loyalty.
The technology should also increase customer spend according to respondents.
“It’s no surprise that this research uncovers overwhelming appetite and excitement for agentic AI-led customer experience. What is surprising, is the velocity,” the report notes.
“Business and technical decision makers are expecting their technology partners to pivot to an agentic future faster than anyone anticipated.”
