Executives, CX leaders and analysts are increasingly framing AI agents as tools that can augment human representatives rather than eliminate them entirely, pointing to the continued importance of empathy, judgment and relationship management in customer interactions.
But comments from Verizon CEO Dan Schulman in an interview with Bloomberg TV indicate that some of the industry’s biggest companies still expect significant workforce disruption ahead.
“For sure you’re going to see disruption with AI in certain job functions. I don’t see how that’s not possible. I don’t see how anybody can look people in the eye and say that’s not possible.”
Pressed on how much customer service work could ultimately be displaced, he added: “It can be a large percentage of customer service.”
Verizon Tests AI Agents That Are ‘Replacing’ Customer Service Reps
Verizon has been testing AI agents in its customer service operations and is already seeing an increase in customer satisfaction, Schulman said.
“In the last 3 months, we’ve been experimenting with agents that are replacing some of our customer service reps,” he said. “And those agents, their customer satisfaction rate is 1,280 basis points better than what we had before.”
Schulman sees AI changing internal operations as well as customer engagement.
“AI will do at least three things inside the company. It will dramatically improve our productivity levels. It will dramatically improve our ability to satisfy customers… And then finally AI is going to radically redefine our value proposition.”
Schulman pointed to Verizon’s internal initiative, “every customer has a name,” which is designed to make customer interactions more individualized.
“That means every customer is individual,” Schulman said. “How we respond to you should be empathetic.”
Schulman said many service interactions remain routine enough for AI agents to handle.
“That function is a function that has a lot of rote parts of it,” he said. “I forgot my password. What’s my billing amount? Those are all simple and easy things for an agent to go do.”
However, Schulman acknowledged that more complex customer issues will still require humans working alongside AI, adding: “More complex things will be a combination of human and machines working together.”
“What we’re seeing in our customer service right now is the rote stuff can be done by agents. More complex is a combination of an agent and a human working hand in hand to be able to satisfy that customer much better than either of them could do alone.”
Verizon Is ‘Leaning Heavy’ on AI
Schulman’s comments come as enterprises across sectors accelerate AI deployments in contact centers, where automation has long promised lower costs and faster resolution times.
Schulman made clear Verizon intends to move quickly.
“I’m going to lean heavy as I think all of my colleagues will. All of Fortune 100 will lean heavy on AI.”
“You cannot be a part of this age without understanding the technological revolution,” Schulman added.
At the same time, the Verizon CEO acknowledged that companies have a responsibility to help workers adapt. The telco has set aside $20 million to train and reskill people impacted by AI, a move described as “the tip of the iceberg.”
“My view is we have a responsibility to put serious money, resource, and effort into training not just our employees, not just people that are impacted, but the communities we serve as well,” Schulman said.
Verizon is training employees across the business, from basic AI literacy to building agents. “Some people don’t even know the right prompts to go use and how to use basic chat bots, to being able to gin up agents.”
Schulman’s message to employees was direct: “You should not be scared of AI. You need to learn AI. You need to be able to use it in your work. You need to be able to use it in your personal life because that’s the age we live in.”
The Commercial Reality Behind AI in Customer Service
Schulman’s comments cut through a familiar corporate narrative, that AI will augment, rather than replace, human workers.
That tension was also raised in a recent CX Today interview with Simon Thorpe, Director at Pegasystems, who acknowledged the pressure companies are under to use AI.
“There’s certainly downward pressure, understandably, from a lot of board execs saying, look, we need to be using AI because of the vast returns that it promises. Reducing the reliance on human labor forces is a big one that we hear a lot of quotes from the analysts about.”
But Thorpe argued that the aim should be to remove low-value work, “not replacing people, using to accelerate and automate, take away the low value work and also really making people shine.”
Thorpe added: “I think the future of AI is not AI or humans, it’s AI and humans. And we’ve got to think about when that’s right to make those judgment calls.”
That framing is close to Schulman’s argument that AI will take on rote customer service tasks, while more complex issues are handled by humans and machines together.
Yet Schulman’s comment that AI displacement “can be a large percentage of customer service” is likely to sharpen debate about what that balance looks like in practice.
Altman: “The World Has Got to Be Built for People”
Recent comments by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at a CommBank event also indicate that companies are still working out where AI should and should not be used.
Asked how his own use of AI has changed, Altman said he revised his view on AI replacing jobs completely in certain sectors, including customer service, when he tried using AI to manage emails and Slack messages.
“We really do care about our interactions with people,” Altman said, adding that his personal communication, “which is a huge amount of my time, is not something that I can imagine myself outsourcing to an AI anytime soon.”
“The world has got to be built for people and be better for people,” Altman added.
That principle may prove especially important in customer service, where companies are under pressure to automate, but customers still expect empathy, accountability and trust.
Altman said businesses have not yet established the operating model for people and AI systems working together.
A Defining Contact Center Question
Schulman’s remarks highlight the central AI question facing customer service leaders in the contact center. Which interactions should be automated, which should be augmented and which should remain human?
Verizon’s early results suggest AI agents may already be outperforming traditional service models in some areas. But Schulman’s acknowledgement of workforce disruption also underlines the scale of the shift ahead.
The question now is whether businesses can deliver on the promise of better service while also managing the human impact of automation.
