46 percent of organizations are funneling more AI investment into customer service than any other customer-facing function.
That's according to a 2025 CX Today study entitled: "AI in Customer Experience: Where Are We Now, and Where Are We Going?"
The statistic underscores how the contact center has become ground zero, a test bed for AI.
A cynical take on this is that many businesses sense the opportunity to cut costs in customer service by replacing live agents with AI.
Recent service team layoffs at the likes of Sky, Zalando, and even Salesforce embolden this view.
Meanwhile, some CX vendors have promised to help companies replace their service staff. One even underscored its goal to help brands automate the entirety of their support operations.
However, if customer service is still “the new marketing”, is this a sensible objective?
Revisiting the “Customer Service Is the New Marketing” Concept
The "customer service is the new marketing" principle implies that excellent support experiences lead to happy customers who will advocate for the brand.
It also underscores how service teams can help retain customers. That’s highly beneficial. After all, decades-old studies suggest that acquiring a customer is five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing customer – as noted in the Harvard Business Review.
Given all this, the concept of "customer service is the new marketing" has much merit.
However, in 2025, is a digital, AI-led experience memorable enough to create advocates and retain existing customers?
Maybe, for now. After all, the space is still swamped with previous-generation chatbots that stumble, forget, and frustrate.
Nevertheless, as AI becomes increasingly advanced, an excellent customer service experience may not be fully automated. Instead, human agents will take more of a strategic role, add extra value, and deliver something special.
AI & Orchestration: The Best Path Forward
Across transactional engagements, customers generally want a fully automated experience.
However, by aiming to automate everything, contact centers miss out on opportunities to further customer relationships, generate value, and act as the new marketing department.
As such, contact centers should not only consider where is best to deploy automation but also where is best not to.
That process starts with understanding the contact center's demand drivers, considering each's value and repetitiveness.
Contact centers should aspire to automate low-value, highly repetitive queries first.
