A Gartner survey has revealed that 44 percent of service leaders explored a customer-facing generative AI (GenAI) voicebot this year.
Of the 187 customer service and support leaders Gartner surveyed in July and August 2024, 11 percent were piloting the technology, while five percent were already leveraging it.
And the interest in GenAI is not limited to voice. The study found that 85 percent of leaders will explore or pilot some form of customer-facing GenAI solution in 2025.
Interestingly, the customer service sector appears to have become the unofficial GenAI guinea pig for businesses looking to deploy the tech.
While IT is still primarily relied upon for designing and maintaining AI solutions, the findings showed that customer service and support were expected to lead the way in identifying AI opportunities, roadmapping the evolution of AI advancements, and promoting adoption.
In discussing the results of the survey, Kim Hedlin, Senior Principal of Research in the Gartner Customer Service & Support Practice, commented:
“More than seventy-five percent of customer service and support leaders said they feel pressure from executive leadership to implement GenAI.
The customer service function has a growing level of influence over AI initiatives. This historically people-and-process driven function has evolved into a technology-focused one.
Despite this increased pressure to integrate GenAI in customer-facing roles, the survey found that many leaders were inadequately equipped to do so.
In order to deliver a high level of customer service, GenAI solutions are informed by a company’s knowledge library.
However, according to the survey, 61 percent of leaders face a backlog of articles to edit, and over one-third lack a formal process for updating outdated content.
For Hedlin, to maximize the potential of customer-facing GenAI tools, “service and support leaders need to dedicate resources to building an AI-optimized knowledge base.”
The Rise of Agentic AI
For those with their finger on the pulse of the customer service and experience space, Gartner’s survey results will not come as much of a surprise.
Agentic AI, which utilizes GenAI to automate customer-facing interactions, has arguably been the hottest tech topic of 2024.
With several of the sector’s most significant vendors pouring money and resources into launching their own AI agents, it is natural that customer service leaders will begin experimenting more with the solutions.
Among these vendors is Salesforce, which launched Agentforce earlier this year.
Described by the company as “groundbreaking”, the new suite of autonomous AI agents is designed to improve customer experiences and boost business efficiency.
Microsoft also chose 2024 to make its AI agent move, with CEO Satya Nadella revealing plans to develop three foundational solutions for the future of agentic AI.
Elsewhere, the likes of Five9, Talkdesk, and Cognigy have all released agentic AI solutions and/or enhancements in the past 12 months.
More News from Gartner
Last week, Gartner predicted that by 2028, 30 percent of Fortune 500 companies will offer customer service exclusively through a single AI-enabled channel.
Instead of managing multiple channels, businesses are expected to streamline customer experiences by integrating AI, various modalities, and human support when needed.
This shift aims to reduce the complexity and high costs associated with traditional multi-channel contact centers.
In other news, a recent Gartner survey of 5,728 customers found that self-service channels are underperforming, with only 14 percent of customer issues fully resolved through these platforms.
Even for “very simple” issues, just 36% percent were successfully handled via self-service, underscoring a significant gap between customer expectations and company offerings.
