Agentic AI is simply the latest development on the customer experience( CX) innovation spectrum, and just as this starts to take hold, the next wave of innovation won’ t be far behind.
As such, contact center leaders need to view Agentic AI as the next CX driver. Implicit here is the need for an agile approach for how AI is transforming the contact center – this isn’ t just about one wave of innovation to embrace – there will be continuous waves to manage.
Now let’ s bring the focus back to Agentic AI, as this is a step-level change in terms of where and how automation brings value for the contact center.
To briefly explain, Agentic AI pertains to a new class of bots that can autonomously manage a customer inquiry end-to-end, with minimal or no human supervision.
What takes this beyond what existing bots can do is the ability to use human reasoning to make decisions, apply judgment, and even make recommendations to customers.
This set of capabilities has not existed before, and raises the bar for what’ s possible with self-service and contact center automation.
Aside from the fact that this can provide a new – and very different – form of self-service, Agentic AI represents a major improvement over IVR-based options. In this regard, Agentic AI is an opportunity for all contact centers to up their game and could possibly be the best use case for investing in AI.
HOW FAR TO GO WITH AUTOMATION?
This really is the fundamental question, both with AI in general, and Agentic AI in particular. There is no question that contact centers need more and better forms of automation, and nothing does
AGENTIC AI
... AGENTIC AI PERTAINS TO A NEW CLASS OF BOTS THAT CAN AUTONO- MOUSLY MANAGE A CUSTOMER INQUIRY END-TO-END, WITH MINI- MAL OR NO HUMAN SUPERVISION.
that better than AI. As customers make greater use of digital channels, their options for contacting businesses expand, and with that, the volume of inquiries will only increase.
Contact centers don’ t have the luxury of hiring more agents, and legacy forms of self-service are woefully inadequate to do the job. Automation can be used in many ways to help manage growing call volumes. This is where it’ s important to understand the various use cases for AI. Some of these are customer-facing, and this is where Agentic AI can take on certain types of inquiries, and automate them to a greater extent than IVR ever could.
Not only can they be routine inquiries like address changes or checking on the status of an order, but AI Agents can handle more complex situations, such as canceling a hotel reservation and making a new booking. These are high-impact use cases in terms of improving CX when done well.
Other use cases are behind the scenes, where there is no direct customer engagement. But the Agentic AI-driven automation makes for more streamlined workflows and fast execution of tasks that indirectly drive better customer outcomes.
A good example would be where a customer speaks to a human agent to request a refund. Once the agent approves it, the follow-on tasks are delegated to an AI Agent that could then autonomously manage things to complete the interaction.
While these AI use cases sound promising, the logical extension for AI Agents is to fully automate customer service, and take on a growing share of the workload.
But while that is certainly a desirable scenario, Agentic AI is still far too new to take on the complex inquiries that human agents are often very good at handling.
To be fair, there are other scenarios where human agents fall short – remember, humans aren’ t perfect – raising the thought that perhaps an AI agent could have done a better job.
In this regard, automation should be viewed as a way to help human agents better manage their workloads, rather than to replace them. To some extent, AI will replace human agents, but mainly in cases where agents cannot or will not adapt to working with AI to help make them better.
There will always be the temptation to evaluate AI on its potential to replace agents for cost reduction, but that only impacts operations. As businesses make CX a strategic priority, executive leaders will place more value on AI’ s impact on customers. And that’ s where Agentic AI can be a big step forward.
WHAT CX LEADERS SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT
This brings us full circle to the title of this article: are human and AI Agents better together? The answer can go either way, and it really depends on your business priorities.
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