In 2 years, half of all service calls will be resolved by AI - survey

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ZDNET's key takeaways

• AI agents are boosting efficiency, cutting costs, and improving customer satisfaction.
• By 2027, 50% of service cases are expected to be resolved by AI.
• 4 out of 5 service leaders say AI agent investment is essential to meet business demands.

Seventy-nine percent of service leaders say investment in AI agents is essential to meet business demands, according to Salesforce's State of Service 7th edition report. Here are the key takeaways from the company's annual State of Service research, based on a survey of more than 6,500 service professionals worldwide. 

Teams tackle AI adoption: Service teams face challenges like meeting customer demands with limited resources, talent shortages, and successfully implementing AI. However, companies that've integrated their service channel data in one unified platform are 1.4x more likely to call their AI implementation very successful compared to those with siloed systems.

AI agents redefine customer service:- Companies are incorporating predictive, generative, and agentic AI to deliver faster, more accurate, and more personalized interactions. Leaders expect AI agents to amplify prior AI outcomes and are backing that expectation with investment. Investment in AI agents is essential to meet business demands, say 79% of service leaders. 

AI gets conversational with voice and multimodal interactions: Conversational AI is reshaping customer communication across digital channels, like text and chat, increasing self-service resolution rates. When cases do need human attention, the right AI tools maintain context. Eighty-five percent of service professionals usinf voice AI say transitions to human representatives are seamless for customers.

Agentic AI makes field service safer and more efficient: Field service organizations face inefficiencies due to administrative tasks, scheduling issues, and long waits for parts. AI can help. Eighty-five percent of field service leaders believe their AI field service investments will increase over the next year.

This article will focus on the first two key findings -- AI adoption and AI agents redefining customer service -- and look at key trends that will reshape the service industry. 

Teams tackle AI adoption challenges

The demand for higher-quality customer service engagements is growing fast. Eighty-two percent of service professionals agree that customer expectations are higher than they used to be. Success is now defined by how companies can develop stronger relationships with their customers. 

The challenge is removing wasteful activities, ensuring that service professionals can focus on high-value work. And though 81% of service representatives say building relationships with customers is an important part of their job, they spend less than half their time (46%) with customers due in part to administrative tasks and internal responsibilities.

All waste is costly, but not all costs are wasteful. The cost of poor service is your customers' future business. The research found that 43% of consumers say a poor customer service experience will prevent them from making a repeat purchase.

Talent shortage is also a major challenge for service teams. Twelve percent of service employees left their company over the past year, and these highly trained individuals are often hard to replace. The top service challenges for service organizations include keeping up with changing customer expectations, higher operational costs, and difficulty hiring and/or retaining employees. Service teams are mitigating these challenges by expanding training and skill development, self-service for customers, and career path enhancements. 

Security concerns are slowing down AI adoption. State of IT research found that 75% of IT security leaders believe AI-driven cyber threats will soon outpace traditional defenses. In this report, service leaders cite security concerns as their top challenge while implementing AI, and over half say it's delayed or limited these initiatives. 

To combat the issue, 86% say they're willing to pay more for technology that keeps data secure. In addition to security concerns, AI accuracy and explainability, lack of AI expertise, high costs, and customer adoption barriers are the top challenges for AI adoption.

The other challenge is silos. Forty-four percent of service leaders with AI say tech silos have delayed or limited their AI initiatives. Integration is key to successful outcomes driven by AI investments. Eighty-eight percent of service leaders say they're prioritizing tech integration to support their AI initiatives. Organizations that integrate service channel data in one unified platform are 1.4x more likely to call their AI implementations very successful compared to those with siloed systems.

AI agents redefine customer service 

Service organizations are ramping up AI and agent investments. Companies are investing in all three forms of AI: predictive, generative, and agentic. Sixty-nine percent of service professionals say their organization uses at least one form of AI, with 39% saying they use agentic AI. The vast majority of the 6,500 service professionals surveyed are adopting aggressive strategies for AI agent adoption. Only 6% of service leaders don't expect to use agentic AI within five years -- a finding that makes sense, given that 79% say AI agent investment is essential to meet business demands.

AI agents are delivering measurable results, including improved decision-making, increased efficiency, and happier customers. Companies that use AI agents specifically anticipate better results across their KPIs, from customer satisfaction scores to case deflection. Service ops and leaders who use AI agents expect their service costs and case resolution times to decrease by an average of 20%.

The future of customer service is hybrid -- humans and AI agents working together to achieve more. The collaboration between humans and AI in customer service yields significant benefits. In fact, 83% of service representatives at organizations with AI say they have better career prospects because of it, and 82% say working with AI has helped them develop new skills. It's also made them more productive and their jobs less stressful. AI agents are augmenting service representatives with better career prospects, faster case resolution for complex tasks, and development of new skills as a resulting of using AI. Smarter, faster, more productive, and increased job satisfaction are the noted benefits of using AI in service.

As AI agents gain momentum, service professionals anticipate rapid growth in the share of cases resolved by AI. By 2027, 50% of service cases are expected to be resolved by AI, up from 30% in 2025. 

The top AI agent use cases in customer service are: 

1. Customer FAQs
2. Order inquires
3. Conversation summaries
4. Knowledge retrieval for reps
5. Personalized product recommendations

The report also highlighted service technicians' desire to use AI agents more effectively to be successful. Technicians think AI agents could do 35% of admin tasks, saving around 14 hours per week on average.

Research recommendations

The research concludes with a recommendation on how companies can map out their agentic maturity journey, noting that agentic maturity is a transformational journey from "good" to "great" -- and beyond. Great means handling simple interactions with autonomous experiences, while also helping humans with complex customer requests. The levels of maturity include: 

• Level-1: Answer with knowledge (aka RAG retrieval).
• Level-2: Access transactional data (with reasoning).
• Level-3: Action on systems (with system orchestration).

To learn more about the 2025 State of Services report, you can visit here.