Customer service

Nearly 3 in 5 consumers say it’s important for companies to respond to support inquiries on social media, according to an Emplifi survey of nearly 1,000 U.S. consumers released in April. 

Customers who reach out via social media for customer support want fast, human responses. Two-thirds say they want a person to respond to them, according to the survey.

They also largely expect a response within 24 hours. One-third of respondents say they expect a response within 1 hour. Only 4% said they are OK with a response in 72 hours or more.

Customers expect timely responses on a range of channels — whether via phone, chatbot or social media. 

With social media the No. 1 preferred communication method in the U.S., the channel has evolved from a marketing platform to a critical form of customer service, according to Susan Ganeshan, CMO at Emplifi.

“Social media is no longer just a promotional tool; it’s a vital support channel that requires speed, visibility and personalization,” Ganeshan said in an email. “Customers expect quick responses and public interactions, and slow replies can significantly damage a brand’s reputation.”

Over one-third of respondents — 37% — cited slow response times as a contributor to negative experiences. About one-quarter say a lack of 24/7 customer support options contributes to a poor experience. 

AI can be useful to quickly acknowledge a customer complaint, but it can fall short as the only form of response. Emplifi encourages brands to use AI to triage, but to prioritize timely follow-up by the customer support team.

“AI can handle basic queries and repetitive tasks, making it an efficient tool for high-volume situations,” Ganeshan said. “However, human oversight is still crucial for complex issues that require empathy or problem-solving.”

SALT LAKE CITY — While the growing power of automation gives companies more opportunities to change store and contact center operations, it’s not a replacement for people in customer experience. 

Companies embracing AI are looking for the right balance between automated experiences and the human element, according to Anna Krementz, VP of client success and sales for NPS Prism at Bain and Company.

Leaders from Sam’s Club and Chime, a financial services company, discussed their approach to striking that balance during a panel at the Qualtrics X4 conference in Salt Lake City in March. 

While Sam’s Club is primarily implementing AI in stores and Chime in customer service, both recognize that people still play a key role in their businesses. Technology can streamline experiences, but it’s not a substitute for the human touch.

Implementing AI to reduce repetition 

AI can reduce the burden of certain tasks on associates, call center agents and other employees, which in turn frees them up to spend more time with customers.

Walmart’s approach to AI, which includes the implementations at Sam’s Club, is to use the technology as a way to empower its frontline while assisting customers.

“We firmly believe in the concept of people first, but how can we use technology to make things easier?” Eva Ouma, VP of data and business insights at Sam’s Club, said during the panel. “We really focus on promoting routine tasks that people really don’t want to do.”

One example is Sam’s Club’s autonomous floor scrubbers, which not only keep the store clean, but take pictures of shelves and feed the images into the system, according to Ouma. 

Associates can then receive alerts when something needs to be restocked, rather than roam the aisles looking for what needs to be done. As a result, floor scrubbers have eliminated 100 million tasks since their implementation. 

“That’s an example of how manual tasks get repetitive, and automating it makes life easier for the associate,” Ouma said. “Then what that means is associates are freed up for human interaction.”

Chime takes a similar approach in implementing AI at its contact centers, according to Chris Hernandez, speech analytics lead at the company. Its use of automation targets simple, repetitive inquiries, which reduces the cognitive burden on agents and leaves them better prepared for more complex customer calls.

However, Chime had to put in the work before it knew which kinds of queries were best suited for automation, according to Hernandez. The company drew on its strong data backbone to study where and how AI could be applied in the contact center.

“We try to make sure that whatever we’re trying to automate, we do a good job at understanding the downstream impact,” Hernandez said. “I think a lot of companies want speed to market and when they want to launch AI, they just launch it. But we want to make sure the impact is apparent.”

Customers want to talk to people 

AI can walk a fine line between helpful and frustrating. While customers may appreciate the convenience of automated assistance, they don’t want to feel like AI is removing the human element.

While it can be tempting to route as many customer service queries through AI as possible as a cost-saving measure, most customers still prefer live agents.

AI is at its best when it’s combined with the option for live support, according to Hernandez. When AI is a good fit it can save customers time and the business money, but only when applied to the right points of friction.

“I think some companies should be cautious about overrelying on automation to try to solve every single problem,” Hernandez said. “It shouldn’t start with using AI as your first contact. Look at the people and processes and understand, ‘Can AI solve for this?’”

Many Sam’s Club customers have embraced its scan-and-go technology to shop and leave without waiting for a cashier, according to Ouma. In these cases, their only human interaction is an associate thanking them as they leave.

However, each store still has a member service desk available for anything customers need, according to Ouma. Shoppers can visit if they need help with something, if they want to report a problem, or even if they simply want to ask another person a question.

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By Sendbird

Meta: Learn how AI agents enable support teams to scale proactive, predictive support to boost CSAT scores and streamline operations.

Customer support is undergoing a major transformation. For decades, asking for support has meant waiting: you hit a problem, open a ticket and hope for a timely response. But with customer expectations ever-increasing and interactions multiplying across digital platforms—a reactive approach is no longer enough.

Proactive AI is emerging as a powerful alternative to reactive support, enabling companies to anticipate issues and defuse them before they arise. Driving this shift from reactive to proactive customer support are AI agents.

Unlike generative AI chatbots that can only respond to users based on historical data, agentic AI is autonomous, proactive and adaptable. By analyzing data in real time, AI agents can anticipate customer needs with new levels of precision, helping to resolve around 70% of inquiries at first contact (FCR).

In a world where 8 in 10 people prefer to resolve issues on their own before contacting a human agent, proactive AI is a scalable way to meet customers with timely, tailored, context-driven interactions across channels. Here’s how it’s poised to enhance customer satisfaction and streamline operations so businesses can do more with less.

Always on, everywhere: The rise of omnipresent AI

Proactive AI is about more than predicting needs. It’s about being available to customers 24/7, delivering the next generation of personalized cross-channel experience that consistently delights customers.

AI agents are interoperable, meaning they can be embedded across the customer journey, including in-app, websites, SMS, email, even messaging platforms like WhatsApp. This omnipresence, combined with their ability to process and use real time data, enables AI agents to deliver context-driven, tailored interactions across channels—all while holding a single continuous conversation with customers.

AI agents can also remember past interactions, enabling them to pick up with returning customers where they left off, regardless of channel. Combining this contextual awareness with predictive capabilities, AI agents draw on both historical data and real time intent signals to effectively predict customer needs in the moment. This accelerates resolution times and improves CSAT scores by eliminating the friction of information re-entry between touchpoints. This result is a truly seamless customer experience across channels, introducing a new level of convenience to delight customers and boost CSAT scores.

For example, brands like Delta Airlines already use AI agents to inform travelers of delays or gate changes via their preferred channels such as SMS and in-app notifications before a traveler even asks. By integrating AI across owned and third-party channels, companies can ensure they’re always reachable and most helpful at every touchpoint.

From reactive to proactive AI: Data-driven action at scale

While agentic AI ensures you’re always there for customers, predictive AI takes things a step further—intelligently using the data flowing in from these cross-channel interactions to create a more satisfying customer experience.

Think about a customer who makes multiple failed login attempts in a banking app. Instead of waiting for this frustrated customer to call in, a predictive AI agent can identify this pattern, then reach out proactively to offer a password reset and restore access—all before a ticket is ever created. This helps to nip frustration in the bud, before it leads to churn or negative reviews.

With AI In e-commerce, being proactive goes beyond support, it’s also a revenue opportunity. For instance, a customer who browses a product category frequently but hasn’t converted in weeks might receive a personalized recommendation via chatbot, or a free shipping offer if they’re stalled on the checkout page. By understanding and acting on user intent in real time, proactive AI can drive upsells while minimizing friction so it doesn’t turn into dissatisfaction.

Why omnichannel data is a game-changer

The true power of proactive AI lies in its ability to gather and leverage rich omnichannel data at scale. By analyzing and compiling data from customer behavior, email interactions, proactive chat messages and more into CRMs and existing tools in real time—AI agents allow companies to create a single unified customer profile based on the latest and most comprehensive cross-channel data.

This unified 360-degree customer view is the foundation for effectively predicting customer needs and behavior for support, but it has other uses—helping businesses to mitigate risk, identify and acquire new opportunities and advance a culture of data-driven decision making.

Related reading: Why enterprise-grade infrastructure is key in the AI agent era

Proactive, omnichannel AI: The business case

Proactive support is shaping up to be a wise business decision. By automatically handling up to 70% of support inquiries at first contact, it reduces inbound ticket volume to cut operating costs. Also, brands that adopt proactive AI can expect to see a boost in customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores and Net Promoter Scores (NPS), which translates into repeat purchases and longer customer lifetime value.

Customer experience is the big winner. In travel and hospitality, this can mean fewer stranded guests. In finance, it translates to fewer account lockouts and fraud cases. In ecommerce, it means fewer cart abandonments and more repeat purchases. Wherever customer trust and experience is paramount, proactive support gives brands a strategic advantage.

The future of AI support is proactive and omnipresent

In a world where 47% of Gen Z walk away from a brand after just one bad support experience, the stakes are sky high for support teams. Most businesses can no longer afford to wait for problems to appear in their inbox if they want to remain competitive.

Proactive AI for customer service is poised to help support teams nip a huge volume of their tickets in the bud, using data dynamically at scale to enhance experiences, free human agents to focus on more high-value work and ultimately do more with less.

The most effective support may soon be the kind customers never notice. It’s not magic, it’s proactive AI customer service.

With omnichannel reach and predictive power, AI agents aren’t just enhancing the support experience—they’re redefining it.

Customer service is “on the brink,” according to an Accenture report released in March. Surveying more than 7,000 customers, Accenture found that 3 in 5 customers felt frustrated or annoyed after at least one service interaction in the past 12 months.

That one bad service interaction can cost a company. Nearly 9 in 10 respondents said that just a single bad service interaction can completely deter them from a brand. 

Poorly implemented technology is one source of trouble. Only 18% of consumers said technology had significantly improved their customer service experiences.

Businesses have implemented technologies to cut costs and improve operational efficiency without regard to the customer, hurting service quality in the process, Accenture found.

CX leaders face immense pressure to demonstrate the ROI of their initiatives and to cut costs. 

“Many of these cost savings don’t go hand in hand with good customer experience,” Maxie Schmidt, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, told CX Dive in January. “In the future, it will be a fine line for a CX professional to try to show short-term cost benefits, but also show the options that in the long run are least detrimental.”

Nearly two-thirds of executives say they’re actively making trade-offs between customer satisfaction and cost efficiency, according to Accenture’s survey of 2,400 customer service-focused senior executives. The number of executives who say their service departments primarily exist to create value for customers has dropped by 60% since 2022. 

A common complaint among consumers is the difficulty in speaking to a human. Only 27% of customers surveyed said brands often or always make reaching a customer service representative easy.

Many companies have made it harder to speak to a customer service representative, directing consumers instead to self-service options like FAQs and chatbots.

But when those self-service technologies can’t solve customers’ inquiries, it causes frustration and can cost companies more.

Nearly two-thirds of customers say service quality is the most important factor in setting one company apart from the rest, making the case that investing in quality customer service can differentiate a business.

“As a customer experience person, you have to then find the cost savings that are in line with customer needs versus the cost savings that you just do,” said Schmidt. “Five years ago, when everybody went digital, all these processes got digitized without any regard for the customer so it was a cost saving maybe for a short term, but then there was so much service needed afterwards.”

But CX improvements, like first-contact resolution, can reduce expenses. The key is for CX leaders to identify those and make the business case to implement them, Jon Picoult, founder and principal of Watermark Consulting, told CX Dive in January.

“When companies take a look at how many of the customer contacts that come into our organization are repeat contacts, because we didn’t answer the person’s question completely the first time, or we gave them incorrect information, every organization I’ve ever worked with is astounded when they actually start to measure what proportion of their incoming customer inquiries are repeat inquiries,” he said.

It’s a common scenario: a customer receives a call from an unknown number. Assuming it’s spam, they decline the call and continue on with their day.

Only hours later, upon listening to the voicemail, do they realize it was a follow-up call from their doctor with eagerly awaited test results.

This scenario plays out time and time again, whether it’s a student loan servicer or HVAC repair tech, creating lost hours of employees’ time and missed connections, said James Garvert, senior vice president of TruContact Communications Solutions at TransUnion.

TransUnion decided to solve that. In February, TransUnion and AT&T launched a capability for brands to display the reason for the call, along with the name of the company and brand logo, for Android users. 

The goal of the technology is to build trust in companies’ phone calls to customers and encourage more customers to pick up the phone. 

“What we’ve seen is if you authenticate these calls and add more information to the consumer, they trust these calls more, they answer the calls more,” Garvert said.

TransUnion began offering the capability to display the company name and logo last year. A TransUnion study of more than 1,500 U.S. consumers found nearly three-quarters said they’d be likely to answer calls if the company name and logo were shown. 

Displaying the reason for the call is expected to boost that rate.

Companies that deploy the technology will be able to choose from a wide list of options, such as appointment reminder, customer service, refill reminder, delivery service and patient callback.

Customers still want the ability to speak to a human, especially for sensitive or complex issues, whether asking their bank about their mortgage or discussing health issues with their doctor. The TransUnion study found that 4 in 5 said the phone channel is important when communicating with businesses.

But robocalls and spam calls have eroded trust with phone calls. 

“You want consumers to trust again,” Garvert said. “When it comes to the engagement with the enterprise, there’s so much out there today of the bad actors leveraging the phone channel.”

Nearly three-quarters of consumers say they have not answered a call because they worry it’s a scam, according to the survey. Another 7 in 10 said they have not answered a call due to safety or fraud concerns but later learned it was a legitimate number calling them.

Robocalls and scams have become such a large issue that Congress passed the TRACED Act, which provides the Federal Communications Commission new tools to fight robocalls. That alone doesn’t stop them.

To combat bad actors and maintain trust, TransUnion’s technology requires that companies verify their information. If it seems like a simple solution, the technology to implement and authenticate callers is much more complex, Garvert said.

“You have to have authentication in place as well because what you don’t want to do is enable better scams and spam,” Garvert said. “You have to set up integrations on the front end with the enterprise to get call authentication in place, and then you have the deep integrations within the mobile networks.”

Original equipment manufacturers need to consume this information, too, he said.

By getting customers to pick up the phone more, companies can improve operational efficiency. It can save money and boost employee morale, too.

“Imagine you’re an operator calling out all those times and constantly getting hung up on and yelled at or others for being bothered,” Garvert said. “Instead, you’re connecting with the people who want to engage with you. You feel better at the end of the day with that type of engagement.”

While the reason for call capability is only available for Android and AT&T users at this time, Garvert expects the technology to expand to iPhones in the future.

 

More than half of consumers — 56% — say their interactions with businesses are more difficult today than they were a decade ago, according to a February survey of 4,000 consumers in North America and the U.K. conducted by Pegasystems, The Enterprise Transformation Company and YouGov.

Consumers’ top complaint was long wait times, followed by having to repeat the same information to different customer service agents multiple times and representatives lacking the necessary information.

More than three-quarters say organizations should invest in improving how they interact with consumers, but more than two-thirds say companies’ tech investments are more often about profit than customer experience improvements.

Despite investments in technology, customers say their interactions with companies are worsening. 

Businesses are under pressure to prove value and cut costs. But technology investments shouldn’t come at the expense of the customer, according Maxie Schmidt, VP and principal analyst at Forrester.

“As a customer experience person, you have to then find the cost savings that are in line with customer needs versus the cost savings that you just do,” Schmidt told CX Dive in January. 

Consumers regularly complain about long hold times to speak to a representative. It was the top complaint cited by respondents in a Vonage survey released in February, and a leading reason consumers hesitate to reach out to customer service, according to a November Zingly.ai and Dynata survey.

Many companies simply try to avoid taking phone calls altogether as they can be expensive. Instead, they try to direct customers to self-service options.

HP, for example, set a minimum 15-minute wait time to speak to a customer service representative in an effort to nudge U.K. and some European customers to digital service options, the Register reported in February. 

Cutting costs without thinking of the impact on the customer can add up for a business in the long run. Nearly 2 in 5 customers said they change which company they frequent after a poor customer experience, according to the survey.

Calling a company’s contact center can be a frustrating experience for many customers, especially when wait times are long. 

Automatic callbacks, however, can boost customer experience, lower telecommunications costs and improve workforce management, according to experts.

“It’s a big, loud way to tell customers you care,” said Max Ball, principal analyst at Forrester.

Customer experience scores in the U.S. have reached an all-time low, declining for the third year in a row, according to Forrester Research’s 2024 Customer Experience Index. One oft-cited source of displeasure: calling customer service.

Long wait times can negatively affect customer experience, with many people hanging up before they resolve their issues or speak with a representative — a phenomenon known as call abandonment.

About 1 in 4 customers will abandon their attempt to receive customer service if they call and have to wait too long on hold, according to a recent Gartner survey.

How automatic callbacks help CX and the bottom line

An automatic callback option allows customers to receive a return phone call from a customer service representative rather than wait in a queue. These functions are usually part of an interactive voice response or automated phone system or integrated into a cloud-based software solution. 

Providing customers with an automatic callback option can be a cost-effective way to reduce average wait times, improving the experience and lowering call abandonment rates, experts said. 

Automatic callbacks can also reduce work-related stress for contact center employees and ease staffing concerns.

“You don’t deal with as many angry customers who have been waiting on hold for an extended period,” Ball said. “It can flatten some of the peaks and valleys [in call volume]. So you can have a bit less staff, and it’s less of a scramble getting people to the calls.”

Automatic callbacks can also help companies save money by reducing the time customers spend on toll-free phone lines, which often charge by the minute.

“That was the original business case. It wasn’t customer experience,” said Steve Blood, VP of market intelligence and evangelism at Five9.

Companies that have high call volumes, industries that deal with seasonal variability, such as airlines, and businesses with long average handling times, such as tech support lines, are most likely to benefit from automatic callbacks, experts said.

Why many companies don’t offer automatic callbacks

Automatic callbacks are often a win-win for businesses and customers, but many companies don’t offer them because they would rather avoid customer service calls altogether, Ball and Blood said.

In recent years, many businesses have sought to eliminate the costs associated with customer service lines by hiding the phone number and relying on self-service options like FAQs webpages and chatbots, Blood said. 

“There’s a real backlash to that,” Blood said, pointing to the widespread decline in customer satisfaction. 

While technologies like generative AI have the potential to reduce call volumes at contact centers by improving chatbots, customers still need to speak with a human from time to time, and automatic callbacks are “a very cheap way to manage calls,” Blood said. “We don’t think voice is going away.”

Eventually, generative AI-powered chatbots will be able to handle more customer inquiries and help customer service representatives provide better support by ensuring that customers can speak with a human when needed, but “that’s probably a couple of years away,” Blood said.

While many phone and omnichannel contact systems include automatic callback functionality — or offer it for an additional charge — some contact center leaders mistakenly believe implementation would be more challenging than it is, according to Josh Streets, CEO and founder of Scoreboard Group Consulting and technology practice leader at ICMI.

Other leaders may have the “misconception” that automatic callbacks can cause more trouble than their worth by providing incorrect callback times to customers, Streets said. Some contact center leaders also worry, based on their experience as customers, that the rise of “rampant” robocalls could lead automatic callbacks to go unanswered, causing additional operational challenges for contact centers.

But automatic callbacks “are a proven satisfier,” Streets said. “That’s why it’s been adopted by so many of the great brands out there.”

What to consider before implementing callbacks

Before adopting automatic callbacks, companies should conduct an analysis to better understand why their customers call them, Blood said, noting that many businesses have “no idea.”

“You’ll probably find, on average, that about 30% of those calls could actually be avoided,” Blood said.

In those instances, improved communications, such as product announcements, websites and chatbots could help avoid many unnecessary calls.

Once a company has taken those proactive measures, they can consider offering customers an automatic callback option since voice calls are “likely to be a later stage in the journey,” Blood said.

Companies usually offer an automatic callback based on call volumes, abandonment rates or once the average waiting time reaches a certain threshold, such as 10 minutes.

“A lot of that can be automated these days,” Streets said.

Additionally, while most businesses offer simple automatic callbacks with no specified timeframe, some allow customers to select a callback time that’s convenient for them.

However, companies must ensure they have enough staff to call customers at the requested time or risk angering them, Ball and Blood said. Customer experience leaders should also consider how scheduled callbacks could affect their staff.

“Workforce managers in the contact center are the ones that get really uptight about scheduled callback times,” Streets said. “There have to be a lot of rules in place for a scheduled callback.”

Other best practices can help ensure customers pick up an automatic callback, including providing customers with an expected callback time, telling customers to expect a call from a specific state or area code, or using branded caller ID, Streets said.

Several vendors will soon offer AI-powered, omnichannel contact center solutions to help customers transition from self-service to a voice call with a human, including first-available and scheduled callbacks, whether the first contact point was a chatbot, social media or email, Streets said.

Whether and how to adopt automatic callbacks ultimately depends on the customer experience a company wants to deliver. Some companies, including online retailers like Amazon, may want to rely mainly on self-service, while others, such as luxury brands, seek to offer a higher level of service.

“Those that are in the middle are going to have to figure out which they want to be,” Streets said.