AI Agent Insights

A new study predicts the AI Agent market will grow from $5.1B in 2024 to $47.1B by 2030 - with a compound annual growth rate of 44.8%. It’s a tidal wave of growth and companies are rushing to get in on the action.

These organizations are hiring their own teams to develop, market, and sell their tools. Jason Lemkin posted on X about Salesforce's plan to hire 1,000 people to sell AI products. Lemkin points out the irony: AI could eventually replace those sales roles.

AI already plays an increasingly significant role in business operations – streamlining tasks, enhancing customer interactions, and improving efficiency. As companies ramp up hiring for AI roles, debate grows over AI's impact on the workforce.

After all, if these AI tools are (or become) sophisticated enough to automate complex roles, including those in customer service and sales, the very demand for human labor may diminish.

AI Agents Don’t Care

Contrary to Lemkin’s point, though, humans have something AI intrinsically does not - drive. An AI Agent does not care. It doesn’t have needs, aspirations, or empathy that cause a human to show up to work and do a stellar job. An AI tool can help a human be more efficient and productive, but it’s not going to take the initiative to sell on its own.

Human customers know that, and especially for larger purchases, we consumers want the reassurance of a consultant. That’s why a human-in-the-loop model for customer experience will prevail.

Your Day-to-Day Will Be Different with AI

Your experience as a CX professional is valuable. Still, your day-to-day job will likely look very different in the coming years as AI becomes capable of handling more customer conversations.

Start thinking about how you can reinvest that time that AI frees up to uplevel your brand’s CX to excel by bringing that human element:

• Improve and expand your brand’s self-service knowledge base resources

• Implement proactive customer support initiatives

• Create more personalized customer experiences

• Find innovative solutions for common customer problems
  

• Specialize agent teams to deliver higher quality service

A Thought Experiment

Here’s one example of how brands are bringing humans in in a novel way: a video went viral on X this week with over 9 million views as a retailer replaced its storefront mannequins with people walking on treadmills, supposedly to better demonstrate how the garments fit and move on a real person. This retail stunt is a helpful thought experiment - what can humans uniquely do to provide a better shopping experience for customers?

As we go into 2025, find your brand’s version of the treadmill models.

Research Insights

Is consumer research still valid and useful if the data doesn’t come from human consumers? Qualtrics’ 2025 Market Research Trends Report seems to say so.

Consumer research based on synthetic data seems like an oxymoron, but consumers are notably fickle with consumer behavior, throwing brands through a loop. Researchers note that current online data samples face quality issues anyway. With AI becoming a “permanent member” of research teams, brands can quickly test new ideas, predict customer reactions, and refine experiences based on synthetic personas.

Key insights:

• synthetic responses are expected to make up more than half of data collection within three years

• synthetic data can replicate consumer behavior patterns without relying on personal data, which the report positions privacy by design as a competitive advantage.
  

• this could allow brands to innovate while overcoming challenges like budget constraints, privacy concerns, and survey fatigue.
  

The true test about the usefulness of synthetic data will be if the decisions made based on it will perform comparably well to decisions made based on human consumer data.

Golden Nuggets

T-Mobile is making a nine-figure bet on AI customer service

Prepping your social customer care team for the holiday rush with Sprout

Consumers embracing AI-powered customer support

How retailers are making it harder to shop, just in time for the holidays

Product Updates

Kustomer just made delivering expert customer support even smarter with the launch of Skills-Based Routing (SBR). With SBR, we’re helping businesses connect each customer inquiry with agents who have the exact expertise needed, whether it’s language skills, certifications, or more. SBR can reduce handle times, improve SLA success, and elevate the customer's experience.

Learn more about it here.

Catch the Replay

Want to get a deep dive into how AI Agents work? The Kustomer team hosted a webinar showing how Kustomer’s AI Agents deliver across chat, voice, and email and work with your CX team, going beyond simple handoffs.

Check out our webinar on-demand here.