Forrester: Customers' AI Agents Increase Service Volume
Personal AI agents, like Meta's Muse, are changing how customers interact with businesses, increasing service volume and exposing unresolved demand. This shift matters as it forces companies to re-evaluate their customer service strategies.
Original reporting · forrester.com
Original: “Your Customers’ AI Agents Will Never Give Up”
Read “Your Customers’ AI Agents Will Never Give Up” at Forrester →
How this was written. Voyager Commercial wrote this article with a language model from Forrester’s reporting (model: @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast); it describes that reporting rather than adding to it. The original, linked above, is the full story.
Key points from Forrester’s report
- Personal AI agents, like Meta's Muse, are changing how customers interact with businesses, increasing service volume and exposing unresolved demand.
- Businesses need to find the problems that customers shouldn't need to chase them about in the first place, rather than just looking for new ways to contain the demand.
- Personal agents will increase service volume, and businesses need to be prepared to handle this shift by understanding the demand that personal agents will create and working to resolve the underlying issues.
According to Forrester, personal AI agents are becoming increasingly popular, with Meta's Muse reaching 10 million US downloads just 40 days after launch. These agents can browse, fill out forms, negotiate, and keep working toward outcomes on a user's behalf, making them a game-changer for customer service.
For decades, brands have been able to externalize some of the cost of service on customers in the form of effort, but personal agents are giving customers a way to hand back that 'effort' bill. This means that customers can now delegate tasks, such as chasing a $40 billing error, to their personal agents, rather than having to spend their own time pursuing a resolution.
When customers don't get what they need from a business, they may try again or give up, but personal agents can persist on their behalf, making it cheaper for customers to pursue a resolution. This could lead to an increase in service volume, as customers who previously gave up may now have their personal agents continue to pursue a resolution.
Contact centers have spent decades investing in containment and automation to manage demand, but personal agents may expose unresolved demand that customer effort used to keep out of sight. As a result, businesses need to find the problems that customers shouldn't need to chase them about in the first place, rather than just looking for new ways to contain the demand.
To prepare for this shift, businesses should pressure-test the demand they may actually have to serve, by finding where customers give up, where customers have to persist, and revisiting issues whose low volume may be misleading. They should also true up resolution measurement, to ensure that they are accurately tracking whether customers are getting what they need.
Vendors will soon offer technology to identify, route, or even block personal agent traffic, but knowing that an AI agent made the contact tells businesses very little about what created the demand. Instead, businesses should focus on understanding the underlying issues that are driving the demand, and work to resolve those issues, rather than just trying to manage the volume of requests.
Ultimately, personal agents will increase service volume, and businesses need to be prepared to handle this shift. By understanding the demand that personal agents will create, and working to resolve the underlying issues, businesses can improve their customer service and reduce the effort required for customers to get what they need.
Questions and answers
What is a personal AI agent?
A personal AI agent, like Meta's Muse, is a type of AI that can act on a user's behalf, browsing, filling out forms, negotiating, and keeping working toward outcomes.
How will personal AI agents affect customer service?
Personal AI agents will increase service volume, as customers who previously gave up may now have their personal agents continue to pursue a resolution, and will expose unresolved demand that customer effort used to keep out of sight.
What should businesses do to prepare for the shift to personal AI agents?
Businesses should pressure-test the demand they may actually have to serve, by finding where customers give up, where customers have to persist, and revisiting issues whose low volume may be misleading, and true up resolution measurement to ensure that they are accurately tracking whether customers are getting what they need.
