Introduction
AI will soon be the front line of customer experience
AI Agents are reshaping how businesses deliver service, earn loyalty, and create measurable value.
Very soon, we believe AI will have the potential to handle all customer service. And eventually, every customer interaction. Humans will be involved, but they will move to primarily work on analyzing and optimizing the AI Agent system.
Customer experience is the goal. Customer service is the first frontier. It's where this transformation is happening fastest, and where the impact of AI is already clear.
Right now, every company sits somewhere on the AI maturity curve when it comes to customer service. Some are just getting started. Others are racing toward fully autonomous, AI-led operations.
Here are the stages we see teams move through. Find where your company is, and understand where you need to go next.
Customer service is manual: human-dependent, basic or no automation, no AI. Costs scale linearly with headcount. Teams are trapped in volume-driven cycles that prevent strategic growth.
AI is introduced and handles informational queries with speed and consistency. Early wins emerge, but most workflows remain unchanged and broader impact is limited.
AI is embedded in core workflows. Routing is contextual, handovers are seamless, and common customer journeys operate without human bottlenecks. Support capacity begins to scale independently of headcount.
Every conversation starts with AI. Complex queries, edge cases, and task-based requests are resolved without human intervention. Human roles evolve from handling volume to optimizing systems.
Customer service is rearchitected around AI. Instant, personalized, proactive support becomes the norm. Support drives measurable business impact, and sets the model for how other teams can operationalize AI across the company.
Wherever you're starting from, there are two key milestones for companies on the AI journey:
1. Launch it
Go from zero to a successful deployment. This will unlock immediate efficiency and value from an AI Agent.
Think: At least 50% of your support volume immediately automated away, straight out of the box. Happy customers. Hours/days of team capacity released, getting you out from underwater and buying you and your team time to think and act strategically, versus reactively.
2. Scale it
Unlock long-term, large-scale business transformation by rewiring your organization across three core pillars:
- Customer experienceRewire customer journeys; design for trust, transparency, and seamless human-AI collaboration. Every interaction starts AI-first, fragmented handoffs are eliminated. Reactive support turns to proactive service.
- Organizational and system designMove from experimentation to formal systems, processes, roles, and governance. Teams evolve from handling support volume to managing AI systems. New roles like conversation designer and AI operations lead emerge. Content becomes infrastructure.
- EconomicsExplore new metrics, ROI models, and reinvestment strategies as you elevate your support function from a cost center to a strategic growth lever.
Think: 100% AI Agent involvement and resolution rates, new team structures and skills, completely transformed customer experience, and ties to business outcomes.
This blueprint will show you how to do both.
It's designed for people leading AI transformation initiatives and the executive sponsors they partner with. It will provide the strategic framing, economic proof points, and deployment guidance needed to implement an AI Agent for customer service confidently and scale with impact.
Full transparency: we reference Fin Intercom's AI Agent, throughout this Blueprint as the benchmark for what best-in-class AI Agents can do.