For many marketers, handing over customer interactions to an automated genAI-based process requires a leap of faith. The good news is that as more AI agents come to market, the use of this technology to improve engagement and generate revenue will become clearer.
Adoption is already underway. During the 2024 holidaystraffic to retail sites from genAI-powered chatbots increased 13x over the previous year. Chatbot usage peaked on Cyber Monday, up 1,950% year-over-year, according to Adobe.
2025 will be the year of the AI agent
Marketers seek to integrate AI agents in the customer experience now have several options. Sales force introduced Agentforce in September 2024, And more recently, SAP announced sales assistant agents for later in 2025.
Dig Deeper: Salesforce Agentforce: What You Need to Know
“While 2023 and 2024 [was for] Realizing the first benefits of AI in the customer experience, 2025 will be the year we really start to see the profound impact it will have,” said Jay Patel, EVP and GM, Webex Customer Experience Solutions, Cisco. “This shift will see AI become an integral part of customer interactions, with consumers and businesses adopting its capabilities.
Patel added: “By 2025, AI will be woven into the fabric of daily customer service operations, including AI agents with natural voice capabilities and the ability to act on customer requests. This will take efficiency, personalization and satisfaction to unprecedented levels. This widespread acceptance will not only improve the customer experience, but also set new standards for engagement, making AI an indispensable tool in the customer service arsenal.
Better customization of AI agents
Agent advancements in 2025 will help brands create personalized AI agents for customers. These AI models, which will include small language models running on individual devices, will power highly personalized virtual assistants, according to Patel.
“These assistants will interact seamlessly with brands and service providers, providing a level of convenience and personalization previously unattainable,” Patel said. “The evolution towards personalized AI will not only allow users to benefit from more efficient and tailored communication, but also to anticipate their needs, making interactions more intuitive and proactive. This development will significantly improve the overall customer experience, creating a more dynamic and responsive digital environment.
AI agents reflecting core brand value
“On the other hand, brands will increasingly adopt AI agents that embody their unique values, personality and purpose,” Patel said. “These AI-driven representatives will interact with customers in a way that is deeply aligned with the brand philosophy, ensuring interactions are authentic, meaningful and memorable. By leveraging AI to reflect their core values, brands will create more consistent and emotionally resonant customer experiences. Additionally, these AI agents will enable brands to maintain a consistent voice and presence across all touchpoints, fostering greater customer loyalty and trust.
Dig Deeper: How genAI can fill the brand trust gap
Greater investments in AI behind agents
Companies have committed to investing in AI in 2025. Nearly all organizations surveyed by Invoca said they will increase their investments in the coming year.
“In 2025, investments in AI will decisively move from experimentation to execution,” said Megh Gautam, chief product officer at Crunchbase. “While 2022-2024 saw companies make splashy AI announcements and conduct broad and, in some cases, performative experiments, 2025 will mark the year when AI must prove its ROI. Companies will move away from generic AI applications in favor of targeted solutions that solve specific, high-value business problems.
Gautam added: “We will see this manifesto in two key areas. The first is the rise of AI agents – agentic AI – that handle routine but complex operational tasks. Salesforce’s success this year is based on this trend. Second, the widespread adoption of AI tools that drive measurable improvements in core business metrics, particularly around sales optimization and customer support automation.
“With the help of AI agents, brands can now have a local extension of their store manager trained and ready to help digital customers 24/7,” said Monica Ho, Director marketing from AI-based marketing technology company SOCi. “AI agents have the ability to revive dormant online business profiles, increasing foot traffic and building brand loyalty through immersive consumer experiences that resonate. By mitigating human error, AI agents function as trusted strategic assets, representing brands with a local touch that manual efforts struggle to achieve. For brands, deploying AI agents will be essential to creating impactful, scalable and trustworthy local experiences that will set them apart from their competitors in 2025.”
Use AI agents to gain customer insights
AI agents engage customers in conversations. These longer queries and responses provide a new stream of data that marketers can leverage to improve the experience and drive revenue.
“By leveraging agentic AI, marketers can more easily gain a holistic view of the customer journey from data hosted across systems and departments,” said Pedro Andrade, vice president of artificial intelligence. at Talkdesk, a cloud contact center software company. “In 2025, we will see marketers leveraging this technology to capitalize on a wealth of customer insights.”
Data from these conversations can be analyzed elsewhere in the stack, and the resulting insights can be used for more holistic marketing strategies.
“For example, in the contact center, AI agents can connect to existing CRMs and analyze customer interactions in real time, identify patterns and proactively suggest personalized solutions or offers,” Andrade said. “By leveraging conversational AI, these agents can anticipate customer needs by autonomously making decisions about processes to meet those needs. »
Andrade added: “Insights marketers can glean include key customer churn drivers and competitors mentioned, new features or enhancements customers are requesting during interactions, and emerging topics. These agentic AI systems can automate research on the vast amount of data to generate insights and ensure marketers that their strategy resonates with customers, develop more effective and relevant campaigns highlighting areas of interest. best interests of customers and proactively resolve issues in their communications.
Streamlining marketing strategy and functions
Using data and insights from AI agent conversations, marketers will have a new, streamlined process for improving campaigns. How does this work?
“Agentic AI can monitor phone calls or chats with customers to continuously understand their feelings and attitudes and check the correlation of these emotions with changes in purchasing habits,” explained Andrade. “Agentic AI can surface sentiment analysis insights to make it easier for marketers to put themselves in customers’ shoes and incorporate feedback into marketing strategies, campaigns and messages. »
Keep humans informed
“Virtual assistants and sentiment analysis will change the function of contact center workers, instead of replacing them,” said Titus Jumper, CEO and founder of digital marketing company Sales-Hub. “While virtual assistants handle the majority of routine requests, human agents will evolve into ‘human in the loop’ roles, supervising and supporting AI in complex or emotionally charged interactions. Rather than handling basic requests, these agents will intervene when human empathy, nuanced judgment, or specialized knowledge is required, enabling a seamless escalation process.
With AI agents joining marketing and service teams, companies will need to implement reskilling programs in the new year, according to Jumper.
Dig Deeper: AI adoption gap seen between executives and entry-level marketers
