In July, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned that AI advancements are leading to the ‘end of human customer service’.
Meanwhile, just three days ago, Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, noted that his company had cut its customer service team from 9,000 to 5,000 employees after implementing Agentforce.
Yet, ServiceNow tells a different story. Its headcount has remained flat.
Indeed, despite deflecting roughly 75 percent of customer cases, its contact center team is no smaller than two years ago.
Amit Zavery, President, CPO, & COO of ServiceNow, shared the news in a discussion on Bloomberg Live.
One of the big reasons here, per Zamery, is that the company’s case volume has increased by 40 percent over the past two years, as the business has grown.
However, ServiceNow has also empowered its agents with their own self-service AI to not just give answers back, but engage in deeper discussions and solve their issues.
As such, while its headcount hasn’t changed, its customer satisfaction (CSAT) rates have, moving in a positive direction. Zavery also noted:
Retention rates on the customer service team are much better than they were a couple of years ago. This is because it’s now much easier for them to manage and maintain the level of quality our customers expect.
Zavery also noted that service teams should measure the impact of AI beyond their traditional contact center metric set.
For instance, ServiceNow monitors the success of its customer service AI by looking at how quickly customers get to “go live”.
“If a customer bought software, it might have historically taken three to four months to implement,” said Zavery, “Now, we can get them live in just one and a half to two months. That’s a much stronger return on investment for our customers.”
Additionally, that’s a crucial goal for ServiceNow. After all, while its technology has always been revered, it has the perception of being more complex than alternatives, especially in areas like CRM.
Yet, if it can overcome these perceptions, it can continue to gain market share. As such, sustained investment in customer service remains crucial for the brand.
That includes investment not only in customer service orchestration and automation, but in human agents, ensuring they’re equipped to go deeper with customers and face less stress from pressure-based metrics.
Indeed, by removing repetitive queries from the queue, agents have more time focusing on complex cases, high-value interactions, and customers who just need a bit of human reassurance.
ServiceNow’s Customer Service AI Strategy
ServiceNow excels in everything “workflow”, shaking up the CRM market by pulling in more data from the middle and back office while connecting processes.
To bolster that strategy, it’s partnering more closely with CCaaS providers to orchestrate, connect, and automate end-to-end fulfillment workflows.
As a result, it hopes its customers can deflect 75 percent of their contact volumes, too.
A recent collaboration with NiCE and $750MN investment in Genesys underscore the ambitions, while the brand is also creating tighter partnerships with 3CLogic, AWS, and Zoom.
Yet, not all of ServiceNow’s customers will aim to keep their contact center headcount flat. Others will target workforce reductions.
Prominent figures like AI Sam Altman, predicting the end of customer service, will only bolster pressure from the broader business on many service leaders to do so.
Indeed, he imagines AI agents flawlessly handling calls, cutting out phone trees, transfers, and human error.
The reality is messier. Research firm Cavell predicts the number of human contact center agents will rise from 15.3 million in 2025 to 16.8 million in 2029.
Gartner, on the other hand, suggests 50 percent of businesses will abandon plans to cut their customer service headcount by 2027.
And the consumers? They still overwhelmingly prefer human support, with 81 percent preferring to wait for a live agent rather than interact immediately with AI.
However, AI can be a big help, as ServiceNow’s internal story emphasizes. The key is in the implementation, and ServiceNow’s continued investment in its own customer service highlights its understanding of just how crucial a role human (and AI) agents continue to play.