Cisco Report: AI to Handle 68% of Tech Vendor Customer Support by 2028

68% of tech vendor customer support to be handled by AI by 2028, says Cisco report

The growing role of automation among tech vendors reflects a broader push in Silicon Valley to deploy new and more advanced AI agents. Agentic AI is poised to take on a much more central role in the IT industry, according to a new report from Cisco. The report, titled "The Race to an Agentic Future: How Agentic AI Will Transform Customer Experience," surveyed close to 8,000 business leaders across 30 countries, all of whom routinely work closely with customer service professionals from B2B technology services. In broad strokes, it paints a picture of a business landscape eager to embrace the rising wave of AI agents, particularly when it comes to customer service. Also: Can you build a billion-dollar business with only AI agents (yet)? This author thinks so As soon as next year, according to the report, over half (68%) of all customer service and support interactions with tech vendors could become automated, thanks to agentic AI. A striking 93% of respondents, furthermore, believe that this new technological trend will make these interactions more personalized and efficient for their customers. Despite the numbers, customer service reps don't need to worry about broad-scale job displacement just yet: 89% of respondents said that it's still critical for humans to be in the loop during customer service interactions, and 96% stated that human-to-human relationships are "very important" in this context. The overnight virality of ChatGPT in late 2022 sparked massive interest and spending in generative AI across virtually every industry. More recently, many business leaders have become fixated on AI agents - a subclass of models that blend the conversational ability of chatbots with a capacity to remember information and interact with digital tools, such as a web browser or a code database. Big tech developers have been pushing their own AI agents in recent months, hoping these more pragmatic tools will set them apart from their competitors in an increasingly crowded AI space. At its annual developer conference last week, for example, Google announced the worldwide release (in public beta) of Jules, an agent designed to help with coding. Agents were also a major focus for Microsoft at its own developer conference, which was also held last week. Also: Most AI chatbots devour your user data - these are the worst offenders The growing emphasis on agents within Silicon Valley's leading tech companies is reverberating into a more general rush to deploy this technology. According to a recent survey of more than 500 tech leaders conducted by accounting firm Ernst & Young (EY), close to half of the respondents have begun using AI agents to assist with internal operations. Against this backdrop of broad-scale adoption of agents, Cisco's new report emphasizes the need for tech vendors to move quickly. "Respondents are clear that they believe vendors who are left behind or fail to deploy agentic AI in an effective, secure, and ethical manner, will suffer a deterioration in customer relationships, reputational damage, and higher levels of customer churn," the authors noted. Also: The best free AI courses and certificates in 2025 - and I've tried many Conversely, 81% of respondents said that vendors who successfully incorporate agentic AI into their customer service operations will gain an edge over their competitors. The report also found that despite all of the enthusiasm for AI-enhanced customer service interactions, there are still widespread concerns around data security. Almost every respondent (99%) said that as tech vendors embrace and deploy agents, they should also be building governance strategies and conveying these to their customers. Get the morning's top stories in your inbox each day with our Tech Today newsletter.

Agentic AI Poised to Handle 68% of Customer Service and Support Interactions by 2028

New Cisco Research Reveals Overwhelming Demand for Agentic AI to Transform the Way Technology Vendors Deliver Customer Experience With agentic AI reaching a new level of maturity, we're closer than ever to solving some of the most persistent customer pain points in enterprise environments. For instance, a significant share of network issues stem from misconfiguration, something agentic systems are poised to eliminate. That shift will lead to smarter networks, stronger security, and more productive teams. As an industry, we've been talking about these concepts for decades, and while we've made incremental progress, AI - and especially agentic AI - can make that vision a reality. Imagine a world where customers never have to recap their situation to a new support agent, where issues are resolved before they are ever experienced by an end-user, and where every interaction feels tailored to individual needs and business outcomes. That's not just a better experience; it's a transformational one. This is the agentic future of Customer Experience (CX). The benefits are clear and compelling, but how ready are organizations to adopt agentic AI? While customers are eager to reap the benefits of AI, how comfortable do they really feel interacting with AI agents instead of humans, and what are the effects on the customer relationship if something doesn't work exactly as planned? These are the types of questions we had in mind when we launched our most recent research study, surveying nearly 8,000 business and technical decision-makers worldwide on the future of agentic AI. The findings confirmed some preconceived notions and totally challenged others. We know that AI is progressing incredibly fast and that it's changing nearly everything about how we work, live, build, operate, and communicate. Those statements are practically clichés at this point but are still true. What we didn't entirely anticipate is the ripple effect that AI is having across customer expectations, and the urgent need for technology vendors, many of whom are still only exploring the potential for agentic AI in customer experience, to accelerate their strategies. Here are three key takeaways from the report. At Cisco, we are drawing on four decades of data, our deep industry knowledge, and the trust of our customers to re-imagine Cisco Customer Experience as agentic AI-led. This research has validated our vision for the agentic future of customer experience but has also made one thing clear: we have to move faster.

Agentic AI Poised to Handle 68% of Customer Service and Support Interactions by 2028 By Investing.com

New Cisco Research Reveals Overwhelming Demand for Agentic AI to Transform the Way Technology Vendors Deliver Customer Experience News Summary: SAN JOSE, Calif., May 27, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced the findings of its latest global research report, "The Race to an Agentic Future: How Agentic AI Will Transform Customer Experience," highlighting the potential of agentic AI to revolutionize the way technology vendors deliver services and support to customers. In the survey of 7,950 global business and technical decision-makers across 30 countries, respondents predict that agentic AI will play an increasingly prominent role in their interactions with technology vendors over the coming years and are positive about the benefits it will bring. 88% report they feel confident that the agentic AI-led customer experience provided by technology partners will help their organization achieve its goals " for example, making their IT environments and operations more efficient, resilient and secure, accelerating their most important strategic IT projects, and maximizing value from their IT investments. Respondents also expect the pivot to agentic AI-led customer experience (including technical support, customer success and professional services) to advance at a far greater velocity than the industry anticipated. They predict that 68% of their customer experience interactions with technology partners will be handled using agentic AI within the next three years. And, surprisingly, they expect more than half (56%) of interactions to be through agentic AI within the next 12 months, representing a significant increase and heaping pressure onto those vendors who are still only in the early stages of thinking about agentic. Liz Centoni, EVP & Chief Customer Experience Officer, Cisco, commented: "With agentic AI reaching a new level of maturity, we're closer than ever to solving some of the most persistent customer pain points in enterprise environments. For instance, a significant share of network issues stem from misconfiguration, something agentic systems are poised to eliminate. That shift will lead to smarter networks, stronger security, and more productive teams. As an industry, we've been talking about these concepts for decades, and while we've made incremental progress, AI - and especially agentic AI - is making that vision a reality. "We are drawing on four decades of data, our deep industry knowledge, and the trust of our customers to re-imagine Cisco Customer Experience as an agentic-led function. Our vision is to make every customer interaction with Cisco personalized, proactive, and predictive, and to make every customer feel like they are our only customer. And while we're making meaningful progress, this new research makes one thing clear: we have to move faster." In recent years, in response to growing IT complexity, technology businesses have introduced automation into their workflows and layered in AI to streamline support and services. This approach has still required human intervention to stitch processes together " to monitor, decide, act and adapt. Agentic AI negates the need for this level of human intervention. Agentic AI is a category of artificial intelligence that leverages AI Agents and a contextualized interconnection among them. Agentic AI requires agency, meaning the AI Agents are capable of having memory, are task aware and possess the ability to independently take actions " or choose what actions to take or recommend " to achieve a particular outcome through the ability to learn from their environment and reason, with minimal human oversight. This frees up customer experience professionals to focus on complex problem-solving, humans-on-the-loop feedback process for specific use-cases (where humans, for example, provide feedback to an AI system to improve its performance and focus on accurate and safe results), and building deeper, trusted relationships with customers. The research highlights the urgent need for technology vendors, many of whom are still only exploring the potential for agentic AI deployment within customer experience, to accelerate their strategies. Respondents are clear that they believe vendors who are left behind or fail to deploy agentic AI in an effective, secure and ethical manner, will suffer a deterioration in customer relationships, reputational damage and higher levels of customer churn. Meanwhile, the research highlights that respondents feel that vendors who embrace this transformation head-on, seamlessly and ethically deploying agentic AI across the technology lifecycle, will benefit from data-driven insights, improved scalability within their support and services, and loyalty at scale. Customer experience will become a strategic differentiator, with 81% of respondents predicting that vendors that successfully deliver agentic AI-led customer experience will gain a competitive edge. Key Findings You can read the full report here: The Race to an Agentic Future: How Agentic AI Will Transform Customer Experience. Additional Resources Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that is revolutionizing the way organizations connect and protect in the AI era. For more than 40 years, Cisco has securely connected the world. With its industry leading AI-powered solutions and services, Cisco enables its customers, partners and communities to unlock innovation, enhance productivity and strengthen digital resilience. With purpose at its core, Cisco remains committed to creating a more connected and inclusive future for all. Discover more on The Newsroom and follow us on X at @Cisco.