While companies are automating customer service with AI bots to increase efficiency and cut costs, customers are reacting by switching brands. In the AI Age, the company that offers the best Human-first customer service will succeed. Humans are still the ones doing the buying, and Humans crave connection, empathy, creativity, and relationships. Five ways to build Human-first customer service.
Fiona Passantino, AI Leadership
The AI-First Customer Journey
We’ve all been there. We have a small issue with a product or service we’ve recently acquired and need a moment of the seller’s time to get it to work as promised. We dread the call to customer service, knowing it will lead to long waits, aggravation, frustration and inevitably, losing our temper with the poor Human agent we may be lucky enough to interact with at the end of a long AI-driven funnel.
We feel like mice running through a maze to reach the cheese. What was that combination again? Press “2” or was it “3”…? One of those ended the call, the other one sent us to a useless website. What magic combination of actions will we need to take before we can speak to a Human?
As AI reshapes industries, the temptation to automate every part of the customer journey and fire the expensive Human agents is too great for the C-Suite to resist. Initial cost savings are enormous, and AI is much easier to manage than flesh-and-blood Humans who have personal issues, need vacations, cookies and “purpose” to do their work.
But the numbers don’t lie. We customers simply hate interacting with AI chatbots. About 70% of consumers would consider switching brands after just one negative interaction with an AI chatbot.[1] Nearly half of us struggle to get accurate answers from chatbots, and 46% dislike being trapped in endless Q&A loops.[2]
And it isn’t just customer support. Later that week I bought an item in a fully automated funnel. I purchased it online without interacting with a single person. I received endless auto-emails telling me every detail about my order. Eventually, I was asked to pick it up at a roadside locker with a code sent to my phone. When the item I had purchased didn’t work, I could only text with chatbots that sent me in endless loops leading nowhere. And when I inevitably returned the product, I did so online, bringing it back to the same locker on a lonely, dusty streetcorner.
At no point in my short and frustrating Customer Journey did I engage with a Human. It felt like I wasn’t worth anyone’s time. It felt empty, cheap and exhausting. I thought of the waste of it all – the energy to run AI inference, ship a product from another country – only to have my money returned. How can this business model survive in the long-term?
70% of us choose a different brand after one bad AI customer service experience.[3]
CEOs believe the ultimate goal is to unlock ever more efficiency, make customers solve their own problems themselves, and get what they need on their own, and fast. Corporations have long seen customer service as a cost center, and it’s an area they’re constantly looking to reduce.
But this automation trend is bringing customer service to a new low. If poor service is driving customers away, there will soon be no one left to buy.
Human-first customer service
In the AI Age, the companies that get Human-first customer service right will be the ones that win. The CEO’s that fight the urge to automate everything and double-down on the Human experience will create sustainable, lasting growth based on actual demand.
Consumers are 2.5 times more satisfied with a Human agent than with an AI bot.[4]
AI is not a plug-and-play solution, at least not yet. Even today’s Agentic AI bots with the ability to perform tasks and make transactions without Human oversight are largely ineffective. They are unable to do what a good Human service agent can do in a heartbeat.
Five ways to build Human-centered service
We know that as little as a one-point increase in customer satisfaction can increase shareholder value by 1%.[5] Companies that will thrive in the Age of AI will invest heavily in Human-AI training, AI‑integration platforms, strategy and Human‑first customer journeys.
1. Rebalance, not reduce
Much of the first generation of companies actively reducing their service staff and replacing them with AI has now been reversed. In 2024, Klarna replaced 700 service roles with AI agents only to later rehire Humans when their customers revolted.[6]
2. Train your Humans
Put your Humans straight into the first line of service. Empowered by AI, receiving accurate, relevant information, talking points to fix problems instantly, the Human can engage with the other Human, be creative, emotional, and focus on the relationship. The Human can crack a joke or two while the empowered AI bot is in the background handling the repetitive tasks that ultimately solve the problem.
The EU AI Act is mandating companies to provide AI literacy training to their employees.[7] AI training should be streamlined and intense from top to toe. All employees need to understand how to operate AI safely and effectively to keep data and privacy safe for the good of the company and the customers.
And it’s not just AI training. The best customer service workers have excellent interpersonal and communication skills. High emotional intelligence. All of this is not a born trait, but skills that can be taught and learned in the right environment.
3. AI assist not replace
Make sure that 100% of your incoming service queries are routed to a Human agent. Allow them to deploy a series of internal agents to analyze customer history, preferences and previous interactions. AI can support with logging, hot transfers and back-end fixes. If you have a complex product offering and need AI for service routing, use AI to quickly identify the nature of the inquiries then route them to the best Human agent as soon as possible, with full context; without the goal of having AI solve the issue.
4. AI to proactively identify and prevent issues
Well-trained sentiment analysis can track customer behavior patterns and identify problems long before they become support tickets. This informs the Human agents to reach out with solutions, which quickly leads to moments of delight.
5. Create live, in-person events
Live, person-to-person experiences make for a memorable interaction. This can be positioned at any part of the customer experience, from a live marketing event, to live sales interactions on-location, connecting customers with one another to use your product together or creating an impression with a brick-and-mortar experience. Growth might be slower, but you’re building a Human community of users rather than shoppers.
The Future
Someday our customers will all be replaced by AI agents buying on behalf. When that time comes, customer communication will be AI to AI, in Gibberlink or Neuralese, and the Humans will all be on a beach somewhere checking sales trends or receiving our drone-delivered goods.
But for now, we are still Humans selling to other Humans. The future belongs to companies that understand a fundamental truth that customers don’t want to interact with algorithms. We do not prize efficiency over the experience. We want our problems to be solved quickly and effectively, to be sure; but we want more than that. We crave connection, relationships and understanding with other Humans, even if it’s part of a sales process. In the end, this is what makes our lives richer, more fulfilling and more inspiring.
Need help with AI Integration?
Reach out to me for advice – I have a few nice tricks up my sleeve to help guide you on your way, as well as a few “insiders’ links” I can share to get you that free trial version you need to get started.
No eyeballs to read or watch? Just listen.
Working Humans is a bi-monthly podcast focusing on the AI and Human connection at work. Available on Apple and Spotify.
About Fiona Passantino
Fiona helps empower working Humans with AI integration, leadership and communication. Maximizing connection, engagement and creativity for more joy and inspiration into the workplace. A passionate keynote speaker, trainer, facilitator and coach, she is a prolific content producer, host of the podcast “Working Humans” and award-winning author of the “Comic Books for Executives” series. Her latest book is “The AI-Powered Professional”.
[1] Ngo (2024) “One Bad AI Experience Could Drive Customers Away, Acquire BPO Study Warns” Business Wire https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240905660730/en/One-Bad-AI-Experience-Could-Drive-Customers-Away-Acquire-BPO-Study-Warns
[2] Brackenbury, Dixon (2024) “Gartner Survey Finds 64% of Customers Would Prefer That Companies Didn’t Use AI For Customer Service” Garnter https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-07-09-gartner-survey-finds-64-percent-of-customers-would-prefer-that-companies-didnt-use-ai-for-customer-service
[3] Stewart (2024) “Customer service hits a new low” Business Insider https://archive.ph/B8qI5
[4] Ngo (2024) “One Bad AI Experience Could Drive Customers Away, Acquire BPO Study Warns” Business Wire https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240905660730/en/One-Bad-AI-Experience-Could-Drive-Customers-Away-Acquire-BPO-Study-Warns
[5] Matzler, Hinterhuber (2004) “The relationship between customer satisfaction and shareholder value” Research Gate https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228109398_The_relationship_between_customer_satisfaction_and_shareholder_value
[6] Economic Times (2025) “Company replaces 700 employees with AI, two years later, it’s rehiring humans as AI falls short” The Economic Times English Edition https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/company-replaces-700-employees-with-ai-two-years-later-its-rehiring-humans-as-ai-falls-short/articleshow/121263692.cms
[7] Future of Life Institute (2025) “EU AI Act” 2025 Chapter I: General Provisions Article 4: AI literacy” Future of Life Institute https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/article/4/