CX Jobs Are Heading Away From Minimum Wage In 2025: by Mark Hillary – CX Tech Analyst
This is a very unusual time for anyone involved in managing or designing the customer experience (CX) for their company. In one way if feels like the last two years of experimentation with artificial intelligence (AI) will coalesce into a general acceptance of the technology in 2025, but there are no guarantees.
One thing that is certain is that AI will be all around. All the trends we usually see listed at this time of year – more personalization, more proactive service, more efficiency, more automation – will be delivered using a foundation of improved AI. Inside the enterprise there is zero reluctance to use AI to make processes work better and faster.
Gartner has predicted that a third of new Generative AI projects will be abandoned in 2025. I think this is not unusual for a relatively new technology. Many companies have only been experimenting with it to date and are only now ready to try it in a real business environment. There will be failures, because it’s not ready out-of-the-box.
I don’t think there will be a major pushback by the general public though. If small language models can dramatically improve the quality of conversations with customer service chatbots then the only customers complaining will be those who insist on hearing a human voice.
This will also be spurred on by the growth in use of Agentic AI. As Amazon’s Alexa and all the device-based digital assistants (Siri for example) start functioning as smart digital assistants then it is highly likely that customers will ask their bots to handle that challenging customer service problem. Bots will need to engage with bots. Inside the enterprise, employees will also be able to use Agentic AI to allow each person to have ‘a team’ working on their behalf.
Outcome-based business models are attracting more and more attention and not just for GigCX or outbound sales. Analysts are suggesting that the BPOs cannot continue selling services using the FTE pricing model when the service itself is increasingly a blend of software automation and the contact centre. How do you sell headcount in a contact centre if half the volume is handled by AI?
This is a very difficult subject for the BPO community to address, but as CX is increasingly seen as a tech-powered service, usually a platform-based solution, the idea of the contact centre being at the heart of what it means to deliver CX will decline.
We will also need to redefine the role of the agents. As more and more enquiries are handled by AI, the agents really do need to become subject matter experts. They are better than Google, better than AI. They are not just there to be a kind voice – they are the troubleshooters. These are not minimum wage jobs.
The share price of all the major BPOs has tumbled dramatically in the past couple of years because of all this AI uncertainty, but one thing is clear, companies will still need advice and strategy for CX solutions even if they are not purchasing these services as they always did in the past.
Mark Hillary is a CX and tech analyst. He hosts the CX Files podcast and recently published his 26th book.
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