Agentic AI is reshaping the future of customer relationship management (CRM). Able to complete tasks and solve problems with minimal human oversight, AI agents are helping companies uplevel their customer service with proactive, personalized interactions.
That’s good news for chief commercial officers (CCOs), who need to figure out how to meet higher-than-ever customer expectations to keep their brands relevant. All too often, their legacy CRM systems aren’t up to the task. They need modern CRM powered by AI agents, built on an intelligent platform, and designed to break down silos across the enterprise.
That’s why, for CCOs, the AI-powered transformation is arriving just in time. Two-thirds of respondents to a survey by Accenture said they felt frustrated or annoyed after a recent customer service interaction—while almost 90% agreed that one bad interaction would make them avoid a brand in the future. Unsurprisingly, 64% said that service quality is the single most important factor separating one company from another.
Today, customer service extends beyond the traditional call center with all its frustrations, says Elisha Harrington, an innovation officer at ServiceNow in Asia Pacific and Japan. “Customers are expecting 24/7 support. They want engagement across every channel and interaction and touch point, and their journeys aren't linear,” she says.
Such capabilities will be the foundation for businesses to build ever-greater trust and loyalty with customers. AI agents won’t wait for problems to arise; they will proactively solve them before customers even notice. They’ll craft hyper-personalized interactions and create intuitive experiences that can seamlessly cross from phone to text, email, social, and more.
According to data from Qualtrics, 72% of executives believe that AI will transform their company’s relationship with customers in the next three years, while 69% expect it to significantly or completely change the way their company does business.
According to ServiceNow’s second annual Enterprise AI Maturity Index, a research survey of almost 4,500 global executives in partnership with Oxford Economics, CCOs are already seeing transformative change as a result of AI. Sixty-three percent of them reported that AI had increased gross margin by an average of 11%. Similarly, more than half reported their company was already realizing a “significant” return on AI investment.
Being able to cite such financial impact is vital to customer-facing executives working to secure AI investment from their bosses, rather than just arguing that it improves customer service, according to Michael Ramsey, ServiceNow group vice president of product management, customer and industry workflows.
“People see that [AI] drives better customer service, but they're not just going to do it because of a better customer experience. They're asking, ‘What's my spend?’" he says. "It has to make sense financially, not just from a customer service standpoint."
To calculate concrete ROI, CCOs are targeting specific AI outcomes, focusing on revenue growth and cost reduction, according to the Enterprise AI Maturity Index. Although use cases for AI vary by company and industry, CCOs cited the most important as being in data management, AI-generated customer support summaries, and AI-enhanced chatbots.
As AI revolutionizes the world of business and the expectations of customers, CCOs will need to be more closely aligned with the rest of their organizations when it comes to AI strategy. Right now, that’s not the case.
While one-third of CCOs surveyed strongly believe their company is operating with a clear, shared AI strategy, only 13% strongly believe that their function is aligned with the rest of the organization. Using AI to deliver more value to customers will require CCOs to work more closely with all stakeholders, no matter where they are on the org chart.
Top CCOs are already realizing value from AI investments. Here’s what they’re doing differently, based on our research:
“There was a customer backlash to the AI, where customers felt as if they were being recommended products that didn’t fit their needs.” The takeaway? Customer-facing execs should be heavily involved in governance because they are the closest to customers, Harrington says.
Of the CCOs already using agentic AI, most are piloting implementations related to assessing business risks. CCOs are also using agentic AI to perform core business actions that previously were done by humans, according to the survey.
CCOs seem to understand this: Almost half of them report that their org encourages a culture of AI experimentation to determine the best use cases and define successful utilization. This is especially important, as the tech talent gap, which companies have struggled with for many years, will only expand as we move further into the AI era.
Forward-thinking CCOs are pioneering an era where anticipatory service replaces reactive support and AI helps create deeply personalized experiences. From customer support to CRM, AI is already redrawing the boundaries of what's possible in customer relationships.
The question is no longer if this revolution will happen, but which CCOs will lead it—and how quickly they can translate AI's promise into a competitive advantage.
Find out how ServiceNow can help you put AI to work for CRM.
