You’re frustrated. Something’s not working with a product you just bought, but it should be. You’ve done everything you can on your own. The chatbot has been less than helpful. You finally find the helpline phone number, take a deep breath, and make the call.
Who answers? A customer service rep who may well be as frustrated with their support tools as you are with the product that hasn’t met expectations. We know this because the new ServiceNow research report, The CX Shift: A study of customer expectations in the AI era, revealed the many ways customer service reps are struggling to do their jobs.
Our data shows that reps spend only 45% of their time addressing customer issues and follow-ups. Instead of connecting with customers, 55% of their time is spent on other tasks. Our survey found that:
- 59% spend significant time summarizing call notes
- 48% spend significant time handling administrative tasks
- 44% spend significant time reporting and analyzing data
- 37% spend significant time chasing other teams for information
So, what does a day in the life of a service representative look like? We used our research findings to get a better look into the realities of customer support.
It's 8:47 a.m. Before the first customer calls, our service rep has logged in to three different systems, searched two knowledge bases for a policy update she half-remembers from a training session last quarter, and spent 15 minutes summarizing yesterday's unresolved cases in a spreadsheet that feeds into a report nobody has asked about in months.
By the time she speaks with her first customer, she's already behind.
The first call of the day is straightforward—a password reset. It's exactly the kind of task that shouldn't require a human at all, and she knows it. But the customer made a mistake while attempting to reset it himself and ended up locked out. It takes four minutes to resolve, but the caller is irritated. He’s among the 75% of customers who prefer to use self-service options before picking up the phone. This time, however, he feels let down.
The rep’s second call is more difficult. A customer is frustrated because his delivery arrived damaged and the chatbot doesn’t seem to grasp his problem. He's not angry at her, exactly, but she can hear it in his voice: He expected more. This customer’s experience is common. He’s among the 46% of people who say current chatbots often fail to understand their problems and concerns.
The rep pulls up the customer’s account in two separate systems, pieces together the order details from a third, and manually cross-references a fulfillment note that was entered in a format no one ever standardized. It takes eight minutes to find information.
If the data were easily available via a quick AI query, it would have taken 30 seconds. Instead, it’s scattered across systems that can’t communicate. The customer, meanwhile, is on hold.
This morning could have gone differently. With a single, AI-driven customer experience (CX) platform, the rep could have broken down the silos that slowed her down. Our research shows that reps spend too much time going back and forth between systems. That’s no fun for them—and it eats into the time they spend with customers.
Our research reveals that these sentiments are typical among customer service reps. Eighty percent of them say they have to navigate three to five systems to resolve a single customer issue. Forty-three percent cite inconsistent views of customer data as one of their biggest daily challenges. When systems don't align, reps can't trust what they're seeing—and customers feel every second of the delay.
By midday, our rep is struggling to keep her head above water as the volume of calls keeps rising. High call loads are the top reported challenge for service reps, but the volume feels heavier than it actually is when every interaction requires manual effort that technology could handle.
She wants to be the rep who goes above and beyond. But to do so, she needs more support. Only 39% of service reps feel their organization has given them the tools and training needed to deliver superior experiences. Fifty-nine percent identify better training as the most critical improvement their organization could make.
That's not a workforce that doesn't care; that’s a workforce that's under-resourced for the moment they're living in.
The customer service rep in this story knows she could be helping people more effectively if she didn’t spend so much of her time swiveling between systems and pouring energy into admin tasks and documentation.
This is the gap AI was made to close—not to replace her but to give her time back.
When AI handles call summaries, automates data entry, surfaces customer history before a call even begins, and flags sentiment in real time, something shifts. Reps who once spent the majority of their days on administrative overhead can redirect that energy toward the work that actually requires a human: listening, problem-solving, and building trust.
Fifty-nine percent of reps report that AI has already reduced time spent on call summaries. The ones who’ve experienced that relief describe it simply: They finally feel like they can do their jobs.
The last call of the day ends well. The customer was patient, the issue was solvable, and the rep had just enough breathing room to handle it the way she'd wanted to handle every call. She hangs up and starts typing her notes—manually, into a system that won't talk to the next one.
Tomorrow, she'll do it again.
Find out how ServiceNow can help you put AI to work to improve customer experience.
