The Gist
- Customers still want to speak to a human. AI efficiencies aside, phone and email remain the preferred methods of contacting customer service.
- Rapid response is necessary, but so is a resolution. Businesses need to unify efficiency and satisfactory outcomes to please their customers.
- People and technology in unison. Automation can compact workloads, yet over-reliance should be avoided in favor of a supplementary approach.
Customer service will always be a critical part of the customer experience. It impacts customer loyalty, trust, and brand reputation. However, contact centers, the mainstays of customer-to-company interaction, are now facing profound questions about their future. These questions are driven by expanding customer expectations, rapid technological change, and economy-wide transformations.
Customer Service Trends Reveal What Customers Expect and What Frustrates Them
What’s being asked of the contemporary call center is no longer simply quick answers and ready resolutions. It’s the delivery of the whole service, from the first response and the way it’s delivered to the final outcome that satisfies the customer. A failure in one area can bring the whole house down in terms of customer perception.
According to PissedConsumer’s 2025 Customer Service Trends report, 58% of surveyed consumers said that they’ve received no response from a business after reaching out to their customer service team. This is a striking example of the company dropping the ball in the first instance. At the other end of the customer service interaction, respondents report that as few as 26% of issues get resolved.
Why Phone Support Still Leads Customer Choice
Despite great leaps in recent years, many consumers have yet to warm to AI customer service, and the majority still gravitate to the traditional contact methods like phone calls in pursuit of a human representative. According to Statista, 65% of consumers choose to contact customer service by phone as their preferred option.
Using AI Without Losing the Human Touch
2025’s contact center trends clearly reflect the widespread shift toward AI integration in all aspects of business, including customer service. Chatbots, behavioral analysis, and other AI embellishments have expanded the ability of a customer service operation to tackle support issues.
Triage, Test, Entrust: A Balanced Customer Service Strategy
This blended model uses AI and human agents together to match the right channel to the right task — improving both efficiency and customer experience.
| Step | Primary Function | Best Used For | Why It Matters | |---------|------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------| | Triage | Automatically handle simple, routine tasks | FAQs, refund status, order tracking | Frees up human agents by resolving high-volume, low-complexity requests quickly | | Test | Use AI to assess tone, complexity and urgency | Ambiguous questions, emotional callers | Ensures sensitive or complex cases are flagged early and routed correctly | | Entrust | Route to human agents for nuanced problem-solving | Escalations, VIP concerns | Lets agents focus on high-value interactions where empathy and judgment are critical |
What Emerging Customer Service Trends Mean for Businesses
Customer service trends highlight a clear need for an exceptional customer service experience. Customer feedback tells us that this can be achieved through a shift away from a reactive or dismissive approach to customer service. Instead, the goal should be to provide holistic support that focuses on the customer experience, and this should help build a lasting relationship and encourage positive word of mouth.
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