The author suggests that autonomous agents could significantly improve customer support by handling generic information requests, specific or private information requests, transactional or actionable requests, and exceptional requests. To prepare for this shift, businesses should make their internal systems accessible through APIs, define which processes autonomous AI agents should control, and continuously monitor and improve these agents. The author warns that businesses that fail to adopt autonomous agents could be left behind in the AI-powered customer service revolution.
Key takeaways:
- Autonomous agents, AI solutions with agency, are the next progression in AI's evolution, bringing new capabilities around planning, communication, execution and self-learning.
- Customer support is a great use case for autonomous agents, despite the challenges of slow adoption rates and insufficient autonomy with current AI agents based on large language models (LLMs).
- Autonomous agents can handle different categories of customer needs, including requests for generic information, specific or private information, transactional or actionable requests, and exceptional requests.
- Businesses should prepare for AI agency by making their internal systems accessible through APIs, defining which processes autonomous AI agents should have agency over, and running evaluations to understand how AI agents behave.