The Future of Customer Service is an Embedded Agent, not a Super Bot

Everyone is trying to figure out how AI agents can make them and their businesses more efficient, productive, and profitable. The temptation is to imagine a single, universal enterprise agent that can do it all.

But as Brian Kinsella explained, Agents deliver the most operational benefit when they live alongside the users they’re designed to help. (link to BK article)

Take customer service as an example.

For customer service representatives (CSRs), true value will come from domain specialized agents that live where the work happens. If an agent sits on a second screen, we just create more swivel chair work.

Consider the day-to-day of a CSR, who spends too much time identifying what went wrong and hunting for data across multiple systems before they can even start resolving an issue. An embedded agent that surfaces actionable customer and order insights and kicks off automated workflows, means less time researching and more time resolving—driving faster handle times and higher CSAT.

That’s why we’ve built a Contact Center Agent which provides proactive insights about customer’s recent orders to pre-emptively arm the CSR with information about why the customer might be reaching out.

Proactive customer insights for instant CSR context

This Agent provides proactive insights about customer’s recent orders, purchasing patterns, and a summary of notes entered about this customer by CSRs over time.

Proactive order signals, right where CSRs work

The Contact Center Agent can also provide proactive insights about a specific order, highlighting why items are on hold or cancelled and sharing real-time carrier status updates – all before the customer even shares their question.

Smart sale price adjustments, with the research done for you

This Agent also surfaces any recently purchased products which may be eligible for a sale price adjustment. For example, if the customer purchased a purse on Monday for $200, but now it’s on sale for $175, a CSR would historically need to check the current price (to confirm it’s on sale) and validate if this product is eligible per the business policy (e.g. perhaps final sale items are ineligible, price adjustments can only be done within 1 week of original order placement, and the maximum discount permitted is 10%).

The Contact Center Agent has already done all these validations by the time the customer asks for a price adjustment, freeing up the CSR to focus on providing world-class service to the customer.

Instant answers for orders and SOPs

Customer service teams also face constant change: distributed workforces, high turnover, and massive seasonal hiring waves. Agents that deliver real time guidance, coaching, and “next best action” directly inside the application reduce the need to dig through knowledge bases or ping a senior teammate. Again,

That’s why we’ve built a Contact Center Agent which can answer questions on demand about order data or business SOPs:

Of course, AI Agents absolutely play a role before the customer even connects to a CSR – Agents are already successfully assisting customers in tracking orders, initiating returns, and editing orders. But for the customers who need to connect with a CSR for service above and beyond what AI Agents can provide, embedded Agents should sit alongside CSRs to help them provide more proactive, personalized service.

That’s the future that excites me: specialized agents, embedded in customer service workflows, quietly turning operational friction into business value.