12 ways AI is changing customer expectations

Artificial intelligence is changing modern businesses by making them more efficient, agile, and capable of delivering an outstanding customer experience (CX).

Given these benefits, it’s no wonder why AI is now an expectation. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2025, 81 percent of consumers believe AI has become part of modern customer service, showing the technology’s increasing importance.

To help you adapt to the evolving marketplace, we’ve compiled a list of 12 ways AI is changing customer expectations.

Read on to learn how to meet these new customer expectations by using AI to improve the customer experience.

More in this guide:

• Improved customer experiences
• Greater personalization
• Immediate responses with AI agents
• Proactive support
• Comprehensive sentiment analysis
• Advanced self-service
• More accurate demand forecasting
• Comprehensive conversation reviews
• Automated agent suggestions
• Better voice experiences
• Advanced data security
• Seamless omnichannel interactions
• Frequently asked questions
• Use Zendesk AI to exceed customer expectations

1. Improved customer experiences

AI can help teams engage in customer experience automation to deliver a fast, personalized, and seamless CX that feels authentically human. This includes enhancing the efficiency of support agents, empowering customers to find answers to their questions independently, and using AI for customer success.

The Zendesk CX Trends Report 2025 revealed that 70 percent of consumers believe a clear gap exists between companies that leverage AI effectively in customer service and those that don’t.

Key takeaway: AI strengthens the CX in every interaction, and consumers are starting to expect it.

2. Greater personalization

AI helps drive greater personalization by making it easier for businesses to analyze customer data and pinpoint consumer preferences. For example, teams could use AI to understand buying patterns and give personalized product recommendations.

Or, support agents could use AI-powered customer service platforms to know who the customer is and their problem without the customer repeating themselves. Consumers see the benefits, as 61 percent say they expect more personalized service with AI, per the Zendesk CX Trends Report 2025.

Key takeaway: AI makes it easier for businesses to speak directly to their customers and tailor every touchpoint.

3. Immediate responses with AI agents

According to the Zendesk CX Trends Report 2025, 90 percent of CX Trendsetters—organizations that have fully embraced AI—think AI will resolve 8 in 10 issues without a human within the next few years.

AI agents are one of the driving forces of this change. These advanced chatbots can provide 24/7 support to customers and handle even the most complex customer interactions from start to finish. They can autonomously resolve complaints or route the customer to a human agent, allowing businesses to deliver a faster and more efficient CX.

Key takeaway: AI agents can deliver round-the-clock customer support and free up live agents to focus on more important tasks.

4. Proactive support

Modern businesses shouldn’t just resolve customer issues—they should prevent them with proactive customer service. AI can help facilitate this by predicting and addressing potential problems before they escalate.

For example, AI agents could warn customers of upcoming service outages before they happen, or an AI system could predict customer intent, allowing support agents to tailor their interactions.

Key takeaway: AI-driven proactive support helps businesses solve problems before they occur, creating a better CX.

5. Comprehensive sentiment analysis

Customer sentiment analysis helps businesses understand how customers feel about their experience with your product, service, or brand. With the help of capabilities like AI customer feedback analysis, teams can analyze large data sets of consumer behavior across comments, reviews, complaints, and support interactions.
This allows them to spot concerning trends in their CX.

For instance, AI could highlight consumers who are frustrated or at risk of churning, enabling managers to step in to help those customers and ensure timely resolutions.

Key takeaway: Sentiment analysis helps businesses understand their customers and deliver what they need without the customer asking.

6. Advanced self-service

According to Zendesk Benchmark data, 83 percent of CX leaders expect customer self-service interactions to increase 5x thanks to AI. Offering self-service resources like knowledge bases and help centers empowers consumers to solve their problems independently, leading to higher customer satisfaction and a lower strain on support teams.

Additionally, AI agents can connect to knowledge bases to surface relevant help center content to consumers during automated support interactions.

Key takeaway: AI-powered self-service helps consumers easily find what they need, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing support costs.

7. More accurate demand forecasting

When customers need to speak to a human agent, they don’t want to be kept on hold, and that means businesses must have enough support agents on staff to meet demand. AI-powered workforce management (WFM) software like Zendesk WFM can:

• Analyze historical data to expertly predict staffing needs in a day, month, or season.

• Automatically create support agent schedules that account for training, breaks, and ticket types.

• Highlight metrics like average handle time and occupancy rate, which can provide insights into team performance.

These capabilities ensure organizations maintain a positive CX and always have someone ready to communicate with customers.

Key takeaway: AI can forecast demand effectively, enabling organizations to schedule the appropriate number of support agents per shift. This creates an optimal balance between labor costs and customer satisfaction.

8. Comprehensive conversation reviews

When human agents interact with customers, they need to be swift, effective, and do everything they can to foster a positive CX. AI-powered quality assurance (QA) software like Zendesk QA uses AI to review 100 percent of support agent conversations.

This information gives managers unparalleled insight into employee performance, allowing them to identify top performers and those who may need additional training.

Key takeaway: AI can monitor conversation quality to ensure support agents deliver a positive CX to customers.

9. Automated agent suggestions

Even star support agents can glean insights from AI and improve their processes.
AI copilots act as a virtual second-in-command, helping agents deliver faster, more accurate, and personalized support. This technology can identify customer sentiment, automate tasks, and give agents suggested replies—from which agents can execute, modify, or reject.

Per the Zendesk CX Trends Report 2025, 75 percent of consumers are in favor of agents using AI to help draft responses, showing that consumers appreciate the speed and efficiency of AI.

Key takeaway: AI agents can turn any support agent into a productivity powerhouse, allowing them to deliver more proactive and personalized support.

10. Better voice experiences

AI can turn standard phone calls into helpful support experiences. With a solution like Zendesk Voice, AI agents can answer calls, resolve issues, and route the customer to a human agent if necessary.

Or, AI can assist human agents by automatically transcribing a phone call after it is completed and using QA capabilities to identify churn risks and outliers, so managers can step in before it is too late.

Key takeaway: When a customer calls a support line, the interaction should be fast, seamless, and helpful. With AI, teams can achieve that.

11. Advanced data security

With cybercriminals and hackers on the rise, organizations need to prioritize customer data protection more than ever. AI can support these efforts by automatically detecting anomalies in data access, preventing fraud, and safeguarding customer information.

For example, teams with an advanced customer data protection platform like Zendesk can use AI to suggest redactions so confidential information, such as customer email addresses, remains safe.

Key takeaway: AI can help teams protect sensitive data and keep customers at ease, knowing their information is secure.

12. Seamless omnichannel interactions

Consumers may interact with a company via a website, mobile app, social media page, and other mediums.
AI helps keep these conversations consistent and connected across all touchpoints.

An AI-powered omnichannel experience enables real-time data synchronization, allowing customers to switch channels without losing context or repeating information. This ensures a seamless support experience that gives consumers the freedom to reach out to a support team at their convenience.

Key takeaway: AI-powered omnichannel strategies create a cohesive and frictionless customer journey that enables them to communicate with businesses on any available channel.

Frequently asked questions

Use Zendesk AI to exceed customer expectations

Customer expectations are rising, and businesses must embrace AI to survive in the new era of business.
That said, not all AI is created equal—choose an AI-powered solution like Zendesk that is purpose-built for CX,
allowing your team to provide outstanding service at every touchpoint.

Check out our service capabilities to see how we can help you connect with your customers,
scale your service, and stay flexible through change.