If The Customer Is King, Why Aren't They Treated Like One?
The King has arrived.
gettyWe live in an age of on-demand everything.
One-click ordering delivers our favorite products in hours; streaming platforms let us watch anything at the tap of a screen, and whatever cuisine you crave is just one click away.
Yet for all this convenience, it often takes a 45-minute hold time and three rounds of automated menu prompts to accomplish the simplest task in customer service, like updating a shipping address or canceling a subscription.
This is not the future the Jetsons promised, that's for sure.
Businesses have long treated customer service as a necessary evil, an afterthought to be staffed as cheaply as possible somewhere far away from the company’s ‘real’ operations, and measured by how fast each agent can get the customer off the line.
But from the consumer’s perspective, customer service is the company.
It’s where product, brand, and experience meld into one real-time interaction. If that interaction is painful, it taints everything else the company does. Worse yet, this last interaction in the chain of many may become the final one.
This chasm between how companies and customers perceive support is starting to close, thanks to a new wave of solution providers, each bringing novel technology and a customer success mindset to the space.
It being the year 2025 it is no surprise that the future of customer service is being shaped by pioneers that lean heavily on advanced AI; others focus on empowering human agents with better systems.
But all share one conviction: the days of “just enough” are over.
To thrive, businesses must think of support as a core strategic function, not a tacked-on cost center to optimize for performance.
Customer service’s bad rap is not entirely unearned, for reasons both structural and cultural.
On the structural side it's important to acknowledge how expensive things can get: having large teams of human agents who provide personalized support can eat up operating budgets.
It’s no wonder that many firms have sought both shortcuts and snake oil in keeping costs down, outsourcing to low-cost regions, limiting hours, or investing in labyrinthine phone trees that discourage clients from seeking service more than satisfying them.
Culturally, service teams have never enjoyed the prestige of sales or product divisions that, ironically enough, often share much less time with the client.
While the Chief Revenue Officer has become a sought after title, Chief Customer Experience Officers remain an oddity of sufficient esoterica that if you spot one you will tell a friend you saw one.
Revenue is reported to each board and investor, while customer satisfaction figures rarely break out of Yelp. As a result, companies are incentivized to pour resources into acquiring new customers rather than nurturing and retaining existing ones.
The mismatch has led to what we see today: chronically underfunded service departments, high agent turnover, and the use of archaic technology that frustrates both staff and users. Welcome to the state of customer service in 2025.
But times are changing.
Customer support technologies have grown into a multi-billion-dollar market, making it a breeding ground for innovations seeking both VC funding and the clients’ hard-earned dollars.
At the same time, companies are realizing that if they don’t handle issues gracefully, social media can amplify negative experiences, poisoning brand perception in hours. Today’s consumer, spoiled by frictionless e-commerce, demands a similarly frictionless resolution of problems as well as frictionless onboarding and purchases.
And if that demand isn’t met, they’ll take their loyalty and money elsewhere.
Front is among the new guard leading this transformation.
Their platform helps companies streamline customer interactions across channels, email, chat, and more, while weaving in AI in ways that go beyond the ‘summarize this’ button and other gimmicks the audience is already growing tired of.
As they reflect on how AI supercharges customer services with Front, Dan O’Connell, CEO, and Kevin Yang, Director of Product Management, stress a principle that sets their systems apart: let AI do only what it’s truly good at. The rest is handled by humans.
“We’ve seen platforms that force automation for everything, which can lead to an abysmal customer experience,” says Dan. “The goal isn’t to push AI to its breaking point; it’s to let AI handle routine tasks so humans can handle the higher-level work.”
The company’s approach ensures that if a conversation grows complex, it doesn’t bounce around a script or multiple bots. Instead, the system escalates to a human with all relevant context in tow, for them to make a decision.
“Your AI can’t say ‘I don’t know,’” Kevin adds. “But we can design the workflow so that if confidence dips below a certain threshold, it’s seamlessly handed off to an agent. We’ve found that’s the sweet spot: you keep the personal touch while reaping the efficiency gains of automation.”
Such “intelligent triaging,” as they call it, translates to faster resolutions and less frustration.
It also turns frontline service agents into problem-solvers rather than monotone script-readers.
As Dan puts it, “We’re giving humans room to shine where empathy and creativity matter, and letting software handle the predictable bits.”
If Front’s solution balances AI with human empathy and decision-making, Conversica doubles down on advanced AI’s potential for a positive transformation by removing the drudgery from customer service.
CEO Jim Kaskade believes that, contrary to fears of job cuts, AI can free human agents to focus on deeper customer relationships and act as subject matter experts where they shine the best.
“The tasks we’ve created for ourselves in customer service, repetitive data entry, basic Q&A, can today be automated away,” says Jim. “That doesn’t eliminate human jobs; it expands their capacity to do better work. You can actually have more time for that warm, empathetic conversation that cements brand loyalty.”
Conversica specializes in AI-driven virtual assistants that can converse with customers in a near-human manner, understanding context, pulling from brand-approved data including
inventory at a local dealership, and passing complex issues back to humans when needed.
Jim sees an inherent synergy: “When humans and AI collaborate, you’re doubling output. A single agent can handle more sophisticated inquiries because they’re not burned out answering the same five questions all day.”
He also warns against over-regulation or “glass-half-empty” thinking that might slow innovation.
“Yes, there are real concerns about privacy and data misuse,” he acknowledges.
“But let’s keep momentum so the ‘good guys’ remain ahead of the bad actors. AI has massive potential to elevate service if we harness it responsibly, and given the state of customer service it's time we move fast.”
So far, the conversation around AI in customer service often revolves around text or voice interactions.
But TechSee CEO Eitan Cohen points out a crucial missing piece in the customer service equation: sight.
For many support calls, like troubleshooting a router, installing a new appliance, or diagnosing a device malfunction, words alone can be painfully inadequate.
“We realized the biggest gap in customer service was the lack of vision,” Eitan says.
“A phone call might take 30 minutes of guesswork to figure out which cord is plugged in wrong. An AR-enhanced video feed can solve that in under a minute, giving everyone a better experience.”
TechSee’s platform lets agents or AI-driven bots see what the customer sees, often via a smartphone camera link.
Using augmented reality overlays, the agent or virtual assistant can circle the correct button, highlight the faulty part, or guide the user step by step. In some cases, the AI can even identify objects automatically:
“We have an AI engine that’s trained on thousands of visuals, model numbers, blinking light patterns, you name it,” Eitan says.
“It can often recognize the exact error code on a washing machine display. Suddenly, you cut out a ton of guesswork and speed up resolution.”
The fact that customer service has worked for decades without the faculty of vision suddenly seems like something we should have started opposing long ago, not least for the convenience and efficiency that adding it provides.
The environmental impact of removing the blinders off customer support is no small matter either.
Fewer in-person service calls mean less driving, which cuts down carbon footprints.
As Eitan sees it, “Visual solutions let customers help themselves, reduce costs for businesses, and benefit the planet. That’s a trifecta we can get behind, and so can your customers.”
While TechSee is adding sight to support, Pindrop is perfecting the sound dimension.
CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan founded the company after a personal banking mishap showed him how vulnerable call centers are to fraud. Today, Pindrop’s voice biometric technology analyzes hundreds of micro-characteristics to verify a caller’s identity. It also flags suspicious behaviors in real time, making sure that only the real customer is serviced, instead of a hacker that has access to your address, date of birth and maiden name.
“If we treat phone calls as a black box, we open the door to social engineering and identity theft,” Vijay explains.
“We’re making sure the voice on the line is who they claim to be, which both reduces fraud and spares honest customers from extra hoops. This is how security technology contributes to customer success.”
Voice authentication has broader benefits: it lets genuine callers skip lengthy security scripts, creating a faster, friendlier experience. One that both the agents and customer can trust.
“You remove friction by trusting the voice print, which also means you can scale up phone-based support without drowning in overhead,” says Vijay.
“Customers love not having to recall random passcodes or to recite the name of loved pets that have long since passed away each time they call.”
Finally, there’s Gupshup, a pioneer in Conversational AI, and its subsidiary Dotgo, the leader in RCS (Rich Communication Services).
Dotgo CEO Inderpal Singh Mumick sees RCS as the next frontier for text-based support, one that merges instant messaging with app-like features, photos, videos, buttons, within a single interface.
His bigger vision is simple: Agentic AI-powered messaging that outstrips today’s stunted chatbot experiences.
“Traditional SMS is text-only and limited in user experience. RCS breaks those chains,” Inderpal notes.
“Our platform enables businesses to deliver interactive, visually rich support experiences right inside the user’s default messaging app.”
Inderpal argues that as RCS uptake grows, so will the potential for sophisticated AI assistants that can handle multi-step tasks.
“Imagine booking a flight, picking seats, and paying for extra luggage all via a single chat thread, no separate apps needed, no clunky web forms. That’s where we’re headed.”
Importantly, Gupshup invests heavily in ensuring these advanced features remain secure and private. “We want the next generation of personal assistants to be context-aware, yes, but also respectful of user data and brand guidelines,” says Inderpal.
“Over time, that fosters trust, which is the cornerstone of good service.”
For decades, sales and marketing have hogged the corporate limelight, while customer service got table scraps. But the reality is that a single negative service encounter can overshadow a year’s worth of brilliant ad campaigns.
The new breed of CX innovators such as Front, Conversica, TechSee, Pindrop, Gupshup, and Dotgo demonstrate that service shouldn’t be a begrudged cost center, at least not if you want to outcompete your peers.
When elevated to the core of your business model and as an essential part of the customer journey, CX becomes a competitive edge, a branding differentiator, and a driver of loyalty.
And if there’s a single lesson that unites these forward-thinkers, it’s that customer service is no longer optional.
Customer service is embedded in the product, and it is the brand.
And when customers have near-endless choice, customer service is the pathway to success that is sustained, no matter what your competitors or the market gets up to.
