Self-Service and Live Chat to Be Top Service Tech by 2027

Technologies that support digital-first service will overtake traditional channels like phone and email as the most valuable technologies for customer service and support leaders in the next two years, according to Gartner.

And while artificial intelligence agents are rising in value, they remain outside the top 10 customer service technologies, Gartner found.

"Live chat, self-service portals, and knowledge management systems are solidifying their place as essential tools for fast, scalable support," says J.J. Moncus, research principal in the Gartner Customer Service & Support Practice. "To stay ahead, customer service leaders must focus on leveraging enhanced analytics, optimizing knowledge management, and using agent assist techniques to enhance the assisted-service experience."

Gartner predicts that by the end of this year, 73 percent of customer service organizations will have implemented agent assist solutions for their workforces. With many simple customer service cases now resolved in self-service, the remaining assisted-service interactions are more complex. Agent assist can offer real-time customer insights and prompts, helping agents resolve more complex cases more efficiently and focus on delivering high-quality experiences, it said.

"Agent assist can offer both valuable efficiency gains and customer experience benefits," Moncus states. "There are a wide variety of customer context and guidance use cases that can empower agents to resolve complex issues more easily."

Gartner also found that while customer service leaders are excited about AI agents, the technology remains outside of the top 10 most valuable technologies and will continue to do so for at least the next two years.

"AI agents offer the potential for customer-facing chatbots to take actions on the customer's behalf, expanding self-service resolution to include a wider variety of issue types," Moncus says. "Despite this, many customer service leaders remain unconvinced. The technology is still developing, and some leaders are concerned about 'agent-washing' where products are marketed as 'agentic'when they are in fact just rule-based."