White-Glove-for-All Is the Future of Customer Care

Unlike just a few years ago, even occasional or first-time customers today expect white-glove treatment from companies in return for spending their hard-earned dollars with them. And they will quickly take their business to a competitor if a company doesn’t provide the level of service that they expect.

It’s a dramatic shift in the company-customer dynamic, but companies can’t afford not to offer white-glove customer service, also known as concierge service.

Premium services can’t be reserved for top-tier customers anymore when all customers expect seamless, personalized experiences, acknowledges Priti Vakil, assistant vice president of connected experiences at Verizon Business. “We are seeing a significant shift in the market where buyers now sit on the business rather than the technical side. Every single customer journey and interaction impacts the loyalty and revenue of an enterprise.”

Carmit DiAndrea, director of artificial intelligence data management at NiCE, has seen the same trend developing. “Every customer wants to feel like they’re special,” she says. “In the past, only top-tier clients may have gotten that kind of attentiveness, but now with expectations continuing to rise as consumers expect the brands they do business with to be using AI to its full capabilities, every single interaction matters.”

This type of service, typically associated with luxury goods, is spreading out across the general marketplace, and it is also spreading out to every contact that people have with companies, from product discovery to purchase to after-care and beyond.

And though that level of service might have a higher price tag, experts say the extra expense might pay off in the long run.

“When every customer is treated as though they’re your VIP, you build trust and loyalty at scale for all your customers, not just a few of them,” DiAndrea says.

So what is white-glove service? Though many companies might apply it differently, and different customer groups might have different expectations, there are a few constants, according to experts.

“White glove isn’t champagne service,” says Kateryna Babenko, a software analyst and implementation expert at Katico. “It’s predictable, respectful outcomes. Treating every customer this way protects trust, lowers contacts per issue, and keeps you out of apology theater. I frame it as an operating system that includes clean intake, a living knowledge base with versioned policy snapshots, context preserved across channels, and visible ownership.”

“At its core, white-glove service is about proactive care rather than reactive fixes,” adds Charlotte Webb, marketing director at Hyve Managed Services. “It’s the difference between simply resolving tickets vs. cultivating a trusted relationship with customers. The key differentiators are understanding each customer’s context, anticipating needs before they arise, and helping them operate faster, smarter, and with greater confidence. That philosophy shouldn’t be reserved for your highest-paying customers; it should be embedded in how every customer is served.”

Speed, accuracy, and personalization are non-negotiables, especially for premium customers who expect issues to be resolved quickly and proactively, adds Chris Angus, vice president for CX expansion at 8x8. “It’s not necessarily about it being a human or AI agent that helps; it’s about getting prompt customer service to their satisfaction.”

Of course, it’s impossible and unrealistic to expect a 100 percent customer satisfaction score every time, but treating each interaction as the most important one ever will surely reduce the number of unhappy customers. After all, no customer will complain that a company went too far out of its way to resolve an issue, especially if that kind of service didn’t cost extra.

Meeting expectations is the baseline; exceeding them should always be the goal. And though it sounds excessive and expensive, white-glove customer service is far less complicated than it sounds. At its core, it requires consistency and attention to detail to be successful.

“Organizations need to take a look at their operations and make changes; most are sitting on enormous amounts of customer data but struggle to utilize it for real-time insights,” Vakil notes. “We are seeing that a lot of these journeys are inconsistent and fragmented.”

The foundation for a successful white-glove-for-every-customer strategy is having a unified customer profile that includes one view of history, intent, and consent. “Next, you have a complete journey orchestration that triggers the next best step in real time,” adds Steve Zisk, senior product marketing manager at Redpoint Global, a marketing, data, and customer experience technology provider.

AI Has a Role

Because of the challenges in delivering white-glove service across the board, many companies have turned to technology to help meet the demand. Data and a robust CRM system are foundational to successful white-glove customer service and support tactics.

“Technology and data are making [white-glove service] possible at scale,” Webb says. “Advances in monitoring, automation, and AI-driven diagnostics are giving service providers the tools to trigger a remote fix before the customer has to get in touch. This also means that superior customer service cannot exist in isolation within a customer success department. A white-glove approach must be embedded throughout every customer touchpoint.”

AI is, of course, the go-to technology for enabling white-glove service for all.

“The biggest change to white-glove service has been the rise of generative and agentic AI,” DiAndrea says. “Without AI and orchestration, white-glove-for-all is just wishful thinking.

“These tools not only understand context, but they’re also able to act on it. Two years ago, automation was task-based and reactive. Now, thanks to agentic systems that can reason, plan, and take autonomous actions, service can be personalized in real time.”

DiAndrea adds that generative AI enables natural, humanlike interactions and retains context across conversations so every engagement feels consistent.

“AI is the real game changer,” Vakil adds, pointing to recent Verizon research that found that three-quarters of companies are using AI for customer support and 71 percent are using it for personalization.

“When trained on customer data, AI anticipates needs proactively, delivering personalized service once reserved for VIPs across your entire customer base,” Vakil says further.

But, as with every other use case for AI, technology cannot do it all alone.

Customer service offers a strong foundation for AI implementation; however, even the most sophisticated AI tools might fall short without a well-defined AI strategy, facing risks such as wasted investment and reputational harm, according to David Fischer, chief sales officer at Luware, a customer service solutions provider.

For engagement, Zisk recommends using AI for self-service and for agent assistance such as summaries, suggested replies, and policy checks. However, he cautions that built-in guardrails, like retrieval-augmented generation, citations, confidence thresholds, and audit trails, are necessary to keep AI responses accurate and on-brand.

Humans Needed, Too

But even with the efficiencies that AI offers, there are some customers who consider the ability to talk to a human agent essential for optimal service.

“To harness the advantages of AI automation in customer service, enterprises must [factor in] the benefits of the human touch, using AI in ways that empower agents,” Fischer says.

“With the seeming ‘AI takeover’ in customer experience, a lot of businesses are scrambling to deploy and dominate in the customer journey, but as we’ve seen, this rapid adoption has come with its challenges, and customers are making their feelings about it known,” Zisk says.

In a study by Dynata and Redpoint Global, 77 percent of customers said that AI-driven experiences still need an element of human touch, while nearly as many (76 percent) said they are less likely to trust or engage with a company if its use of AI creates disjointed communications.

“For white-glove customers, that human element is critical,” Angus says. “When something goes wrong, especially during a high-value transaction, they expect to reach someone who understands the situation instantly. That’s where AI-driven summarization, unified data access, and predictive suggestions are vital. They reduce the time it takes to resolve an issue and even identify upsell opportunities based on real-time behavior.”

When humans are involved, customers are usually more satisfied, according to Vakil, citing Verizon survey data that found 88 percent satisfaction among consumers with human-led interactions vs. 60 percent for AI-driven ones.

The main frustration for consumers, cited by 47 percent, is the inability to reach a human agent.

“This shows us the answer isn’t choosing between human and AI,” Vakil says. “We’re seeing 44 percent of companies invest equally in both. AI handles routine inquiries efficiently while empowering agents with real-time data for complex situations requiring empathy.”

Using AI to take care of the predictable work—like password resets, order status, updating account info, etc.—so that employees can show up when things get complicated, emotional, or strategic just makes sense, according to DiAndrea. “The right handoff filled with context means humans can bring true understanding within seconds, not after taking time to dig through data. That balance is what makes white-glove treatment real and sustainable.”

“The human element in service can still be provided, but AI tools are there to augment and power up the human agent,” Angus says. “Tools like intent detection, real-time transcription, contact history, and context-driven product suggestions help agents resolve issues quickly and recommend additional value without sounding like a sales script.”

Angus adds that virtual agents can solve things quickly, noting that FAQs, delivery checks, or returns can easily be handled by AI virtual agents, which then frees up human agents to focus on what matters: empathy, escalation, and high-touch interactions.

Fischer has identified some practical ways AI can support the human touch. They include the following:

• Agent reconnection, which helps maintain continuity by linking returning customers to the same agent with whom they previously interacted.
• Security verification, to ensure that the system handles secure interactions through efficient, standardized checks.
• Language detection, to instantly identify customers’ spoken language, ensuring they receive support in their preferred languages.

As always, finding the right balance is both necessary and will take some time.

Premium Service for Some

Even though white-glove service for everyone is becoming the new standard, there is still room for differentiated levels of service for companies’ highest-value customers, something that top customers have come to expect.

“You can still offer an elevated tier without compromising baseline excellence,” DiAndrea says. “With the intelligence in NiCE’s AI-powered platform, for instance, you can add prioritized routing, proactive outreach, or dedicated reps for your VIP customers, all while maintaining seamless, responsive support for everyone else. It’s about smart differentiation, not compromising the experience for any segment.”

“There’s still a place for premium tiers of engagement,” Webb adds. “However, true differentiation lies in personalization, not exclusivity. Customers should have access to one-to-one support, which is based on the in-depth understanding of their specific needs regardless of business size. While premium options can add value, they should enhance an already personalized, high-quality experience.”

Ongoing Tech Support

The ability for companies to provide white-glove service for everyone will continue to improve as technology evolves, according to DiAndrea.

“Over the next year, we’ll see exponential growth in agentic AI, both in stand-alone and hybrid use cases in production,” she said. “We’ll see systems using more sophisticated decisioning to take over tasks that humans—both customer-facing and those working in mid- and back-office functions—once executed. For customers, this means faster, more natural experiences that feel personal from the beginning. For brands, it means moving from reactive service to highly personalized and predictive engagement so that delivering white-glove care is the default experience instead of a special exception.”

“Looking ahead to the next year, we’re focused on voice security, deepfake prevention, and agentic AI,” Vakil says. “The biggest shift is measurement, as 33 percent of companies are developing new metrics to capture AI’s true impact. Success means solving the last-mile problem: getting AI’s efficiency without sacrificing human connection when customers need it.”

Zisk expects to see very sophisticated routing that balances customer value and effort automatically and delivers more sophisticated AI in which responses cite sources, remain within policy, and auto-escalate when the path begins to stray or becomes uncertain. Tying this together will be persistent case memory across all channels (i.e., text, email, voice, and chat) that live in one thread.

Angus adds: “The last few years have seen this shift go from vision to reality. What’s next is smarter orchestration with AI not just reacting but also anticipating intent. The future of white-glove service is personal, predictive, and powered by both machine learning and human empathy.” 

Phillip Britt is a freelance writer based in the Chicago area. He can be reached at spenterprises1@comcast.net.