Top 3 Strategic Priorities for Service and Support Leaders

Customer service is at the center of enterprise AI transformation, but the gap between expectation and reality is widening. Organizations are investing heavily in AI, yet few are achieving the promised benefits. This disconnect threatens both financial performance and confidence in the service organization’s ability to successfully leverage the technology.

Pressure to deliver on AI is at an all-time high — only 11 percent of leaders say their GenAI investment has met its primary business objective. The combination of high expectations and low benefit realization is fueled by ad hoc adoption and poor integration, which leaves organizations vulnerable to escalating costs and missed opportunities.

Heads of service and support should move beyond isolated pilots and design an integrated AI strategy that spans the full spectrum of service opportunities. This includes embedding predictive and proactive capabilities into customer journeys and leveraging AI analytics to identify and eliminate root causes of demand. A metrics-based approach combined with investment in data quality and change management will enable sustainable ROI and position service as a leader in enterprise innovation.

Customer service can become a strategic contributor to enterprise growth by helping customers realize value and forming deeper relationships. This requires a shift from efficiency-driven models to value-driven engagement across the customer life cycle.

The disconnect between service priorities and executive growth objectives poses a risk to the overall function. While other leaders focus on revenue growth, service often emphasizes operational metrics. AI disruption makes this gap more visible as automation threatens traditional service models and forces leaders to define a new value proposition centered on innovation and growth.

Service organizations should embrace the Successful Customer Profile (SCP) methodology as the foundation for engagement. This approach identifies the right personas, clarifies desired outcomes and leverages attributes that enable success. By operationalizing these customer insights across onboarding, adoption and engagement, service can deliver measurable value that contributes to enterprise growth.

AI is not replacing human agents, but rather forcing service organizations to redefine their roles. To deliver on the promise of a human-AI workforce, organizations must prepare employees for new responsibilities and create operating models that enable their performance using AI.

The trend toward automation is forcing organizations to reshape the agent role, yet organizations struggle with upskilling employees and overcoming resistance to AI. Traditional metrics and rigid structures often can’t support the behaviors required for complex interactions and effective AI oversight.

Heads of service and support should restructure their organization using the Center for Customer Engagement organizational model. This model embeds AI into every layer of service strategy and delivery, while empowering human talent through training and enablement tools. By focusing on value creation and proactive engagement, organizations can transform service from a reactive function into a strategic contributor to enterprise success.

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