AI Interactions Are About to Jump 1,000%.
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Your business may not be ready for the massive shift expected to take place in the coming months. AI agents will soon be taking over billions of customer interactions and transforming what the customer experience is like, according to a new survey.
Agentic AI is surging so quickly that it will handle 1,000% more customer interactions by 2027, Juniper Research reports. That’s no typo. The global tech strategy agency found that “the number of customer interactions automated by AI agents will grow from 3.3 billion interactions in 2025 to more than 34 billion by 2027.”
This is big news for every business. Customers will get used to the speed, convenience, hyper-personalization, and even fun of interacting with well designed AI agents. They’ll expect to call, or reach out in any other way, at any hour and reach a knowledgeable agent that understands them and responds in a way that feels natural.
Just about every industry will be part of this shift, from home services (HVAC, plumbing, electrical etc.) to healthcare, financial services, tourism, real estate and more. The biggest differentiator will be which companies provide the best customer experiences (CX). As more experiences come to involve agentic AI, organizations will need to work to make sure theirs is the best.
The best tools keep up with the science
I’ve written before about how the voice your AI agent uses can be make-or-break. Not only that, but different customers respond differently to various types of voices. Over time, delivering excellence will mean adjusting a voice for each individual to the maximum extent possible.
And that’s just the beginning. A new study digs into other “paraverbal elements” such as pitch, volume, pauses, timbre and breathiness. “The sound of progress: AI voice agents in service,” published in The Journal of Service Management, finds that these kinds of differences can affect customer satisfaction.
Authors Bieke Henkens, Carsten D. Schultz, Arne De Keyser and Dominik Mahr even cite differences in “melodic height.” For example, an AI agent’s voice may go up in asking, “Is there anything else I can help you with toDAY?” Or it may fall at the end, from a higher to a lower pitch saying those same words. And these are just two possibilities.
The best tools on the market will stay on the leading edge of these changes, updating their software and platforms as new features become available. That’s a core feature of what we do at Nextiva, where our AI agent is XBert. The responses we’ve gotten have been exciting.
Determining your investment
Because I work with leaders across so many different industries, I see how much interest there is in agentic AI. I also see how much confusion there is.
The choices can seem overwhelming. A new study from Precedence Research puts the agentic AI industry at $7.55 billion this year — and expects it to grow to $199 billion by 2034. With so many options, and the technologies developing so quickly, what should organizations look for? I tell leaders to look not only at proven solutions, but also at which tools are backed by companies that act as partners with their clients.
Also look for platforms that gather and organize all of the information they can about each customer. An agentic AI voice can only be tailored well to an individual if the tool has access to data about the customer’s journey, experiences, preferences, and more. This is why a UCXM (unified customer experience management platform) is essential. It pulls together all customer interactions into a single “source of truth.”
How much should you spend? To determine this, take a look at our AI Receptionist ROI Calculator. When you estimate your inbound calls, along with current hourly rates to staff, we help you see the cost savings of letting agentic AI take over. For example, even a small company that gets only 100 monthly inbound calls could easily save an average of more than $45,000.
Of course, the ROI only applies if it’s a high quality tool. Just as people respond well to certain AI agents, they reject poorly designed ones — and those experiences can leave a lasting negative effect, pushing customers to competitors.
It’s important to keep in mind that none of this means erasing the need for humans in the workplace. Every technological revolution creates new jobs for people. I’m already seeing how AI agents help free up human ones to handle more interesting, challenging, and complex tasks.
As businesses seek the right communication solutions, getting agentic AI right is paramount. The ones that do will see a larger share of those new, tens of billions of interactions.