The Ticket: Exploring customer service career paths in the age of AI

All jobs naturally change and evolve over time, and technological advances are often the catalyst.

The impact of AI on customer service is the latest example of new tech leading to rapid change – support roles and career paths are being completely reshaped. 

AI has opened up new opportunities for customer service teams to enhance efficiency and productivity, as well as create fast, high-quality customer experiences. But beyond that, it’s enabling support agents to break through what were previously the “confines” of their roles and explore other areas of impact for their businesses. 

“Not only is AI transforming the day-to-day work of support agents, it’s creating entirely new roles and career paths for them to explore”

In the “old world” of customer service, support roles involved a lot of manual, repetitive, and time-consuming work. And unless support agents wanted to move into management or QA positions, career progression opportunities were somewhat limited. AI is changing all that. Not only is it transforming the day-to-day work of support agents, it’s creating entirely new roles and career paths for them to explore.  

This week on The Ticket podcast, Intercom’s own Senior Director of Automated and Proactive Support Ruth O’Brien and Senior Director of Human Support Bobby Stapleton discuss the impact AI is having on customer service careers, and what “new world” support roles and career paths look like compared to “old world” ones, based on their own personal experience. 

Here are some key takeaways from their conversation: 

• AI is making customer service roles more strategic – and less manual. By managing the majority of frequently asked or simple queries, AI is reducing the repetitive nature of customer service work and increasing the focus on impactful customer interactions, knowledge management, and more.
• Entirely new career opportunities are emerging. In the world of AI-first customer service, new roles are needed to implement, train, and manage AI. From knowledge managers to conversation designers and beyond, there are a ton of new specialized career opportunities being created for support teams. 
• CS leadership roles are becoming more data-driven and strategic. With AI providing deep insights into the customer experience, quality of support delivery, and more, support leaders are more empowered than ever to focus on leveraging data and focus on strategic decision-making. 
• This is just the beginning. We’ve only scratched the surface of what AI can do for customer service teams. Roles and career paths will continue to evolve as the technology progresses, which is why support teams will need to continually adapt and learn to make the most of the opportunities that lie ahead. 

If you enjoy our discussion, check out more episodes of our podcast. You can follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or grab the RSS feed in your player of choice.