As a keynote speaker, author, CCaaS specialist and host of the hugely popular Press 1 for Nick podcast, Nick Glimsdahl is well versed in CX stories. Having interviewed leaders from Chick-fil-A, The Ritz-Carlton and Zappos to name a few, he’s heard all about what does and does not lead to success, particularly around the introduction of AI in customer service.
Now he’s put all his learnings into a new book, The heart of service: A blueprint for human-centric AI in customer service, which follows a fictional company through its AI transformation.
In this interview with CX Network, Nick explains what CX and service leaders can learn from the book and how they too can modernize without losing what makes their company’s culture strong.
CX Network: Your new book looks at bringing AI into an organization, “without losing the people who make it work”, and the situation is presented through the lens of a fictional company called Carelio, which redefines customer care. What inspired you to write the book?
Nick Glimsdahl: This book came out of frustration. For years, I’ve watched good people inside contact centers try to make broken systems work, burning out while leadership rushed to “modernize” with artificial intelligence (AI) tools that solved nothing.
AI was being rushed in to “fix” problems no one had defined, and the result was confusion, burnout and customers feeling ignored. I’ve seen AI used as a shortcut instead of a strategy. The real problem wasn’t technology – it was how we used it.
I wrote The Heart of Service because there’s a better way. I wanted to show how AI can make service more human, not less.
The fictional company, Carelio, gave me room to combine real stories and lessons I’ve seen in the field into one narrative. Every challenge in that book – the pressure, the skepticism, the fear of losing the human touch – comes from real conversations with leaders who’ve lived it.
CX Network: The book is written for service leaders who are “under pressure to ‘transform’ and don’t want to lose their teams – or their values – in the process”. Without giving too much away, how can they achieve this?
Nick Glimsdahl: AI should take away the busy work, not the humanity. That’s how you modernize without losing what makes your culture strong.
Start by slowing down. Too many leaders rush into transformation without understanding the real problem they’re trying to solve. The ones who succeed begin with listening, just like Chloe did in the book. They ask their frontline teams simple but powerful questions: What’s slowing you down? What would give you time back?
Next, they build trust before introducing tools. AI can’t fix culture, but it can strengthen it.
When used the right way, it makes work easier, reduces burnout and lets people focus on what they do best – serving customers. That’s how you get more than efficient. You build loyalty. True transformation doesn’t replace people; it reinforces what already makes them valuable.
CX Network: Each chapter in the book concludes with questions for the reader to think about. To turn one of those questions on you, how can companies maintain core values and mission amid growth and innovation?
Nick Glimsdahl: It’s easy to talk about values when times are hard. It’s much harder to live by them when business is growing fast. Real leadership shows up in the tradeoffs, when you decide what not to do.
In the book, Carelio faced that test. The company had the budget, the tools and the pressure to automate everything. But its leaders paused and asked a better question: “What should AI never do?” That shift, from what technology can do to what it should do, became the turning point.
It’s where growth, innovation, and integrity finally meet. When values define how AI is used, every choice stays grounded in purpose. You build trust, protect culture, and scale without losing your soul.
CX Network: In your opinion, how do you believe organizations can strike the balance between human and machine most effectively?
Nick Glimsdahl: The best companies don’t treat AI as a department. They treat it as a teammate. They use automation for what it’s good at: speed, consistency and data. But they leave the real work to their people – empathy, problem solving and human connection.
You can tell when a brand builds technology around the customer instead of forcing the customer to adapt to it. Those are the companies that measure success not by how many calls they deflect but by how much trust they earn.
You can buy Nick’s latest book via this link and follow his podcast, here.
Quick links
- Will AI replace most customer service teams by 2034?
- AI readiness assessment for contact centers
- 10 ways generative and agentic AI will change the game in 2026