The tension around artificial intelligence (AI) taking customer experience (CX) jobs is palpable. The story is most evident in the CX Network's Global State of CX 2025.
To start, AI-powered technologies for operations is the top trend changing the role of the CX practitioner, according to respondents of the annual survey. Generative AI chatbots and virtual assistants and conversational AI/chatbots and virtual assistants came in second and fifth respectively. Automation of CX and service functions, AI/machine learning (ML) for business operations and conversational AI chatbots and virtual assistants are among the top five investment priorities for CX in 2025.
At the same time, the top three customer behaviors influencing CX planning for 2025 are:
- Expectations for instant service/delivery (43 percent)
- Demand for convenience (40 percent)
- Customers spending less (39 percent)
Clearly, AI tools can help address those customer behaviors in a way that human agents cannot. The bots are faster, more efficient and do not require breaks. While some may cost more up front, they do not require salaries or benefits. Obviously, this all factors into the impact AI is having on CX jobs.
Replacing humans with AI
Organizations are already applying AI to CX. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said AI is responsible for 85 percent of the company's customer service interactions in an op-ed piece in the Financial Times. He warned that this is a significant shift in workforce roles and will require training and upskilling of workers.
In the Global State of CX 2025, practitioners trained their workforce in the last year for product knowledge, customer journey mapping, soft skills, messaging/communication skills and skills for a specific service tool or technology. But this will transform over time as more AI enters the world of customer support.
"Jobs will change, and as with every major technological shift, some will go away - and new ones will emerge," he wrote.
Man versus machine for CX jobs
Benioff goes as far to say that the current class of CEOs may be the last to oversee an all-human workforce. In fact, this piece comes as Salesforce introduces Service Cloud, an agentic platform that helps companies slash operational costs, resolve customer issues quickly and deliver service with the help of real-time insights. The technology can reason and act on customer queries without human interaction. It can also escalate customer support to a human agent when necessary.
Most CX experts are saying that these technologies are not meant to replace humans but to enhance the work of humans and increase productivity. But there's no question that fewer human agents will be needed. Microsoft recently announced it was cutting hundreds of customer support roles and saving $500 million by transitioning call center operations to AI-powered systems.
"As businesses race toward AI-driven efficiency, Microsoft's move acts as both a case study and a cautionary tale," according to BW People. "It highlights AI's potential to reshape entire functions but also underscores the urgent need for balance - in policy, employment and ethical deployment - as technology's influence deepens."
Will AI generate new CX jobs?
McKinsey recommends companies focus on the jobs gained rather than the jobs lost as they transition into an AI-powered reality at work. More than 90 million jobs (not just in call centers but all sorts of industries) are expected to be displaced by 2030. This widely shared data point has made some human workers reluctant to embrace AI. However, some predict as many as 170 million new jobs will be generated by AI, according to the Future of Jobs Report 2025, World Economic Forum 2025.
CX leaders often remind people that customers still want to talk to human agents. In fact, more than 90 percent of US consumers prefer human agents for customer interactions, according to a recent Kinstra survey. Many of the CX experts and thought leaders who talk to CX Network say that AI should enhance human agents' work rather than replace it. This sentiment appears in Keep CX management human in the age of AI and the research report, The practical guide to AI agents.
"Despite all the advancements, human connection still matters," according to IBM. "But the way we support agents is evolving. AI is no longer just a tool—it’s becoming a real-time partner, helping agents respond faster, more accurately and with greater empathy."
At the PEX Network's most recent All Access: Digital Transformation in HR webinar series, Vishal Bhalla, co-founder and CEO of AnalytAIX and HR Exchange Network Advisory Board member, introduced the audience to Pi, an AI virtual assistant who can answer questions about benefits and works alongside HR practitioners. Bhalla is an early adopter and expert of AI and recommends managing human and tech talent similarly. This means checking in on the AI every now and then, assessing performance and supporting collaboration with human counterparts and other technology.
The role of humans
In HR, as well as in CX, the arrival of AI raises questions about the human role. Both of these departments are about elevating people, caring for them. The role requires a certain amount of empathy. While emotion AI is meant to have the machines recognizing, understanding and responding to human emotion, none of it seems as effective as the human touch.
Geoffrey Hinton, the godfather of AI, discussed his fears about AI replacing humans in many jobs on the Diary of a CEO podcast, but he specifically cited CX. After all, it's the obvious choice and the chosen laboratory for experimentation on replacing humans with bots.
"Let's take a call center. In a call center, you have people at present who have all sorts of emotions and feelings, which are kind of useful. So, suppose I call up the call center and I'm actually lonely. I don't actually want to now the answer to why my computer is not working. I just want somebody to talk to. After a while, the person in the call center will either get bored or annoyed with me and will terminate [the call]. Well, you replace them with an AI agent. The AI agent needs to have the same kind of response. If someone just called up because they just want to talk for the whole day, then that's not good for business. And you want an AI agent that either gets bored or gets irritated and says, "I'm sorry, but I don't have time for this." And once it does that - either gets bored or gets irritated - I think it's got emotions."
He also wants people to understand that emotions have a cognitive, physiological and behavioral aspect. For example, if a human gets embarrassed, the cause registers in the brain and leads to clamming up and turning red. AI will never get red. But, as Hinton points out, it could respond with the same behavior because it learns from humans.
The good news is that human strengths of empathy, creativity and compassion do not translate well through an AI agent or robot.
"AI has no childhood, no heart. It does not love, does not feel loss, does not suffer. And because of that, it is incapable of expressing true compassion or understanding human connection," writes Benioff. "We do. And that is our superpower. It’s what inspires the insights and bursts of genius behind history’s great inventions. It’s what enables us to start businesses that solve problems and improve the world."