Will 49% of customer service jobs disappear by 2030? I hope so!

Forrester predicts that by 2030, AI will cause 49% of current customer service jobs to disappear. Should we worry?

First, predicting the future is a hazardous enterprise and many have failed before. I’m highly suspicious of the pretend precision of the 49%, for one.

Second, the study focuses on support reps who are essentially copy-pasting answers to known questions. How wonderful that these badly-paid, boring, clock-driven jobs will retreat! The prediction is that the copy-paste jobs will be transformed into managing teams of AI agents. Whatever that means in reality, it seems better than being scolded by customers who waited too long for an answer, and managers who don’t think you should spend more than two minutes with any customer.

Third, we can manage the transition. I just spent a couple of months working with customer service reps to understand their ideas of how AI can transform their work and I was blown away by their inventiveness and eagerness to move to an AI future. The biggest transition may lie with the leadership teams’ ability to pivot to a different model entirely, away from AHT and other metrics.

What are you doing to anticipate the AI transition in customer service? Tell us in a comment.