Self-service and digital chat to eclipse email and phone channels for customer service

Technologies that support digital-first service will overtake traditional channels such as phone and email as the most valuable technologies for customer service and support leaders in the next two years.

That’s according to a survey by Gartner, which polled 265 customer service & support leaders conducted in April and May this year, finding that while AI agents are rising in value, they remain outside the top 10 customer service technologies ranked by leaders now and in two years’ time.

“Live chat, self-service portals, and knowledge management systems are solidifying their place as essential tools for fast, scalable support,” said J.J. Moncus, Principal, Research in the Gartner Customer Service & Support practice. “To stay ahead, customer service leaders must focus on leveraging enhanced analytics, optimizing knowledge management, and using agent assist techniques to enhance the assisted-service experience.”

Figure 1. Ranking of Valuable Customer Service and Support Technologies, Now and in Two Years’ Time 

Source: Gartner (July 2025)

Gartner predicts that by the end of 2025, 73% of customer service organizations will have implemented agent assist solutions for their workforce. With many simple customer service cases now resolved in self-service, the remaining assisted service interactions are more complex. Agent assist can offer real-time customer insights and prompts, helping agents to resolve more complex cases more efficiently and focus on delivering high-quality experience.

“Agent assist can offer both valuable efficiency gains and customer experience benefits,” said Moncus. “There are a wide variety of customer context and guidance use cases that can empower agents to resolve complex issues more easily.” 

While customer service leaders are excited about the potential of AI agents, the technology was ranked outside of the top 10 most valuable technologies both now and in two years’ time.

“AI agents offer the potential for customer facing chatbots to take actions on the customer’s behalf, expanding self-service resolution to include a wider variety of issue types,” said Moncus. “Despite this, many customer service leaders remain unconvinced. The technology is still developing, and some leaders are concerned about ‘agent-washing’, where products are marketed as ‘agentic’ when they are in fact just rule-based.”

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash