What CX leaders should focus on next
For years, AI in customer service meant chatbots, suggested replies, routing rules and automation.
Useful? Absolutely.
Transformational? Not always.
That is now changing.
AI is moving beyond answering questions and into operational decision-making. Zendesk calls this the shift toward agentic AI: AI that can understand context, take action, recommend improvements and support both customers and internal teams across workflows.
McKinsey describes a similar transition. Organisations are moving away from AI experiments and toward operational accountability, where leaders are expected to show measurable business value, productivity gains and service improvements.
The conversation is no longer simply:
“Are we using AI?”
It is becoming:
“Are we getting meaningful value from AI across our service operation?”
Zendesk’s CX Trends 2026 report highlights how quickly expectations are changing. The report found that 83% of consumers believe customer experience should be significantly better than it is today, while 87% of CX leaders believe agentic AI can improve the quality of customer interactions.
The shift is important because AI is no longer sitting outside the operation as a support tool. It is becoming part of how service teams work, optimise processes, manage knowledge and make decisions.
From automation to operational intelligence
Traditional automation follows rules.
Agentic AI goes further.
It can understand intent, surface relevant context, recommend operational changes and complete actions across systems. That could include updating tickets, suggesting workflow improvements, identifying knowledge gaps, escalating cases, summarising conversations or highlighting operational bottlenecks.
Importantly, this is not just about customer conversations.
AI is increasingly becoming operationally involved behind the scenes. Admin copilots can recommend workflow updates. Analyst copilots can surface trends and generate insights conversationally. AI can identify duplicate triggers, inconsistent processes or gaps in knowledge content.
The role of service teams is therefore changing as well.
The goal is not to remove humans from support. It is to reduce unnecessary effort, improve decision-making and allow teams to focus on complex work, customer relationships and operational improvement.
“The organisations seeing the most value from AI are not treating it as a standalone feature. They are integrating it into how service operations evolve, improve and scale.”
Ignacio de La Llave, Solutions Consultant
Five operational shifts CX leaders should prepare for
1. AI will increase the importance of connected customer context
Zendesk reports that 85% of CX leaders believe memory-rich AI agents are essential for delivering personalised service experiences. At the same time, 74% of consumers say repeating information is one of the most frustrating parts of support.
Customers increasingly expect continuity.
They expect support teams and AI systems to understand previous conversations, account history, preferences and context without restarting the interaction each time they switch channels or speak to a different person.
This changes how organisations should think about their service operations.
Disconnected systems, inconsistent ticket structures and missing integrations create fragmented experiences for both customers and agents. AI can only work effectively when it has access to reliable context.
That is why operational foundations still matter.
At Premium Plus, we help organisations optimise Zendesk environments so customer context is easier to access, maintain and use consistently across service teams. This can include workflow reviews, trigger optimisation, integrations, ticket structure improvements, knowledge organisation and operational governance.
The objective is not simply to become “AI-ready”. It is to create the conditions where AI can deliver stronger outcomes from the beginning.
2. Knowledge quality will directly affect AI performance
Self-service is evolving as well.
Customers no longer want quick answers. They want resolution.
Zendesk found that 74% of consumers now expect support to be available 24/7 because of AI, while 85% of CX leaders believe customers will leave brands that fail to resolve issues efficiently.
That puts pressure on the knowledge layer behind AI.
Modern AI agents rely heavily on structured, accurate and maintainable knowledge. If articles are outdated, inconsistent or difficult to navigate, AI will surface those weaknesses quickly.
At the same time, AI is also beginning to improve knowledge operations itself.
Agentic AI can identify missing content, recommend article updates, detect gaps in resolution flows and suggest documentation improvements based on customer interactions.
But organisations still benefit from starting with a strong baseline.
Well-structured knowledge gives AI more reliable information to work with from day one, improves resolution quality and reduces the risk of inconsistent answers.
“A help centre is no longer just a content library. It is part of the operational system AI relies on to make decisions, guide customers and support agents.”
Ignacio de la Llave, Premium Plus Solutions Consultant
3. Multimodal AI is changing how customers interact with support
Zendesk reports that 76% of consumers value support experiences where they can continue the same conversation across text, images and video without having to restart or repeat context.
This reflects a broader shift toward multimodal service.
Customers and employees increasingly expect to share screenshots, voice notes, videos and visual context naturally during support interactions. They do not want channels to feel disconnected.
For service teams, the focus is therefore shifting away from managing channels separately and toward enabling AI to operate consistently across every interaction type.
Whether the conversation starts in chat, email, messaging, voice or video, the experience should remain connected and contextual.
This makes operational consistency more important than channel-specific processes alone.
Knowledge quality, integrations, permissions, workflow governance and customer context all influence whether AI can support customers effectively across channels.
The challenge is no longer simply offering omnichannel support.
It is creating a connected service environment where AI, agents and customers can work across different media types without losing continuity.
4. AI copilots will change how service operations are managed
Analytics is also evolving.
Zendesk’s CX Trends report highlights the rise of promptable analytics and conversational insights, where teams can ask operational questions in natural language and receive AI-generated explanations, recommendations and reporting outputs.
Traditional service metrics still matter:
- CSAT
- First contact resolution
- SLA achievement
- Backlog management
- Cost per contact
- Resolution time
But agentic AI introduces a new operational layer.
Leaders increasingly need to understand:
- Which issues AI resolves successfully
- Where AI escalates unnecessarily
- Which workflows generate repeated contacts
- Which knowledge gaps create failed resolutions
- Why AI recommends operational changes
- Which processes create friction for customers or agents
This changes the role of reporting.
Instead of relying only on static dashboards, organisations are moving toward continuous operational insight supported by AI copilots and conversational analytics.
At Premium Plus, we help organisations build the reporting foundations, operational visibility and governance structures needed to make AI-driven insights reliable and actionable.
Because as AI becomes more involved in operational recommendations, trust in the underlying data becomes even more important.
5. Governance and operational understanding will become more important, not less
One of the biggest misconceptions around AI is that it removes the need for operational oversight.
In reality, the opposite is happening.
Zendesk found that 95% of consumers want transparency around AI-driven decisions. Customers increasingly expect organisations to explain why an action was taken, why a refund was declined or why a particular workflow was triggered.
At the same time, AI copilots are beginning to recommend operational changes themselves.
They can identify overlapping triggers, suggest automation updates, highlight inefficient workflows or recommend knowledge improvements based on ticket trends.
That creates enormous opportunities for optimisation.
But it also means organisations need strong governance and operational understanding.
Teams still need to evaluate recommendations critically, understand the impact of changes and maintain visibility into how their Zendesk environment evolves over time.
The organisations that benefit most from agentic AI will not necessarily be the ones automating the fastest. They will be the ones with enough operational clarity to guide AI effectively.
That includes:
- Understanding workflows and dependencies
- Maintaining clean operational structures
- Defining governance processes
- Reviewing AI recommendations carefully
- Monitoring impact continuously
- Ensuring transparency for customers and agents
AI can accelerate optimisation.
But organisations still need the operational maturity to manage that optimisation responsibly.
The real opportunity is operational maturity
McKinsey makes an important point: organisations that treat agentic AI purely as a technology project are likely to struggle.
The most successful teams approach AI as an operational transformation initiative involving support, IT, HR, CX and leadership.
That is often where we see the biggest opportunity at Premium Plus.
Many organisations already have powerful Zendesk environments, but over time, complexity increases:
- Triggers overlap
- Forms become inconsistent
- Knowledge becomes difficult to maintain
- Reporting loses clarity
- Integrations evolve separately
- Operational ownership becomes fragmented
AI can absolutely help identify those issues.
Modern Zendesk copilots can surface bottlenecks, recommend improvements and provide operational insights much faster than manual analysis alone.
But organisations still benefit from having strong foundations and governance in place before scaling AI initiatives aggressively.
The question is no longer simply:
“Are we ready for AI?”
It is increasingly:
- Do we understand our operations well enough to guide AI effectively?
- Can we evaluate AI recommendations confidently?
- Does our Zendesk environment provide reliable operational context?
- Are we maintaining knowledge and workflows consistently?
- Can we measure AI impact accurately?
- Do customers and agents understand automated decisions?
- Do we have governance processes around AI-driven change?
These are operational questions as much as technical ones.
Where Premium Plus can help
Premium Plus helps organisations improve how Zendesk supports service operations, customer experience and AI initiatives.
Our services include:
- Zendesk implementation reviews
- Operational optimisation
- AI impact and governance assessments
- Help centre creation and optimisation
- Theme development
- Apps and integrations
- CX guidance
- Training and onboarding
- Reporting and operational visibility improvements
- Data migrations
We work with support, IT, HR, operations and CX teams to create Zendesk environments that are scalable, maintainable and better positioned to support the next generation of AI-powered service.
Final thought
Agentic AI is changing how service operations evolve.
AI can now recommend workflow improvements, identify bottlenecks, improve knowledge quality and surface operational insights continuously.
The organisations that benefit most will not necessarily be the ones adopting AI first.
They will be the ones with the operational clarity, governance and service foundations needed to use AI effectively, challenge recommendations where necessary and continuously improve the customer experience.
AI is becoming part of the operating model.
The question for CX leaders is no longer whether AI belongs in service operations.
It is how effectively organisations can manage, guide and scale it.
Want to understand how your Zendesk environment can better support AI-driven service operations?
Book a Zendesk operational review with Premium Plus, and we’ll help you identify opportunities, governance gaps and practical next steps.