The AI Wave and the Future of Customer Service: A Focus on Cost or a Sustainable Experience?
The AI revolution is bringing many fundamental changes to the business world, along with a host of uncertainties. But behind this fog lies one crystal-clear truth: the need for human staff in customer service operations is shrinking fast.
Booking Holdings’ fourth-quarter 2025 financial results offered one of the most striking examples of this transformation. While the company’s bookings rose about 10% in 2025, its customer service costs declined in absolute terms, resulting in a roughly 10% drop in customer service cost per booking. The company’s chief financial officer, Ewout Steenbergen, attributes this directly to the integration of generative AI into operations. AI’s efficiency gains are no longer a matter of theoretical debate; they are a reality proven on the bottom line, and the momentum keeps building.
It is entirely understandable that finance executives greet short-term cost reductions with great enthusiasm. But on the other side of the coin, in the customer’s world, things don’t work so mechanically. All the research shows that consumers don’t admire brands simply because they use AI. Customers aren’t interested in cuts to companies’ operating expenses or in technological showmanship. They have just one expectation: distinctive experiences that are intelligently designed, run smoothly and, above all, let them reach a real person effortlessly the moment they need human support.
Falling under the spell of short-term cost advantages and putting long-term customer experience, and with it sustainable profitability, at risk is one of the biggest strategic mistakes a company can make. The current period of technological renewal offers a tremendous opportunity — not to hand the entire job over to algorithms, but to build a more customer-centric world and strengthen the overall experience.
In our recent projects and senior-level conversations at Nord CX, we have been focusing on exactly this delicate balance. We develop strategies that position technology not to remove people from the system entirely but to increase the value people deliver. Organizations that manage this deep transformation well, and the outsourcing providers that offer them visionary leadership along the way, will pull far ahead in the market. By contrast, companies that look only at cost spreadsheets, see AI as a lifeline and ignore the human touch entirely are, unfortunately, in for a very hard time in the long run.
This piece was first published in Turkish in CX Bulletin on February 24, 2026. English translation.