Agentic AI for customer service: why your contact centre needs it now
If you’re still relying on traditional chatbots, you might be wondering why. They follow rigid scripts, panic at the first curveball question, and hand over to humans faster than you can say “I’d like to speak to a manager.”
Fortunately, times have changed. Dramatically.
Agentic AI is a far more sophisticated type of customer service automation. It not only responds to queries but also thinks, reasons, and solves problems. No hand-holding required.
In 2025, agentic AI is quickly becoming the norm for customer service. But make it part of a bespoke AI solution for your entire business and you’ll gain a real competitive advantage. An advantage that’s unique to your business, that can’t be copied, and that will last deep into the future.
What exactly is agentic AI?
Rest assured, agentic AI isn’t just a smart new name for the same old chatbot. It’s a fundamentally different proposition.
While traditional chatbots are reactive, inflexible and rigidly follow decision trees, agentic AI is autonomous. It understands context, accesses multiple systems, makes decisions for itself, and executes complete workflows without human intervention. Think of it as a virtual agent who has read every policy document, memorised your entire product catalogue, and can juggle five different systems at once.
In practice, that means:
- It can process a refund request, check your CRM, update the order status, and send a confirmation email – all in one conversation.
- It recognises when a customer is frustrated and adjusts its tone accordingly.
- It learns from every interaction, getting smarter with each query it handles.
In short, agentic AI doesn’t just answer queries, it resolves them – independently and efficiently.
Why UK companies are betting big on agentic AI
According to recent industry forecasts, agentic AI is expected to be autonomously resolving 80% of routine customer service queries by 2029. That’s just four years away.
But what does it mean for your bottom line today?
Cost savings that move the needle
The average UK contact centre spends from £15,000 to £35,000 per agent, per year, when you factor in salaries, training, benefits, and infrastructure. Now imagine slashing those support costs by 60%, all whilst improving service quality. Because AI automation in contact centres does much more than just reduce headcount costs:
- It cuts average handling time (AHT) by up to 40%
- It improves first-contact resolution rates dramatically
- It scales instantly during peak periods (no more seasonal hiring headaches)
- It eliminates inconsistent responses across your support team
That’s the kind of ROI you simply can’t ignore.
Customer experience without compromise
Agentic AI isn’t about replacing the human touch – it’s about amplifying it.
After all, your customers don’t really care whether they’re talking to a human or an AI. They just want their problem solved quickly, accurately, and without being bounced from agent to agent.
In most cases, agentic AI delivers on all three. And that frees up your human agents to focus on the other complex, emotionally nuanced cases where empathy and creativity really matter.
The result? Happier customers and happier support teams. Win-win.
How agentic AI transforms contact centres
What can agentic AI do for your contact centre operation?
1. End-to-end query resolution
Forget simple FAQ bots. Agentic AI handles multi-step workflows across your entire tech stack:
- Order management: check status, process returns, arrange replacements
- Account updates: password resets, billing changes, subscription modifications
- Technical troubleshooting: diagnose issues, walk customers through fixes, escalate when needed
- Payment processing: handle refunds, update payment methods, resolve billing disputes
All of this happens autonomously, in real-time, without a single human touching the ticket.
2. Intelligent routing and escalation
Some queries can be resolved perfectly by AI. Others genuinely require human expertise. The beauty of agentic AI is that it can tell the difference.
It analyses query complexity, customer sentiment, and historical context to decide whether to handle the issue itself or escalate to a human agent. And when it does escalate, it passes along complete conversation history and context, so your agents aren’t starting from scratch.
3. Omni-channel consistency
Your customers don’t live on a single channel, so neither should your AI. Agentic AI maintains seamless context across:
- Web chat
- Voice (yes, AI voice agents are already here)
- Social media
For example, a customer can start a conversation on your website then follow up an hour later via WhatsApp, and your AI will pick up from exactly where the conversation left off. No repeated explanations. No frustrated customers.
4. Proactive support
This is where agentic AI shows just how smart it is. Instead of simply reacting to queries, it can identify patterns and take proactive action. It can:
- Spot delivery delays and notify customers before they ask
- Identify product issues from support trends and alert your team
- Suggest relevant products or upgrades based on customer behaviour
- Send timely reminders for renewals or subscription changes
It delivers customer service that anticipates needs rather than just responding to them.
Real-world impact: what UK businesses are noticing
Early adopters of agentic AI are reporting some eye-opening metrics across a number of industries.
Retail and E-Commerce: A UK fashion retailer implemented agentic AI and saw first-response times drop by 65% and monthly orders increase by 18%. Why? Because faster, more accurate support builds trust – and trust drives conversions.
Financial Services: A fintech start-up used AI automation in their contact centre to handle 70% of tier-1 support queries autonomously. As a result, support costs were down by half, and customer satisfaction scores up by 22 points.
Healthcare: A private medical practice deployed agentic AI for appointment scheduling and patient queries. It delivered an 80% reduction in admin time and a significantly better patient experience.
The pattern is clear. Across sectors, agentic AI delivers measurable improvements in efficiency, cost, and customer satisfaction – often within weeks of deployment.
What to look for in an agentic AI platform
If you’re evaluating AI solutions for your contact centre, these are the capabilities that really matter:
✅ Deep integration capabilities
Your AI needs to work seamlessly with your CRM, helpdesk, payment systems, and knowledge bases. Look for platforms with robust APIs and pre-built connectors.
✅ UK compliance and data security
GDPR isn’t optional. Make sure your AI provider handles data securely, hosts in the UK (or EU), and meets regulatory requirements.
✅ Multilingual support
If you serve diverse customer bases (as most UK business do), your AI should handle multiple languages natively – not through clunky translation plugins.
✅ Human-AI handoff
The best systems know when to escalate. Seamless handover to human agents, complete with conversation context, is non-negotiable.
✅ Transparent pricing
Enterprise-grade needn’t mean enterprise pricing. Look for providers with clear, scalable pricing models that match your business size.
Why Worktual is your first option
At Worktual, we’ve built agentic AI specifically for UK businesses that need enterprise capabilities without the enterprise price tag.
Our platform combines:
- AI agents for chat and voice that resolve queries autonomously
- Sentiment analysis that detects customer emotions and adjusts responses
- Unified inbox for all support channels (web, social, voice, email)
- CRM integrations that work out of the box
- GDPR-compliant infrastructure hosted in the UK
- Multilingual support for 30+ languages
- Transparent pricing designed for SMEs and scaling businesses
But remember, our agentic AI is not intended to replace your support team. It’s designed to free them up and supercharge them.
Move fast? Or think bigger?
The truth is that your competitors may already be implementing agentic AI – and delivering the faster responses and improved experiences customers expect in 2025.
So the question isn’t whether to adopt AI automation in your contact centre. It’s how to do it most effectively and efficiently.
If you really need to move fast, Worktual offers proven, pre-built AI systems which we can integrate into your contact centre infrastructure.
Alternatively, we can partner with you to create a bespoke AI solution to transform every facet of your business. Just bring your data, your knowledge and your vision.
You’ll get a custom-built solution. Impossible to copy. Impossible to equal. And always evolving with your operation in the future, to sustain your competitive edge.
If you want to go beyond, go bespoke.
What is Worktual?
Free your team from repetitive questions
Worktual helps you slash support costs by 60% while improving response speed and accuracy.
See it in action
