7 ways AI is transforming customer engagement

Everyone knows the feeling of waiting for what feels like ages on a support line, repeating the same details to multiple people, or getting a non-response that doesn’t fully answer your question. It’s frustrating and makes you feel as if the brand doesn’t value your business.

AI is helping businesses prevent these moments by using data to provide more personalised support, predict customer needs, and handle routine questions. At a time when 82% of service professionals agree that customer expectations are higher than they used to be, now’s the time to use AI to improve customer experiences across service, sales, and marketing.

In this article, we’ll explore seven ways AI is already improving customer engagement, backed by insights from our State of Service Report, 7th Edition .

AI helps businesses connect with customers by speeding up service, personalising messages, and making decisions more data-driven. Here’s a quick look at seven ways it’s improving customer engagement.

Chatbots, voice assistants, and agent tools can help with frequently asked questions, provide 24/7 support, send complex cases to the right person, and give your team the context they need to resolve customer issues the first time.

We found that 79% of service leaders say investing in AI agents is essential to meet current business demands. Plus, by 2027, 50% of service cases are expected to be resolved by AI, up from 30% today. This means that if you’re not investing in AI now, you’ll need to keep up with competitors that are.

One real-world example of how AI can improve customer service can be seen from the global premium appliance company, Fisher & Paykel.

They started using Agentforce to make customer service more proactive and consistent across all the places they connect with their customers. They also connected Data Cloud and Service Cloud so that Agentforce can instantly pull details from more than 10,000 knowledge base articles to guide customers through appliance troubleshooting. This has cut call times by half and is expected to lift self-service rates to 65%.

AI gives your team the power to act before problems arise. Using AI predictive tools, you’ll be able to spot when a customer might churn or is ready for an upsell. Instead of waiting for your customers to make the first move, your business can reach out to them with a targeted message.

In our State of Service Report , service leaders said that, by using AI agents, they expect service costs and resolution times to drop by 20%, with customer satisfaction increasing by 20%.

Those results show how much being proactive matters. When you use AI to reach out at the right moment, you’re able to save time and keep customers happy.

Using our CRM Analytics, you can see patterns in your customer data – not only what’s happened, but also what’s likely to happen next. This data allows your team to focus their time on keeping loyal customers happy and turning potential churn into retention.

Customers expect brands to know who they are and what products or services they buy. For example, your customers won’t feel valued if you send them a December marketing email offering summer BBQ supplies and they live in the northern hemisphere.

AI allows your team to see these details clearly and adapt your communication in real-time using generative AI. This can be data points like location, timezone, and age, but also preferences, content they have shown interest in, and details from support requests.

One great example of this in practice can be seen from MECCA, Australia’s largest beauty retailer. They use Marketing Cloud to personalise all of their customer communications, whether these are on their website, in their emails, or at the POS in their physical store. Since implementing this, the number of customers who shop both online and in-store has grown from 12% to more than 30%.

When you use AI to personalise how you connect with customers, you’re able to show you understand what matters to them.

Conversational AI helps you manage customer requests much faster than a human support team can. It can listen, understand dynamic requests, and triage them to the right place.

Already, 78% of companies have integrated conversational AI into at least one key operational area. Voice AI in particular lets customers ask questions back and forth while capturing every detail, so your team can pick up right where the conversation left off.

When using these tools, it's important to be transparent. Let customers know they are speaking with AI. That way, if the customer does request to talk to a person, AI can provide a clear and smooth handover.

In our State of Service Report , 85% of service professionals using voice AI said the transition to a human agent is seamless, and 89% of companies said conversational AI has helped more customers resolve issues on their own.

Using Service Cloud Voice, your team can combine AI chat and voice with live support. The AI can answer simple questions, capture details, and pass them to an agent so customers don’t have to repeat themselves.

AI can log data, update records, send follow-ups, and trigger workflows automatically across service, sales, and marketing. This allows your people to focus on the more complex tasks that need human input.

When your systems are connected and data is shared between them, your automation can be more targeted. We found that organisations that integrate their service channels into one platform are 1.4 times more likely to report very successful AI implementations.

With Agentforce and MuleSoft, you can connect all your systems so that data flows smoothly and actions happen automatically.

For example, BizCover, one of the world’s leading Insurtech providers, uses Agentforce and MuleSoft to manage a large volume of service requests with a small team. Since introducing automation, more than 90% of payment issues are now handled automatically, allowing BizCover to support more than 200,000 customers with just 16 full-time service employees.

Historically, getting meaningful customer insights meant hours spent pulling reports, exporting spreadsheets, and trying to piece together disconnected data points. Teams often had the data, but not the time or tools to turn it into something useful.

AI can now scan thousands of data points in seconds and present insights that a human can instantly understand and run with. It does this by spotting patterns in behaviour, preferences, and sentiment that humans wouldn’t have time to comb through data for.

In our State of Service Report , we found that 90% of service leaders believe AI helps them make quicker, yet more informed decisions.

Using tools like Tableau and CRM Analytics, you can collect more customer data and turn it into live dashboards that anyone on your team can understand at a glance. For example, which products or services are performing best, where customer satisfaction is dipping, and how different channels are performing.

Now, instead of waiting for monthly reports, your team can spot patterns instantly and adjust their strategy on the spot.

It’s not just tech companies using AI anymore. The technology is helpful in all areas where you need to manage a large amount of data, like healthcare, finance, automotive, and field services.

For example, in field service, AI can help plan technician schedules, predict equipment issues, and optimise your inventory. This results in fewer delays and more cost-effective resource use.

We found that 85% of field service leaders expect AI investments to rise this year, and technicians report that about 18% of their week (7.27 hours) is spent on admin tasks that AI could eliminate.

We offer tailored tools to support different industries, like Health Cloud, Financial Services Cloud, Automotive Cloud, and Field Service. Having tools designed for your specific industry means the AI is built to understand your workflows and regulations, so it can deliver insights that actually support how your business operates.

While we’ve covered all the big benefits you can expect from AI, implementing it successfully depends on how you manage your data and security.

To support your rollout, here’s advice on how to overcome the three common challenges businesses face.

Customers are more aware than ever of how their data is used. In fact, 64% of customers believe companies are being reckless with their data, and 61% say AI makes it even more important to protect it.

To maintain trust with your customers while rolling out AI, you need to be transparent about what data you gather and how you plan to use it.

Start by putting together a data governance policy with a focus on ensuring your customer data is handled responsibly. Our built-in security features can help you maintain compliance and protect sensitive information from day one.

Connecting your new AI tools with existing systems can sometimes be challenging if you aren’t fully prepared. According to our State of IT: AI and App Development report , 29% of IT projects aren’t delivered on time due to security and compliance challenges.

Integration tools like MuleSoft simplify this process by connecting all your systems into a single, secure platform. This allows your AI to access accurate, real-time data without manual work or disruption.

AI is only as useful as the data it learns from. We found that 86% of IT leaders say data quality makes or breaks AI effectiveness, and many now allocate 20% of their budgets to improving it. However, as it stands, only 53% of IT teams have full confidence in their data.

Clean and structured data helps AI provide better insights and predictions. Start by auditing where your customer data comes from and how it’s stored. Remove any duplicates and fill in missing fields.

From there, tools like Data Cloud can connect your data across platforms, giving you a single source of truth your AI can pull from.

AI can help improve your customer engagement, whether that's from faster service resolutions with Agentforce or personalised marketing powered by Marketing Cloud. AI is now an accessible way for businesses of all sizes to cut costs, speed up service, and give your team a single source of truth.

Plus, with tools like Data Cloud and CRM Analytics, you can bring all your customer data together, automate the repetitive work, and make every interaction feel more personal and proactive.

If you’re ready to see how AI can improve your customer experience, watch our Agentforce demo today.