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5 Customer Service Trends You Need to Watch

Male office worker, sitting at a desk, exploring the latest customer service trends on his laptop
Knowing these customer service ​trends — including the role of ​generative ​AI — will help you meet customers’ changing expectations​​. [rh2010 / Adobe Stock]

What's next for the service industry? Here are the top customer service trends that every leader needs to know.

As technology advances, the state of customer service changes along with it. Our research shows that 65% of customers expect companies to adapt to their needs, and technologies like generative AI will play a major role in meeting those evolving expectations. Here are five customer service trends to keep in mind as you prepare for the year ahead. 

AI is already a major force for great customer service. But knowing how to use it well will put you ahead of your competitors — and make your customers happier. As you build your plans for 2024 and beyond, make sure these trends influence your decisions.

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Keep up with customer service trends

High-performing service organizations are using data and AI to improve efficiency without sacrificing the customer experience. Find out how in our latest State of Service report.

1. Self-service will get smarter

Generative AI will help you deliver great customer self-service, with super-powered chatbots and auto-generated knowledge base articles

AI-driven chatbots will play an important role in responding to simple customer issues, freeing agents to spend more time on high-complexity, high-value interactions. With generative AI tapping into customer resolution data to analyze sentiment and patterns, service organizations will be able to identify customer service trends and accelerate bot training. 

2. Data will become more centralized

Many organizations keep data in different silos or applications, so it’s difficult to get a complete view of the customer across all channels. 

Bringing customer data together is all about creating an end-to-end view of the entire customer journey. This way, you’ll have a continuous feedback loop between sales, service, and other departments within your organization. Doing this makes sure all your teams are on the same page and speaking the same language.

Here’s how you can make this happen in 2024:

  • Identify silos: Start by identifying all the places where your customer data is stored. It could be in different software applications, databases, or even spreadsheets. Break down those data silos and bring everything under one roof.
  • Choose the right tools: Invest in the right data integration tools that can seamlessly connect all these data sources. 
  • Establish data governance: Think of this as setting rules for your data playground. Define who has access to what data, who’s responsible for maintaining it, and how data should be updated. 
  • Create a single customer view: By having one complete view of each customer, everyone on your team can see the full customer journey.
  • Train your teams: Just like learning a new language, your teams need training on how to use your data effectively. Make sure everyone knows how to access and interpret the right information at the right time to make informed decisions.
  • Monitor and refine: Unifying data isn’t a one-time thing; it’s an ongoing process. Keep an eye on data quality, performance, and how well your teams are using it.

3. Conversational AI assistants will take service to the next level

The introduction of conversational AI assistants is already transforming the future of customer service. These new AI-driven assistants will help customer service agents solve one of their biggest problems – spending too much time searching for information. 

AI assistants will surface the right information at the right time to speed up interactions, improve customer satisfaction, and increase loyalty. Here’s what that looks like in practice:  

  • Responding to customers with personalized, relevant answers grounded in trusted company knowledge across any preferred channel — including email, SMS, live chat and social media 
  • Resolving customer issues faster using generative answers seamlessly integrated into agents’ flow of work
  • Auto-summarizing intricate support cases and field work orders

4. AI will make the frontline more productive

AI is improving productivity for workers in the field. One of the emerging benefits of AI in field service is the ability to generate insights and predict job duration. Workers can use AI to easily view asset condition as well as maintenance and repair history, then schedule proactive service to minimize downtime.  

With Generative AI, your customers can also book and reschedule their own appointments. They’ll have the ability to check when their technician is on the way, reducing no-shows and call volume for a better experience all around.

5. Trust will become a competitive advantage

While generative AI is exciting, many customers are understandably wary of the risks. That’s why privacy, security, and trust will become a major competitive advantage in the new AI landscape. 

As we move into 2024, high-performing companies will adopt programs that prevent large-language models (LLMs) from retaining sensitive customer data. More organizations will train their own domain-specific models to access a secure AI cloud while storing data on their own infrastructure. These efforts will be important to preserving customers’ loyalty and trust. 

Staying one step ahead of customer service trends

How can you pursue innovation while maintaining the integrity of your data? How do you build customers’ trust in emerging technologies? And what’s the secret to delivering faster, more effective customer service without breaking the bank?  

The right technologies can help you get ahead of customer service trends — and remain resilient in the face of change. By training your agents to use generative AI, you can increase productivity, resolve cases faster, and deepen customer relationships for a clear advantage in 2024 and beyond.

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Author Rekha Srivatsan
Rekha Srivatsan VP, Service Cloud

Rekha is the VP of Product Marketing for Salesforce Service Cloud, leading product marketing for all Service Cloud solutions and driving Salesforce’s overall success in transforming the customer support industry. Rekha has spent her career building and growing products that help companies connect with their customers — from small businesses to enterprise organizations.

More by Rekha

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