Adoption of AI agents in customer service has grown from 39% in 2025 to 66% in 2026, according to a Salesforce survey of 3,075 service professionals representing 13 countries across five continents. To maintain customer trust, service organizations continue to ensure that people are in the customer service loop. In fact, 77% of companies with AI agents allow customers to connect with human agents at any point.

The Salesforce survey found that 85% of service organizations use AI. The current use is generative AI at 78%, predictive AI at 71%, and agentic AI at 66%. The use of agentic AI by the end of 2026 is expected to be at 88%.

The customer-facing adoption of AI agents is at 89%, meaning the agents are used across the entire service lifecycle and across all channels, including web, voice, apps, text, and social networks. The top use cases for AI agents include: proactive outreach, personalized product recommendations, resolving cases, case routing, and after-call work.

The survey revealed that service organizations are building more skills to support digital labor, aka AI agents. The roles expected to expand due to AI adoption include data management (66%), specialist (62%), AI architect (61%), prompt specialist (50%) and AI generalist (48%). Expanding the capabilities of AI agents will require autonomous design engineers and relationship design engineers to ensure the proper hand-offs between humans and AIs. Most companies are investing in AI training for their staff. The survey found that only 3% of service reps report no engagement with upskilling programs. The AI training curriculum includes workshops and conferences (53%), internal training programs (53%), and online courses (49%).

The skills priorities for services professionals as they adopt AI agents in the workplace include AI oversight and judgment, complex problem solving, and adaptability and learning agility, which includes strategic thinking.

Nearly 9 out of 10 respondents said they are using AI for internal employee-facing functions, including how teams are optimally managed. Half of service leaders are using AI agents to analyze trends and adjust their workflows. Service leaders are using AI to track employee performance (50%), predict demand (47%) and recommend staffing schedule adjustments (40%). The results of using AI for back office performance management is very promising. The vast majority of service leaders (92%) note that AI improves their ability to coach at scale.