December 11, 2025
Gartner: AI Hasn’t Shrunk CX Workforces, Yet
Amid ongoing debate about whether artificial intelligence will replace frontline service workers, new research from Gartner suggests the situation is far more nuanced.
A survey of 321 customer service and support leaders found that only 20% have reduced agent headcount as a direct result of AI deployment, with most organisations using technology to boost productivity rather than remove roles altogether.
The majority of respondents (55%) reported stable staffing levels despite handling higher customer volumes, pointing to AI’s primary impact as operational support rather than workforce elimination. Tools such as virtual assistants, automated triage, agent copilots, and post-call summarisation are allowing teams to manage demand more efficiently while maintaining existing service capacity.
Melissa Fletcher, Senior Principal Researcher at Gartner, said: “Customer service and support leaders should avoid framing AI initiatives solely around headcount reduction. Instead, focus on incremental transformation and workforce augmentation. Leaders should plan for new roles, leverage central resources, and communicate transparently about AI’s impact to manage expectations effectively.”
For now, the bulk of implementations focus on agent assistance rather than replacement. Copilots provide real-time prompts, conversation summaries, tone analysis, and faster access to knowledge bases. Automation handles repetitive tasks such as call routing, identity verification, basic FAQs, and post-interaction wrap-up. The result is agents resolving inquiries faster and managing more interactions, but still acting as the primary interface with customers.
A More Complicated Reality
The broader labour market, however, tells a messier story. Amazon’s move to cut thousands of corporate roles, alongside layoffs at Chegg, Salesforce, and UPS, has been publicly linked to AI, amplifying fears that automation is already wiping out traditional jobs. Yet economists caution against reading these announcements as proof of a sweeping trend. Many restructurings stem from company-specific pressures, and treating executive comments as a proxy for AI’s real impact risks drawing the wrong conclusions.
A St. Louis Fed analysis found rising unemployment in occupations with higher exposure to AI, while other research shows the fallout is far more contained. After ChatGPT’s launch, the only clear spike in unemployment claims came from office and administrative support roles, not frontline service workers.
