January 26, 2026
Gartner Predicts AI Customer Service Costs Will Exceed Those of Offshore Human Agents Soon
The rising cost of AI was a thorny issue across 2025, and one that will likely get worse for the rest of the decade.
The cost of back-end AI hardware (silicon, RAM, data centres and energy) is rocketing. So, even a midsize business with modest AI and cloud use for customer or employee experience could see support service costs rise as vendors change their cost models or keep ticking up prices at renewal.
Which has led to business analyst firm Gartner suggesting that by 2030:
- Cost Per Resolution for GenAI will Exceed $3, higher than many B2C offshore human agents
- And that regulatory changes related to AI will increase assisted service volume by 30%
While none of this addresses customer preference for human or AI help, it could throw another curveball into the executive decision-making process.
The Rising Price of AI vs the Cost of Empathy for Customer Service
Alongside the rising data centre costs, the need for AI vendors to turn a profit and increasingly complex use cases, consuming more tokens, and needing expensive talent, could lead to soaring AI costs for customer service businesses.
“Customer service leaders are determined to use AI to reduce costs, but return on those investments is far from guaranteed,” said Patrick Quinlan, Senior Director Analyst in the Gartner Customer Service and Support practice.
“Full automation will be prohibitively expensive for most organizations; instead, leading organizations will use AI to drive customer engagement rather than to cut costs.” He concludes.
Growing Tensions Across Customer Services
The tension in businesses sees leaders demanding teams do more with AI to reduce costs, even as the price of AI is rising.
With often hidden costs such as licensing fees, integration work, compliance reviews, and constant monitoring to prevent AI drift. Then there’s the well-known and dependable use of outsourcing (ignoring the yo-yo debate around reshoring and juggling between AI and human agents).
However, the AI creator giants of this world are starting to focus on lower-cost AI. Reducing the need for expensive hardware and the use of smaller datasets for limited functions, like customer service. That could see AI prices fall pretty sharply, and other CXM and CX vendors could just as easily follow their lessons, making AI more tempting compared to offshoring (again).
