For many companies, more revenue comes from existing customers than from new logos. AI in customer success and support can protect and grow that base — or damage it if customers feel pushed away.
Uses that help
- Health scores and churn risk: combine product usage, support tickets, billing and engagement to flag accounts that need attention.
- Renewal and expansion briefs: summarize an account's history, value delivered and open issues before a renewal call.
- Support assistants: help human agents answer faster and more consistently.
- Customer agents: answer routine questions directly, with a hand-off to a person.
The evidence
- In a large field study of more than 5,000 customer-support agents, access to a generative AI assistant increased issues resolved per hour by 14% on average and 34% for novice and low-skilled workers, with little effect on the most experienced (Brynjolfsson, Li and Raymond).
- Klarna announced in February 2024 that its AI assistant handled two-thirds of customer service chats in its first month, doing the work of 700 full-time agents, with customer satisfaction on par with human agents.
The warning
In May 2025, Klarna's CEO told Bloomberg that because cost had been too predominant an evaluation factor, the result was lower quality, and that it was critical to be clear to customers that there will always be a human if they want one. Klarna began hiring human support staff again.
Gartner's survey of 5,728 customers found 64% would prefer companies didn't use AI for customer service; their top concern was that it would become harder to reach a person.
The lesson
Use AI to make your people faster and your outreach better targeted. Keep a visible path to a human. Measure retention and satisfaction, not only cost per contact.