Is this the first AI Christmas?

Though the holidays are meant to be merry and bright, for customer service teams, December can feel more like a marathon than a celebration. An avalanche of shipping inquiries, inventory questions, and last-minute returns can bury even the most seasoned service organizations.

“The holidays can be overwhelming for service teams,” says Lauren Lee, vice president of CX sales, global, at Freshworks. “We’ve seen AI lift some of that weight, giving agents more space to focus on the conversations that really matter.”

AI already powers a significant share of customer service today, driving chatbots, knowledge bases, and virtual assistants that field millions of customer questions each day. But a new wave is emerging: agentic AI, which doesn’t just deliver information, but takes action, too.

To ease the load for agents and improve the experience for customers, many companies are beginning to explore this next evolution. More than half are actively using or plan to use AI agents in the next six months across various functions, including customer service, a recent report finds. And today, retailers are laying the groundwork for a future where agentic AI can work alongside human agents to deliver efficient and more human service at scale.

“It’s not just about speed anymore,” says bestselling author and customer-service researcher Shep Hyken. “Customers want efficiency, but they also want effort. They want to feel like the person on the other end cares. AI gives agents breathing room to make that happen.”

That shift is redefining what great customer experience will mean in the seasons ahead, combining the speed of automation with the empathy only humans can deliver. 

Read also: Retail customer experience is getting an agentic upgrade

From chatbots to coworkers

Behind the scenes, AI has already changed the way service teams work—helping agents find information faster, suggest the right next step, or automate routine tasks, resolving issues faster than before. In fact, companies using AI to support their service teams have cut response times by 22%, even as overall customer interactions increased. The next evolution, agentic AI, goes further by taking action on behalf of agents to resolve simple issues automatically.

At Ashley Furniture, the “Ashley Assist” tool uses AI to help store associates and field teams find information that customers request, in seconds. Instead of manually searching product catalogs or websites, employees can ask natural-language questions like “What blue sofas do we sell?” and instantly surface relevant options, specs, and availability, says Pete Petrocelli, the company’s VP of IT. The company is also testing an AI-powered voice agent that automatically creates and routes service tickets, with plans to pilot it in select stores early next year. 

On the front end, Ashley Furniture recently launched a capability that allows shoppers to find and buy products directly through AI-powered search engine Perplexity and pay with PayPal in a single step.

These uses of AI are paving the way for applications of agentic AI in the year ahead, Petrocelli says. After the holidays, the company plans to expand into more autonomous capabilities that handle simple inquiries automatically, freeing agents to focus on solving problems and supporting customers. 

“These agentic tools will help the customer experience and our team member experience, whether they’re at the retail store or the call center,” he says. “And I foresee these tools helping to keep track of customer issues when it’s a busy holiday season so they’re not getting lost.”

Ashley Furniture isn’t alone in these efforts. Across the retail industry, many organizations are imagining how AI agents could take on more of the heavy lifting during the holiday rush. Forty-three percent of retailers are piloting AI agents while the majority (53%) are evaluating use cases. 

From assistance to autonomy

Agentic AI will remake customer service even more, particularly in the way service teams handle the holiday rush, Hyken says. “If you told a chatbot your package was lost, it would likely just acknowledge it and connect you with an agent,” Hyken says. “But agentic AI will recognize that your package is lost, cancel that order, and create a new one, all without needing to be transferred.

That leap from information to action is poised to transform both sides of the customer service experience. Customers could see faster resolutions and fewer handoffs, while human agents could spend less time on repetitive tasks—like processing returns or updating shipping details—and more time on meaningful, relationship-driven interactions. 

And this is only the beginning, Hyken adds. Agentic AI systems are capable of monitoring tone and sentiment in real time, alerting agents when frustration is building or when a customer’s patience is wearing thin. “If the AI senses tension, it might prompt the agent to slow down, acknowledge the concern, or add reassurance before moving on to the solution,” he explains. “It’s like having a coach sitting beside you, reminding you to show empathy at the right moment.”

That emotional intelligence is exactly where agentic AI can elevate service, says Freshworks’ Lee. “The questions don’t really change around the holiday season,” she says. “What changes is the sheer volume of those inquiries. That’s where AI becomes critical—handling the repeat questions at scale so human agents can focus on the interactions that really matter.”

For Petrocelli, that’s the ultimate goal: AI agents quietly resolving simple stuff so human agents can create a better experience. 

“We’re essentially giving agents a personal assistant to support them,” Hyken adds. But the goal isn’t shorter calls, it’s smarter ones. “You want to make every agent better and have every customer taken care of. That’s when technology becomes an experience—and not just a tool.”