AI Will Hit Customer Support First - Here's How to Stay Valuable
Let's be direct. Sam Altman says AI will take a big bite out of customer support work before most other fields. He believes the kind of support handled over phone and chat will be done better and cheaper by AI - and soon.
He also thinks the churn won't be new in scale, just faster. Historically, many jobs change every few generations. This time, that shift could compress into a few years.
What This Means for Support Pros
Routine tickets, status checks, password resets, policy answers - these are first in line for automation. That means fewer entry-level seats and more pressure on human agents to handle the hard stuff.
Your value moves from "typing answers" to "solving edge cases, calming people, and fixing broken systems." The more complex the issue and the more emotion involved, the safer you are.
Jobs With Human Connection Hold Up
Altman points to roles like nursing as safer because people want real human connection. In support, that translates to empathy, negotiation, and trust-building when things go sideways.
Think escalations, VIP accounts, high-stakes retention, and multi-step troubleshooting that crosses teams. These sit further from automation.
Your 90-Day Plan
- Audit your queue: Tag the top 50 intents. Mark what's automatable (FAQ, status, policy) vs. human-critical (edge cases, emotional escalations).
- Build an AI co-pilot: Use an LLM to draft replies, summarize threads, propose next steps, and suggest tone. Keep humans in the loop for final send on sensitive tickets.
- Create a prompt library: 20 reusable prompts for your brand voice, tricky policies, refunds, and de-escalation. Standardize intros, empathy lines, and closers.
- Tighten your knowledge base: Short answers, clear steps, single source of truth. AI is only as good as the content it pulls from.
- Track the right metrics: First-contact resolution, CSAT by intent, deflection rate, time-to-resolution on complex tickets. Show how AI + you improves outcomes.
- Level up your skill stack: Conversation design basics, workflow automation, QA of AI responses, and root-cause analysis across teams.
- Build a portfolio: Before/after replies, policy clarifications you wrote, deflection improvements, and a one-pager on your automation wins.
If You Lead a Team
- Pilot, measure, expand: Start with one queue. Compare CSAT, AHT, and FCR. Keep humans on complex tiers.
- Redesign roles: Fewer generalists, more specialists: conversation designers, knowledge managers, QA reviewers, and ops folks who tune workflows.
- Reskill, don't just reduce: Train agents to supervise AI, handle escalations, and maintain the knowledge base. Create a ladder that rewards complexity.
- Guardrails: Set policies for tone, refunds, sensitive topics, and data use. Humans own accountability.
The Debate: Will Jobs Shrink or Shift?
Some experts say AI could erase huge swaths of work in a couple of decades. Others argue tech usually boosts productivity and eventually creates better roles, even if the short term is messy.
History also shows mixed outcomes: sometimes automation expands employment by driving demand, other times it replaces skilled roles with lower-paid work. The takeaway: outcomes aren't guaranteed - your positioning is.
Simple Career Strategy
- Be the human AI can't replace: Empathy, de-escalation, complex troubleshooting, stakeholder coordination.
- Be the person who makes AI useful: Build prompts, fix the knowledge base, design workflows, QA the outputs.
- Tie your work to revenue: Save churned customers, protect SLAs, accelerate onboarding, and showcase wins with numbers.
- Teach your system: Document your playbooks. Train others. Become the go-to for "How do we do this with AI?"
Weekly Cadence to Stay Ahead
- Pick one high-volume intent and create a clean, AI-ready answer + prompts.
- Run a 10-ticket test. Measure CSAT and handle time. Tweak tone and steps.
- Escalate lessons to the KB and your team. Repeat next week.
Where to Skill Up Next
If you work in support and want a clear path into AI-assisted workflows, these resources can help:
AI will take the repetitive stuff. Your edge is owning the complex, the human, and the system that makes AI actually work. Do that, and you won't be replaced - you'll be the one running the new stack.
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