A recent NVIDIA survey on AI adoption in financial services found that 60% of companies are now exploring generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to elevate customer engagement. With companies looking to integrate real-time, context-aware solutions, AI is shifting from reactive to proactive customer interaction.
But AI in customer service is evolving beyond simple automation. The next step is agentic AI, semi-autonomous systems capable of perceiving, reasoning, and acting on complex problems without human intervention.
AI-Powered Customer Service
At the ongoing Adobe Summit 2025, the company launched the Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator, introducing a new capability for businesses to integrate AI agents into customer experiences and marketing workflows.
In an exclusive conversation with AIM, Klaasjan Tukker, director of product management at Adobe Experience Platform, highlighted how the company’s AI-powered solutions are transforming digital experiences.
“A decade ago, digital marketing was structured around individual channels. Teams worked in silos—one managed website analytics, another focused on email campaigns, and a third handled audience targeting with third-party cookies. Customers had fragmented experiences because their interactions across channels weren’t unified.”
Recognising this challenge, Adobe built the Adobe Experience Platform to unify customer data and enable real-time engagement.
“Instead of relying on batch-driven, brand-initiated messaging, AEP allows businesses to interact dynamically—delivering ‘in-the-moment’ experiences that are personalised and timely,” he said.
Let’s consider a cricket match, for example. When should a brand notify a fan about new merchandise? The day before via email? Right after the match? Or the moment they scan their ticket at the stadium? According to Tukker, the last option is the most effective because real-time, context-aware engagement creates higher impact and conversions.
AI Helps Build Deeper Customer Relationships
The evolution of customer data platforms (CDPs) reflects this shift towards AI-driven personalisation. Tukker outlined three waves in the development of CDPs.
The first wave focused on unifying data. Initially, enterprises struggled with disconnected customer information spread across multiple touchpoints. CDPs emerged to create a single, comprehensive customer profile by integrating data from various sources.
The second wave was about democratising audience insights. Simply having centralised data wasn’t enough; marketing and customer service teams needed real-time access to insights. This phase enabled teams to segment audiences efficiently without relying on IT departments, making data more accessible and actionable.
The current wave is centred on intelligent activation. Today’s AI-powered CDPs go beyond data collection and segmentation to enable real-time engagement.
Adobe’s platform listens to consumer signals at scale, determines the next best action instantly, and delivers personalised experiences at the right moments, ensuring brands engage with customers dynamically and effectively.
“During the Super Bowl, millions of people stream the game at once. Brands can’t wait hours to engage them. Adobe’s AI ensures personalised customer interactions happen instantly, at scale,” Tukker explained.
Adobe vs Salesforce vs Microsoft
While Adobe, Salesforce, and Microsoft dominate the customer experience (CX) space, Adobe stands out by blending data-driven insights with creative storytelling.
“Salesforce and Microsoft focus heavily on data. Adobe goes a step further by combining data insights with compelling content to create emotionally resonant customer experiences,” Tukker said.
According to him, Adobe’s strength lies in its ecosystem, which includes content creation at scale (Adobe Creative Cloud), customer understanding through AI-driven insights, and personalised engagement in real time.
Moreover, Adobe Experience Cloud integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), giving enterprises flexibility in how they deploy their AI-powered customer service tools.
At the summit, Adobe announced a collaboration with AWS to build new offerings that empower marketing and creative teams to deliver customer experiences with greater speed, precision, and scale. The partnership combines Adobe’s expertise in customer experience orchestration with AWS’s advanced cloud services.
What’s Next?
According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2024, over two-thirds of CX leaders believe AI can enhance human-like customer service interactions, fostering long-term loyalty.
Some companies are already leading the charge. For example, NatWest Group and IBM developed Cora+, an AI-driven multichannel assistant that delivers personalised service using watsonx Assistant.
[24]7.ai is embracing generative AI to redefine customer service training, equipping call centre agents with AI-powered learning methodologies.
For Squadstack, AI helps streamline tasks like quality auditing, which was once done manually by agents who listened to calls and graded them—a monotonous and error-prone task. Now, AI consistently audits thousands of interactions simultaneously without fatigue.
Similarly, AI manages simpler conversations through chatbots, providing instant responses and reducing wait times.
[With inputs from Anjali Nair, senior social media specialist at AIM.]
