Less is more, and speed wins: The new benchmarks of AI-powered customer service

Freshworks’ 2025 Customer Service Benchmark Report—packed with data findings from 32,000 companies across multiple economic sectors—reveals two big eye-openers for service leaders looking for a competitive edge. 

1. AI adoption in customer service is reaching a tipping point. Already, one-third of all companies are using AI tools to support customers. And nearly half of those not yet using AI (47%) plan to put it to work in 2025. By year’s end, 79% of companies expect to be using AI in customer service. That rapid pace of adoption reveals the next eye-opener:

2. For any business still at the AI starting gate, this is the wake-up call. Survey data shows that more than half of customer service teams cite ever-rising ticket volumes, paired with flat or reduced headcount, as their No. 1 operational challenge. As the report suggests, AI has become a strategic and operational necessity and is no longer a nice-to-have. The gap between those using AI effectively and those still struggling to implement it creates a new competitive divide.

How to get ahead (or not slip behind)

Now, for the good news: Service teams that are the furthest along in integrating AI in support operations are providing a roadmap for others. They are seeing resolution times plummet, in some cases from 30 hours to 30 minutes. And they’re achieving that not through multiyear “digital transformation” programs, but with simpler, easier-to-use AI tools that don’t replace human effort, but allow it to shine.

Thus, the new battle cry for AI-savvy customer support teams seems to be: Less is more, and speed wins. As Venki Subramanian, head of CX product development at Freshworks, explains: “We believe the future of customer service should be clearer, faster, and easier to scale, without added complexity,” he says. “AI is enabling these outcomes better than ever before.”

See for yourself what Venki means: Read our strategic takeaways from the report in The Works, and download the full report for a deeper dive.