Context
In terms of customer relations, 2025 marked a shift. Until 2024, brands and retailers were hesitant to place bots in front of customers due to hallucinations, as seen with Air Canada and DPD. After using AI to sort e-mails, summarise customer histories and generate responses, retailers decided in 2025 to put AI agent in front of customers to directly respond autonomously. These conversational tools operate on two levels: during e-commerce sales, with chatbots able to chat and make recommendations (on a website or a social network), or after sales (parcel tracking, refunds, returns).
Strong and weak signals
High levels of autonomy from AI agents. According to Zendesk, with intelligent chatbot solutions, brands achieve automation levels of 30%. With callbots added, automation reaches 80%. “We are confident in our ability to resolve up to 80% of requests without human intervention,” told mind Retail Sophie Margerie, CMO Southern Europe. According to an AI Builders study of 40 French executives, in telecoms, a troubleshooting AI agent resolved 50% of requests autonomously (diagnosis, reboot, appointment scheduling).
