The AI concierge is in: Elevating telecom CX with a human touch

When paired with human-centric design, agentic AI has the potential to act as a concierge for telecom customers, making every interaction feel more personal and guided.

For telecoms, brand experience is a critical differentiator. As core services are commoditized, what sets a telecom apart is how they make customers feel during each interaction, from resolving a service issue to changing their plan.

But the industry’s brand experience needs a boost: Although customer satisfaction for internet service providers is inching upwards, the industry still ranks near the bottom—just ahead of the US Postal Service and below airlines. Ouch.

AI, and specifically agentic AI, is increasingly seen as the tool that can provide the boost in brand experience that telecom companies are looking for. Equally important, telecom consumers show a high level of interest in AI. In fact, our recent research found telecom consumers voiced more interest in using AI to discover, purchase and use service offerings than the global cross-industry average.

The key is human-centric design. In our work with telecom companies, we’ve found that agentic AI can significantly enhance the customer experience, especially when it’s built to understand context, communicate with empathy and prioritize customer needs. When grounded in the principles of human-centric design, agentic AI can act as a concierge, making every interaction feel more personal and guided, whether through a mobile app, website or contact center.

A human-centric approach to agentic AI

Human-centric design plays a foundational role in shaping brand experience by focusing on the emotional connection people have with a brand. It ensures that every interaction with a company’s product or service reflects the needs, behaviors and experiences of real users—not just internal processes or stakeholder preferences. Instead of guessing what customers want, you engage with them directly to understand their stated and unstated needs. Then you test ideas with them to ensure what you're building is functional, intuitive and meaningful.

When combined with agentic AI, human-centric design enables systems that act on behalf of users, respecting their goals and preferences at every touchpoint.

For example, rather than making customers navigate a phone tree or chatbot to request a temporary service change while traveling, a telecom could create a multi-agent system that confirms the customer’s request, reviews the terms of their current plan and processes the change. This kind of seamless experience builds trust in the brand.

Or, a customer might say, “I want to upgrade my plan, transfer my old number and schedule installation.” An agentic system could carry out the request step-by-step, with check-ins and updates to stay transparent and in sync.

We increasingly hear from telecom companies interested in crafting a CX that embodies the brand values that define their company. For example, we recently worked with a mid-tier company that had undergone a rebranding exercise that included aligning its customer acquisition and retention strategies with its customer-first values. To advance their brand elevation, the company asked us to prioritize human-centric design when creating the intelligent agents planned for deployment across mobile apps, customer service and billing.

Managing the telecom brand experience in real time

Agentic AI systems can also instill a more real-time approach to ensuring the brand experience. Most telecoms rely on metrics like net promoter score (NPS) and customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) to track customers’ perception of their brand. But NPS is a lagging indicator, and CSAT only captures how customers feel at a specific point in time, typically after interactions like installations, support calls or store visits.

With agentic AI, telecoms can focus on the customer experience during the interaction itself. For example, we’re partnering with telecom clients to explore the use of intelligent agents in a key area of customer frustration: visiting the website for support. Typically, a digital support channel would walk the customer through a decision tree of diagnostic questions—a long and tedious process.

We built a solution in which the AI agent does most of the work. After the customer answers just two questions, the agentic system taps into relevant data to suggest a root cause and provide guidance on how to address it. In addition to being fast, the solution runs on top of the telecom’s existing operational and business support systems—minimizing costs while maximizing the value of the interventions.

AI agents rely on relevant, accurate data, so the first step in creating our solution was to establish a strong data foundation to enable cross-functional data exchange. For example, by correlating network telemetry data and in-bound calls to customer care, the system enabled AI agents to proactively communicate and mitigate basic issues like internet outages. This approach also allowed the agents to monitor lead indicators like first contact resolution (FCR) and service usage metrics, providing a 360-degree view of the customers’ stated and unstated needs.

Start with employee experience, then move to customer experience

To acquire the necessary skills and experience in using AI agents, we recommend that telecoms first develop solutions for their internal customers, that is, their employees. For example, field tech support staff could benefit immensely from AI assistance to provide prompt, precise answers to technicians’ questions.

AI agents could also help new hires come up to speed more quickly. Rather than flooding new hires with manuals or generic training modules, agentic AI could deliver task-specific guidance in the moment, such as surfacing relevant information when a new service rep opens a customer record.

By deploying AI agents internally, telecoms can work out the kinks before rolling them out in customer-facing roles, such as digital or physical store channels.

Boosting the telecom brand experience with human-centric AI

Agentic AI can be used as a strategic lever for transforming how customers experience your brand. By pairing human-centric design with intelligent agents, telecom companies can turn everyday interactions into moments of loyalty, trust and differentiation. With human-centric AI, telecoms can make AI part of their brand experience DNA.