Here’s What AI Means for Sales and Service (Strong Opinion)

You can almost feel the panic in the boardroom every time AI comes up. The questions that float around sound something like:

“Will AI replace our salespeople?”

“Will customers still want to speak to a human?”

“Should we cut headcount?”

I think these are the wrong questions. A much more interesting question to ask is, “What does AI expose about our business?”
 

While I don’t think AI will kill your customer experience, I do think it can make the cracks in your service impossible to ignore. Let’s talk about it.

Most Businesses Have Been Coasting on Mediocre Service

In many businesses, the customer experience has been  just good enough. Not amazing. Not memorable. Just… fine. People tolerated long wait times, patchy service, and repetitive phone menus because they didn’t have a choice. Now they do.

AI can give customers faster answers, fair recommendations, and more convenient service, often without a single human involved. That means your team no longer gets away with being “better than nothing”. You have to be better than instant. If your team doesn’t offer something AI can’t replicate, like warmth, clarity, emotional intelligence and actual care, they’re irrelevant.

If Your Team’s Only Value is Repeating What’s Online, They’re Already Outdated

Think about your frontline sales or service team. Are they solving problems creatively, building relationships, or creating moments people remember? Or are they just reading the same info a chatbot could’ve provided? AI has raised the bar. The standard isn’t “Did they get the job done?” It’s more “Was that experience worth my time?”

So really, the truth (an uncomfortable one) is that AI is not your competitor. Mediocrity is.

If your team can’t do more than what automation can deliver in seconds, it’s time to invest in training.

So What Should AI Replace in Customer Service?

I’ve seen companies where the support team takes 48 hours to answer a basic product question, where sales reps are “too busy” to follow up on hot leads, and where customer feedback gets buried in a spreadsheet no one opens.

AI can fix a lot of that. It can answer the common questions instantly, flag buying signals your team missed and highlight friction in the customer journey before it tanks your reputation. Conversation intelligence can be used to analyse what top performers say in sales calls and the data can be used to coach the rest of the team in real time.

AI can score leads based on actual behaviour and engagement, so reps spend less time chasing dead ends and more time in front of warm prospects. Reps are using AI to write stronger email intros, generate talking points based on a prospect’s online activity and even predict when a customer is likely to churn before they say a word.

I am all for AI. Use AI to eliminate the busywork, the bottlenecks and the bad habits. Then focus your people on having real conversations, solving real problems and showing real care.

Is AI Better Than Human Salespeople?

I think that the businesses that win won’t necessarily be the ones with the flashiest AI tools or the biggest tech stack. But they’ll know how to combine technology with real human empathy.

Customers still crave connection, understanding and care, especially when automation becomes the norm. Yes, AI can make things faster, smarter and more efficient, but it can’t replace the feeling of being truly seen or heard. The winners will use AI to handle the heavy lifting behind the scenes, so their people can show up more informed, present and focused on building trust.

It’s not about man or machine. It’s about man with machine, creating a customer experience that’s both intelligent and deeply human.

Don’t Fear AI. Fear Staying Average.

AI is going to keep evolving. It’ll get better, faster and smarter, with or without your input. So you have two choices:

👉🏼 Keep doing what you’ve always done and hope customers don’t notice.

OR

👉🏼 Use this shift as a reset and a chance to build a sharper, more human, more effective experience that customers will talk about and want to come back to.

 If your team is still selling like it’s 2012, or your service hasn’t evolved in years, now’s the time to change. I help businesses build high-performing sales teams that use tech wisely, show up with confidence and create the kind of customer experience AI alone could never deliver. Let’s talk.