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Over the next few years, we expect that a meaningful percentage of customer contacts won’t be initiated by customers at all. They’ll be initiated by consumer AI agents, acting on the customer’s behalf.
That shift is closer than most companies realize, and it fundamentally changes what it actually means to “meet customers where they are”. Funny enough this will be "Meet the customers where they are not"!
This isn’t the first time the goalposts have moved; the idea of “meeting your customers where they are” has always been in a state of evolution.
It started with brick and mortar. Then it meant having a website that didn’t get in the way. Then it meant being available in the channel the customer preferred—phone, followed by chat, email, and even text.
Each shift reduced friction and forced companies to adapt.
Generative AI is the next step—but it’s different. Customers have long used intermediaries to act on their behalf. Now, those intermediaries may increasingly be AI agents.
From Augmenting Humans to Automating Conversations
AI has entered customer interactions in two ways: augmentation and automation.
Augmentation came first. This looked like helping human agents say the right thing faster or propose the right next step. Making experiences more consistent. Catching obvious failure points before they reached the customer.
Propel Holdings implemented Cresta, and quickly saw a 50% reduction in ACW (After Call Work), from 3 minutes to 90 seconds. Oportun, meanwhile, went from resource-intensive sampling of calls to understanding 100% – and saw quality management (QM) workload drop by 50%.
That work still matters.
Automation is what's in the limelight now, with Cresta leading the way and releasing our generative AI Agent more than a year ago. The appeal is obvious: predictable outcomes, systems that scale up and down with demand, and less reliance on staffing models that are expensive, volatile, and hard to manage in real time.
Generative AI agents make it easy to build something that looks impressive fast, creating the illusion that automation has become simple. In reality, we’ve traded the complexity of scripting flows for the complexity of testing, hill-climbing, and maintaining the control needed to operate confidently in production.
What You Automate Signals What You Value
Most companies start by deciding which queues, intents, or skills to automate. But those decisions often end up driven more by business goals, such as volume, ROI, or API readiness, than by a rigorous assessment of whether the work is actually a good fit for automation. This disconnect is a major reason so many deployments fall short.
Sometimes that decision is thoughtful. Sometimes it’s superficial.
At Cresta, we go deeper. We use AI to prioritize the automation opportunities most likely to succeed, not just the ones that are technically possible. That leads to faster wins, less wasted effort, and establishes the momentum teams need to build confidence and move faster as their AI transformation scales.
Even with that guidance, there’s a line that matters.
Human interactions should be reserved for moments where human connection can actually change the outcome—where trust is built, frustration is diffused, or loyalty is earned.
Automation should remove friction.
Humans should create connections.
The Customer Isn’t Always the One Initiating Anymore
This is where the shift accelerates.
In the next 1–3 years, we expect a substantial increase in contacts initiated by consumer-led AI agents. This consumer agent channel has the potential to make up a significant portion of contact volume.
Today, these interactions exist mostly as edge cases. Soon, they won’t.
At first, these agent-initiated contacts will run through the channels we already know, like phone, chat, email. Agent-to-agent communication over rails built for humans.
That’s just the beginning.
Two Things Will Be True Very Quickly
As AI-led interactions become common, two things need to be foundational:
- A consumer AI–initiated interaction should never spend time with a human agent.
- When AI-led contacts become the dominant pattern, a customer who chooses to show up on their own behalf is making a deliberate choice.
Routing stops being an operational detail, and instead becomes the experience.
Looking Further Out: The Channels Themselves Will Change
If we zoom out further, it’s unlikely that agent-to-agent communication stays constrained to today’s channels.
Chat, phone, and email were built for humans. Consumer agents will tolerate them at first, but they won’t be limited by them forever.
New interaction patterns will emerge. New protocols, or old protocols used in new ways. New ways for systems to negotiate, resolve, and confirm on behalf of people.
That’s not a 10-year thought experiment. It’s a natural consequence of putting capable agents on both sides of the conversation.
As this happens, the need for the human capacity of emotional intelligence, judgment, communication, and problem-solving, becomes more critical. When interactions move beyond familiar channels, companies need visibility, control, and the ability to intervene when it actually matters.
This is where Cresta’s Agent Operations Center comes into play—not as a replacement for automation, but as a control plane for it. A way to observe agent-led decisions across channels, understand what’s happening, and step in when needed.
Automation without oversight is just risk at scale.
An Overdue Overhaul of the Consumer-Initiated Experience
The consumer-initiated experience is overdue for a redesign.
Companies now have to place a bet on the future: on automation, on agent-led interactions, on new modes of engagement, all while staying nimble enough to adapt through an unpredictable time horizon.
Meeting customers where they are is no longer about being present in the right channel.
It’s about recognizing who is initiating the interaction, why, and what kind of experience they’re actually asking for.
The companies that get this right won’t just reduce cost; they’ll earn trust in a world where the customer has leverage again. Cresta is the partner that helps them do it. Schedule your personalized demo today.
