Cisco embeds agentic AI across customer journey

Cisco is embedding agentic AI into its entire customer journey as end-user organizations navigate increasingly complex IT environments. Customer support and professional services are often reactive, where customers call when they have a problem. Cisco's aim is to make support more proactive and personalized to the customer, said Sandeep Milar, senior vice president of customer experience (CX) product management at Cisco. Cisco announced at its partner summit Cisco IQ, which provides real time insights, assessments, troubleshooting and agents for professional and support services in an AI-based interface. Agentic AI touches all parts of Cisco IQ, Milar said. AI agents can adapt to each customer's unique environment, providing contextual and personalized recommendations and actions. Cisco IQ will be released in 2026 and can be deployed in the cloud, on-premises or on-premises air gapped. "The goal is to make sure our teams are being proactive as well," Milar said. He described a scenario where a support team could notify a customer of an impending issue, rather than waiting for something to break and then having the customer file a support ticket. "Customers no longer tolerate fragmented, reactive support," said Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research. "They demand a proactive, predictive and highly personalized experience." Cisco IQ brings professional and support services one step closer to that goal by providing a view of every step of the customer lifecycle, Sandeep said. For example, an enterprise has 500 switches that are reaching end of support but only has the budget to replace 300. Cisco IQ can evaluate the switches and determine which 300 are most critical to replace, based on factors such as performance and network traffic. Cisco IQ includes multiple agentic agents that can diagnose issues, retrieve information and provide documentation. The AI agents provide a personalized experience by learning and troubleshooting specific to a customer. Cisco IQ can also monitor what's happening in an environment and provide guidance and learning tips through an AI chat interface. "Think of it as talking to your inventory," Milar said. Agentic AI drives CX evolution Milar said agentic AI is how he sees CX evolving. According to a Cisco study of nearly 8,000 business and IT leaders, 93% of respondents believe agent AI can deliver more personalized, predictive and proactive services. Another 88% of respondents believe agentic CX will help their organization achieve its goals. The study, conducted by Sandpiper Research, found technology partners that successfully deploy agentic AI in CX reap benefits including improved operational efficiency, ability to scale up CX, access to improved data insights, increased customer revenue and higher levels of customer trust. Agentic AI will continue to grow as customers get comfortable with the technology, Kerravala said. Over the next few years, customers will prefer agentic agent interactions for most issues but still need the option to speak with a person when required, he said. Balancing AI and human connection Agentic AI does an excellent job of handling mundane and repetitive tasks, Kerravala said. Most service calls can be resolved with agentic agents. But AI agents might struggle with more complex problems, and that's where human expertise is key. Roughly 89% of the Cisco study respondents said businesses must combine human connection with agentic AI to optimize CX. Automating the menial support tasks with agentic AI frees up services and support teams to focus on more meaningful work with customers. Customers, too, want to maintain human connections with their technology providers, according to the study. "Tech partners need a balance of human and agentic agents, with agentic agents handling high-frequency, low-complexity cases and people doing the rest," Kerravala said. Katherine Finnell is senior site editor for TechTarget's unified communications site. She writes and edits articles on a variety of business communications technology topics, including unified communications as a service, video conferencing and collaboration.