AI vs hold times: Can Agentic AI save India’s customer service crisis?

ServiceNow, one of the leading AI platforms for business transformation, has unveiled a new research highlighting the rapid adoption of AI chatbots among Indian consumers. According to the ServiceNow Customer Experience Report, 80% of Indians now use AI tools to track complaints, receive product recommendations, and access self-help guides—with five out of six relying on AI for decision-making.

Despite AI’s growing influence, customer service delays persist. Indian consumers wasted 15 billion hours waiting on hold in the past year, with only a 5% reduction in wait times compared to the previous year.

The study shows deep AI integration in daily life:
84% use AI for shopping recommendations
82% rely on AI for food & dining suggestions
78% leverage chatbots for investment guidance

Yet, inefficiencies are costing brands customer loyalty—89% of Indians would switch brands due to slow service.  Businesses spend just 16% of their workweek resolving issues, with the rest lost in administrative tasks, internal follow-ups, and training. Agents cite disconnected systems and manual processes as key hurdles.

While 49% require faster resolutions, 48% need better-trained agents and 46% need less time on hold, Agentic AI here could play a bigger role.

Talking to Business Today, Sumeet Mathur, Senior Vice-President & Managing Director, ServiceNow India says, “Agentic AI eliminates these bottlenecks by providing instant responses, automating workflows, and leveraging predictive recommendations. With 57% of agents believing issues are resolved within 30 minutes while customers report an actual wait of 3.8 days, AI agents can bridge this expectation gap by offering real-time resolutions, ensuring a more seamless and efficient service experience.”

However, Agentic AI will not fully replace human agents but will redefine their roles, allowing them to handle complex, high-emotion customer interactions while AI agents tackle routine queries, he adds.

The report states that 52% of customer service agents believe Generative AI will allow them to spend more time helping customers, demonstrating AI’s role in augmenting—not replacing—human capabilities. AI can solve high-volume, repetitive issues, proactively predict outages, and provide context-rich, data-driven insights to human agents. 

However, complex problem-solving that requires empathy, negotiation, and ethical decision-making will still need human intervention. The future of customer service will be a hybrid model, where AI and human agents collaborate to deliver superior service at scale.