Every week someone asks me whether AI is going to replace customer service teams. My answer is always the same: AI will replace the parts of service that were never very human to begin with. The rest is where the opportunity lives. On Navigating the Customer Experience, I welcomed back Jeff Toister, best selling author of The Service Culture Handbook and his new book Human Service: The Skills AI Can’t Replace, to talk about exactly that. His research gives every service leader three human service skills to protect and develop: connection, understanding and advocacy.
Skill 1: Connection Is Not Just Nice, It Is Efficient
Many leaders treat rapport as a soft extra that slows things down. Jeff’s research says the opposite. In his latest study of more than 370,000 phone calls, a warm, conversational greeting made a measurable difference:
- 16% shorter calls, because the customer and the representative start working together right away.
- 12% better first contact resolution, because warmth at the start improves the odds the issue is solved on the first try.
- Higher customer sentiment, because people simply feel better about the interaction.
Something as simple as “Hi, thanks for calling, this is Jeff, how may I help you?” beats a robotic or verification first greeting. Face to face, the results were even more striking. In a study of over 400 interactions at a coffee shop chain, only about half of customers were greeted at all. A natural smile and a genuine “good morning” got 69% of customers to smile back, compared with just 3% for the scripted corporate greeting at the door.
Skill 2: Understanding the Customer Behind the Words
A lot of service work is transactional: updating an account, making a payment, checking an order. Most of us prefer to do those things digitally, and AI and automation handle them well. Human skill shines the moment something feels complicated or has gone wrong.
Understanding means hearing beyond the words to grasp what the customer really intends and how they feel. People are excellent at reading intent and showing empathy. Automation still struggles with both.
Skill 3: Advocacy, Going Beyond the Script
Advocacy is working on the customer’s behalf to get them a better outcome. As Jeff put it, AI does not care whether you have a good experience. It follows its programming. A person can look past a broken procedure, use creativity and make it right.
The Mall Test: Transactional Employee or True Expert?
I shared a frustrating story on the episode. I spent four hours at a mall, and employees kept quoting discounts but never once asked what I was shopping for, the event, or my taste. Jeff’s response stuck with me: AI can already beat a purely transactional employee who just points to a rack. What it cannot match is an expert who greets you warmly, knows the product, understands what you are really after, and suggests options you never considered.
Automation isn’t replacing the human. It’s replacing the transactional person impersonating a robot.
That is the real call to action for every frontline team: become the expert a customer would choose over a bot.
The Security Guard Who Sang My Welcome
I also told Jeff about a moment I still talk about. Visiting a logistics company in Jamaica, the security guard moved the cone, directed my parking, then walked over and sang my welcome, by name. She did not even work for the company. She worked for an outsourced security firm, and singing was certainly not in her job description. She simply brought her personality to her work.
You do not have to sing. The goal is to make people genuinely feel welcome, and every person on your team can find their own way to do that.
How to Prepare Your Team for 2027
Jeff’s advice for leaders drowning in technology options is to simplify:
- Define it. Decide what a great experience actually looks like for your customers.
- Communicate it. Share that vision clearly with the entire team.
- Align to it. Line up every decision, including technology choices, around delivering that experience consistently.
When I run mystery shopping programs for clients, the greeting is one of the first behaviours we measure, because it sets the tone for everything that follows. If you have never audited how your team says hello, on the phone or in person, start there.
Key Takeaways
- AI replaces transactional service, not human expertise. Help your people become the expert customers choose.
- Connection is efficient: warm greetings shorten calls by 16% and improve first contact resolution by 12%.
- Understanding means reading intent and emotion, where humans still outperform automation.
- Advocacy means going beyond policy to secure a better outcome for the customer.
- Simplify your strategy: define the experience, communicate it, and align every decision to it.
Listen to the Full Conversation
This article is drawn from the full podcast episode and show notes. You can also listen to Navigating the Customer Experience on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.
Want Help Applying This to Your Team?
I help service teams in South Florida, Jamaica and across the Caribbean turn insights like these into everyday behaviour through customer service training, mystery shopping and CSAT research. Book a free 30 minute CX strategy conversation and we will map out the right next step for your team.
About the Author
Yanique Grant is a customer experience expert, trainer and researcher with more than 17 years of experience and over 50,000 professionals trained across Jamaica, the Caribbean and Africa. She is a Service Quality Institute certified Customer Service Trainer, certified in Training Design by Training Magazine, author of The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience, and host of the Navigating the Customer Experience podcast, now in its 280th episode. Through ElevateCX and PTOS she helps organizations turn service into retention, reputation and revenue.
