The world of customer experience (CX) and the field of artificial intelligence (AI) are converging in intriguing ways, driving government agencies forward on a journey to becoming more data-driven enterprises. These advancements provide real possibility to go beyond enhancing CX to truly transform citizen service delivery.
To achieve this kind of transformation, agencies must move beyond foundational improvements, focused only on increasing efficiencies. By its nature, such a narrow approach to CX can limit agencies to improved wait times, speed to case resolution, or reduced friction in customer interactions. Measuring these things is important, but just like the need to upgrade to cloud-based contact centers and omnichannel platforms, they are also now table stakes.
Instead, we can build on this foundation by introducing AI-enabled tools to focus on service delivery effectiveness, and beyond that, to building truly AI-driven, mission intelligence.
What does this look like, and what roles will AI play?
AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants, which can understand, interpret, and respond to human language, will streamline routine interactions. Meanwhile, predictive analytics accurately forecast service demands and help to re-allocate resources.
For government, this is all in the near-term future. If that was not enough, the arrival of agentic AI will take us even further, helping CX-minded leaders to accelerate transformation in significant ways. It is imperative that CX leaders take steps now to empower themselves – and the citizens they serve – to more deeply understand what is coming in the AI evolution.
Equipped with knowledge about the latest AI capabilities, CX leaders and their teams can help shape the strategic use of AI to drive mission outcomes at federal agencies.
Understanding agentic AI-powered CX
Many are familiar with common AI assistants used in contact center engagements. These are designed to execute simple tasks within defined parameters. They are bots with little autonomy. They often provide pre-scripted answers or retrieve information for human agents, which improves interaction accuracy and efficiency while reducing friction.
Now the next evolution of service is here: Agentic AI, a progression of increasingly sophisticated agent-based software tools with varying levels of autonomy, such as:
- Simple AI agents to perform specialized, specific tasks. For example, virtual assistants to aid human users with prewritten responses to frequent questions such as, “What are your hours of operation?”
- Collaborative AI agents to provide coordination across multiple agents focused on individual tasks. For example, in public benefits administration, collaborative AI agents could manage eligibility checks, fraud detection, case updates, and payment processing.
- Agentic ecosystems to provide complex orchestrated coordination across multiple workflows, processes, applications, and more. For instance, after a natural disaster, a network of specialized AI agents across multiple applications and systems might collaborate to enable rescue operations, resource allocation, and assess damage.
Leveraging leading agentic AI solutions
It’s critical to consider the totality of CX, or what some refer to as the “total experience” for an agency. With agentic technology experts helping to integrate AI agents and agentic systems from both the industry’s leading hyper-scalers and niche, best-in-class innovators, a truly next-generation approach has arrived to orchestrate insights-driven, mission-focused action across customers, business unit stakeholders, and policymakers.
Facing the new requirements of the Government Service Delivery Improvement (GSDI) Act, this next generation of AI-powered CX positions both agencies and industry well for a collective future focused on outcomes such as:
- Workflow customization through the analysis and adaptation of agent actions to serve evolving needs.
- Process automation of routine tasks, freeing CX teams and others for higher-impact initiatives.
- AI assistants for human agents to handle common, rule-based inquiries (while humans manage more specialized tasks).
- Personalized experiences using data-driven insights for more tailored communications and services.'
- Continuous improvement through potent analytics that identify optimization opportunities and ensure adaptability in real-time.
Act early to prepare for the future of agentic AI
While AI agents can operate with a degree of autonomy, it is important to remember that human expertise remains crucial in driving continuous improvements. Through disciplined governance and responsible deployment, federal leaders can guide the AI revolution. In doing so, governments can apply data more strategically to inform decisions, champion superior service delivery, and above all, achieve mission outcomes.
The agentic AI evolution provides a leap in capabilities that make it possible to tackle increasingly complex CX challenges. Here at last is the potential to increase self-service and workforce management with optimal resources to drive efficiencies, all while increasing coordination across processes and workflows. Engineering all of that into cross-government intelligence is exciting indeed.
By understanding and embracing agentic AI now, CX leaders can move from reactive service models to proactive, mission-driven ecosystems. Those who act early will be best positioned to meet rising expectations, navigate new mandates like the GSDI Act, and shape a future where citizen experiences are more personalized, frictionless, and smarter than ever.