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Original
2026-01-01
Modified
2026-03-10
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<p>CUSTOMER SERVICE</p>
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<p>In this guide:</p>
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<h2>6 customer service trends B2C brands need to know in 2025</h2>
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<p><a>AI-powered service</a><a></a><a>More self-service options</a><a>Data quality and integration</a><a>Service as a revenue generator</a><a>Peak period preparedness</a></p>
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<p>Deliver the exceptional customer experiences consumers have come to expect</p>
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<h2><strong>1. The pressure is on to accelerate AI in customer service. So far, it’s paying off.</strong></h2>
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<p>Summary</p>
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<p>Increasing AI adoption is on every business leader’s mind right now. A recent<a>Thomson Reuters survey</a>found that most C-suite execs feel that AI will transform their businesses over the next 5 years, and they’re even prioritizing digital transformation initiatives like adopting AI and improving efficiency over revenue growth and cost reduction.</p>
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<h2>Customer service trends in 2025</h2>
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<p>These executive pressures are coming right down to customer service leadership, affecting their team strategies, dynamics, skillsets, budgets, and tech stacks.</p>
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<p>What separates brands that customers love from those they leave behind? Customer service they actually want.</p>
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<p>When we asked customer service leaders about their company’s stage of AI adoption in each of the following parts of the customer service journey, here’s how they responded:</p>
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<p>Great products alone aren’t enough to keep customers loyal or attract new ones. Expectations for proactive, fast, seamless, and personalized customer service across every touchpoint are at an all-time high-and if you don’t deliver, people will move on.</p>
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<p><strong>Part of the customer service journey</strong></p>
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<p>You need to be ahead of the game. Adapting to the latest trends in customer support and customer service strategy while embracing innovations in B2C customer service will help you create experiences that keep customers coming back, drive retention, and boost revenue-so let’s take a closer look at what’s next.</p>
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<p><strong>Fully implemented AI</strong></p>
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<p>IN THIS GUIDE:</p>
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<p><strong>Partially implemented AI</strong></p>
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<ul><li><a>Unified data foundation</a></li>
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<p><strong>Exploring AI</strong></p>
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<li><a>The self-service revolution</a></li>
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<p><strong>Not using/planning to use AI</strong></p>
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<li><a>Quick response times</a></li>
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<p>Customer inquiries and chat support</p>
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<li><a>AI-powered service</a></li>
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<p>26%</p>
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<li><a>Personalized service</a></li>
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<p>35%</p>
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<li><a>Omnichannel support</a></li>
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<p>23%</p>
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</ul><ul><li><a>Unified data foundation</a></li>
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<p>17%</p>
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</ul><h2>1. Unified marketing and service data reduces friction</h2>
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<p>Customer ticket summarization</p>
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<p>Marketing and customer service are often treated as separate functions. But when these teams operate in silos, it leads to fragmented customer interactions and missed opportunities.</p>
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<p>24%</p>
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<p>That’s because your marketing team can’t tailor messaging that truly connects if they don’t understand the pain points your customers have voiced in the past, and your customer support team can’t provide optimal service when they don’t understand the customer’s history with your brand.</p>
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<p>29%</p>
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<p>Imagine this: a customer orders a sweatshirt but gets the wrong size. Frustrated, they contact support-only to receive a promo email for matching sweatpants. The disconnect leaves the customer questioning whether the brand truly cares about their actual needs.</p>
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<p>26%</p>
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<p>Without integration, marketing will continue promoting products to unhappy customers. But this can also result in you launching campaigns or providing service that miss the mark entirely.</p>
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<p>21%</p>
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<p>A B2C CRM keeps all customer interactions across marketing and service in one place, creating a single source of truth for all your teams. In addition to unifying the data and detailed<a>customer profiles</a>you need for personalized support and marketing, it also:</p>
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<p>Predictive analytics or proactive outreach</p>
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<ul><li>Tracks every customer interaction on every channel, so your teams never recommend the wrong products to customers or miss a complaint buried in an old email thread</li>
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<p>21%</p>
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<li>Gives you visibility into every click, purchase, and action in real-time, so the right team can react instantly to what customers want or need</li>
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<p>32%</p>
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<li>Captures full customer history from the moment they sign up, so marketing can refine targeting and customer service always has the full story</li>
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<p>28%</p>
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</ul><h3>Implementing cross-functional processes</h3>
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<p>18%</p>
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<p><a>According to Gartner</a>, voice-of-the-customer insights are the backbone of aligning marketing and service teams with customer expectations. When these expectations aren’t built into marketing and customer service KPIs, cross-functional efforts fall short of truly putting the customer first.</p>
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<p>Ticket routing and prioritization</p>
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<p>Customers don’t care about your internal goals-they care about getting the right support, recommendations, and resolutions. Put your customers front and center with these strategies:</p>
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<p>21%</p>
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<ul><li><b>Align teams around customer-centric goals.</b>Set joint KPIs that focus on solving customer problems, improving retention, and driving<a>customer lifetime value</a>(CLV).</li>
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<p>31%</p>
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<li><b>Work from one omnichannel helpdesk:</b>Consolidate support on the back end by organizing all customer inquiries via email, web chat, SMS, WhatsApp, and social media into one unified workspace that’s<i>also</i>pulling from marketing and customer data. This ensures all agents have the omnichannel data they need to personalize service.</li>
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<p>29%</p>
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<li><b>Leverage analytics for smarter decisions.</b><a>Analyze customer data</a>to identify pain points, predict needs, and personalize interactions.</li>
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<p>19%</p>
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<li><b>Automate flows for faster support.</b>Automated emails and texts respond to customer data and real-time behavior, allowing you to build cross-channel experiences.</li>
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<p>Agent assistance and response suggestions</p>
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</ul><h3>Generating revenue through the marketing-service feedback loop</h3>
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<p>19%</p>
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<p>Retailers that integrate service data with marketing data see higher repeat purchases, larger orders, and stronger customer loyalty. According to Klaviyo’s 2025<a>state of B2C marketing report</a>, brands that align service and marketing teams are 156% more likely to significantly exceed their marketing goals.</p>
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<p>38%</p>
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<p>In other words, customer service is no longer just a cost center-it’s a revenue driver. When you start from a unified data foundation, every support interaction generates data that fuels a more personalized approach to marketing in the future, such as highly targeted post-purchase offers, win-back campaigns, and loyalty rewards. </p>
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<p>24%</p>
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<p>By bringing service and marketing together, you can personalize every step of the customer journey-turning support interactions into opportunities to build stronger relationships, increase retention, and drive more sales.</p>
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<p>20%</p>
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<h2>2. Customers want self-service options</h2>
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<p>Sentiment or intent analysis</p>
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<p>18%</p>
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<p>31%</p>
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<p>27%</p>
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<p>23%</p>
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<h3>How is AI improving customer service and marketing?</h3>
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<p>Most commonly, customer service organizations are using AI customer agents, AI assistance for human agents, and AI-powered helpdesks that summarize tickets. These lower-lift, lower-risk use cases can show impact right away in the form of the following, which can help get buy-in for AI tools before going all-in on full implementation:</p>
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<ul><li><strong>Instant answers and personalized recommendations:</strong>AI customer agents and shopping assistants can quickly provide real-time answers on sizing, shipping, order status, and more, using data from product catalogs and help docs. They can also<a>tailor recommendations</a>based on customer activities and preferences.</li>
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<li><strong>Faster response times:</strong>With help from AI, human agents can move faster. When an AI agent hands off a conversation to a human, an AI-powered helpdesk automatically routes it to the best agent, providing full customer context and conversation summaries.</li>
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<li><strong>Streamlined processes:</strong>An AI-powered helpdesk also makes support teams more efficient with macros (pre-written responses), auto-detecting tone and urgency, categorizing messages, and surfacing relevant replies.</li>
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<li><strong>Growth opportunities:</strong>AI service platforms can turn support moments into signals that strengthen marketing, helping your marketing team understand which campaigns spark questions, where customers are getting stuck, and how to create a smoother path to purchase.</li>
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</ul><p>Home fragrance brand<a>Happy Wax</a>saw a “<a>dramatic reduction in support tickets</a>” after implementing an AI customer agent, says Rachel Fagan, VP of marketing: “In the last 90 days, over 50% of conversations were fully resolved without any service team involvement.”</p>
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<h3>How are customer service teams balancing speed with quality?</h3>
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<p>AI can handle many customer interactions efficiently, but human agents still play an integral role. Notice how none of these AI use cases are at 100% adoption. Customer service leaders are being very careful about how they’re adopting AI, and how it enhances their human teams.</p>
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<p>Use AI customer agents to handle common inquiries (e.g., questions about delivery options) while routing more complicated or sensitive queries to human agents. Fagan, for example, summarizes the value of Happy Wax’s AI customer agent this way: “Customers get instant answers, and our team gains bandwidth for high-touch moments.”</p>
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<p>As you roll out new AI tools, measure the impact on your internal teams and the customer experience to make sure your quality standards remain high, and your teams feel well-supported.</p>
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<h3>What are some AI adoption strategies for different business sizes?</h3>
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<p>Based on our research, AI impact on customer service grows along with company size, likely because larger orgs have more resources to invest in AI and prove its value. When we asked customer service leaders if AI and automation have improved the quality and efficiency of customer service interactions, here’s how they responded:</p>
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<ul><li>At entrepreneur-sized companies (<$2.5 million in annual GMV), 48% of service professionals agreed.</li>
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<li>At SMBs ($2.5-$30 million in annual GMV), 67% of service professionals agreed.</li>
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<li>At mid-market companies ($30-$500 million in annual GMV), 71% of service professionals agreed.</li>
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<li>At enterprise companies (>$500 million in annual GMV), 72% of service professionals agreed.</li>
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</ul><p>This aligns with how much organizations have actually used AI in customer service: in general, we see that the larger the company, the more deeply they’ve implemented AI, and the more value they’ve seen from it.</p>
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<p>By company size, here’s how many companies have either partially or fully brought on AI for customer service:</p>
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<p><strong>Part of the customer service journey</strong></p>
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<p><strong>Entrepreneur</strong></p>
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<p>SMB</p>
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<p><strong>Mid-market</strong></p>
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<p><strong>Enterprise</strong></p>
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<p>Customer inquiries and chat support</p>
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<p>44%</p>
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<p>69%</p>
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<p>67%</p>
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<p>71%</p>
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<p>Ticket routing and prioritization</p>
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<p>32%</p>
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<p>56%</p>
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<p>67%</p>
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<p>63%</p>
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<p>Customer ticket summarization</p>
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<p>34%</p>
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<p>54%</p>
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<p>68%</p>
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<p>66%</p>
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<p>Agent assistance and response generation</p>
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<p>37%</p>
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<p>61%</p>
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<p>69%</p>
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<p>65%</p>
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<p>Sentiment or intent analysis</p>
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<p>36%</p>
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<p>48%</p>
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<p>61%</p>
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<p>58%</p>
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<p>Predictive analytics or proactive outreach</p>
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<p>38%</p>
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<p>55%</p>
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<p>67%</p>
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<p>65%</p>
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<p>Follow the lead of the organizations we surveyed, which are slowly rolling out AI to see how it works for their organization and teams. Smaller businesses might want to take a gradual approach and scale up when it makes sense. Instead of rolling out AI across all customer service channels at once, start by testing it in one area.</p>
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<p>Use your existing customer data to identify where AI could most benefit your business. For example, if you regularly receive high volumes of customer queries via email tickets, start with AI-powered FAQs or automated responses.</p>
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<p>Larger businesses, meanwhile, have more room to play around and integrate AI across multiple touchpoints-such as chat, SMS, and email-to deliver highly personalized customer experiences.</p>
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<h2><strong>2. Self-service is an expectation, and options are expanding</strong></h2>
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<p>Gone are the days when customers tolerated waiting on hold for answers or solutions. Now, they want fast, intuitive self-service support options for finding answers on their own, on their own time.</p>
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<p>Gone are the days when customers tolerated waiting on hold for answers or solutions. Now, they want fast, intuitive self-service support options for finding answers on their own, on their own time.</p>
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<p>These days, over 90% of consumers expect self-service support options,<a>according to Microsoft</a>. But right now,<a>Gartner reports</a>that only 14% of issues are fully resolved through self-service. Even for simple problems, Gartner finds that fewer than 36% of customers find a solution without further help.</p>
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<p>These days, over 90% of consumers expect self-service support options,<a>according to Microsoft</a>. And customer service teams are responding: our research found that 84% of teams have or plan to implement a self-serve customer portal for their customers.</p>
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<p><a>According to PwC data</a>, while more than 50% of consumers would stop buying from a brand due to poor experiences, almost a third would leave simply because of disjointed ones. That means it’s not always about bad service-inconsistency is enough to drive customers to competitors.</p>
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<p>Overall, most companies currently handle less than half of their customer interactions through self-service, but there are high hopes for that number to grow in the next year. According to our research, here’s where customer service leaders stand today, and what they expect self-service to handle in the future:edeem loyalty points. In 2025, the customer hub drove over<a>$200,000 in revenue</a>for Thirdlove.</p>
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<p>This is where self-service<a>customer experience hubs</a>come in.</p>
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<h3><strong>Current % of interactions handled entirely by self-service</strong></h3>
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<h3>Essential self-service capabilities for 2025</h3>
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<p>0%/unsure:</p>
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<p>A customer experience hub is a logged-in, on-site interface that provides customers with uninterrupted, end-to-end customer journeys for browsing, buying, and getting support. These smooth, intuitive destinations help brands build stronger relationships and<a>drive retention</a>and repeat purchases, fueling long-term growth.</p>
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<p>17%</p>
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<p>1-20%:</p>
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<p>21%</p>
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<p>21-40%:</p>
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<p>27%</p>
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<p>41-60%:</p>
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<p>20%</p>
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<p>61-80%:</p>
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<p>10%</p>
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<p>80%+</p>
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<p>4%</p>
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<h3><strong>Expectation for % of interactions expected to be handled by self-service in the next year</strong></h3>
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<p>0%/unsure:</p>
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<p>15%</p>
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<p>1-20%:</p>
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<p>15%</p>
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<p>21-40%:</p>
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<p>23%</p>
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<p>41-60%:</p>
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<p>23%</p>
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<p>61-80%:</p>
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<p>16%</p>
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<p>80%+:</p>
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<p>9%</p>
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<h3>What are some essential self-service capabilities for 2026?</h3>
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<p>A customer experience hub is a logged-in, on-site destination that provides customers with uninterrupted, end-to-end customer journeys for browsing, buying, and getting support. These smooth, intuitive destinations help brands build stronger relationships and drive retention and repeat purchases, fueling long-term growth.</p>
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<p>Customer service teams are expanding self-service into areas like customer portals with FAQs and order management, and AI customer agents that customers can chat with in real time.</p>
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<p>Customers want self-service portals that actually serve them. A customer experience hub provides exactly that, with:</p>
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<p>Customers want self-service portals that actually serve them. A customer experience hub provides exactly that, with:</p>
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<ul><li><b>Knowledge bases and dynamic FAQs:</b>easily accessible resources that allow customers to resolve issues independently, without waiting for support</li>
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<ul><li><strong>Knowledge bases and dynamic FAQs:</strong>easily accessible resources that allow customers to resolve issues independently, without waiting for support</li>
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<li><b>Order tracking and management:</b>the ability for customers to check their order status without entering lengthy numbers or visiting external sites</li>
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<li><strong>Order tracking and management:</strong>the ability for customers to check their order status without entering lengthy numbers or visiting external sites</li>
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<li><b>Return initiation:</b>tools that let customers initiate returns on their own schedule, without waiting for an agent to process requests</li>
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<li><strong>Return initiation:</strong>tools that let customers initiate returns on their own schedule, without waiting for a human agent to process requests</li>
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<li><b>AI customer agents:</b>smart shopping assistants that can quickly pull up customer information like order status or initiate a return, or escalate to a human agent if the issue is too complex</li>
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<li><strong>AI customer agents:</strong>smart shopping assistants that can quickly pull up customer information like order status or initiate a return, or escalate to a human agent if the issue is too complex</li>
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</ul><p>Self-service customer hubs reshape how brands engage with customers-and vice versa. As Aman Advani, co-founder and CEO of<a>Ministry of Supply</a>,<a>puts it</a>, “We see potential for Klaviyo’s Customer Hub to be the future of shopping: a curated one-to-one experience. That’s really powerful.”</p>
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</ul><p>Self-service customer hubs reshape how brands engage with customers, and vice versa. When apparel brand<a>Ministry of Supply</a>created a more seamless, bespoke shopping experience with a self-serve customer portal, they saw<a>12,000+ self-serve support interactions</a>, like customers accessing details from previous purchases and getting recommendations for their next purchase.</p>
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<h3>Implementation considerations and calculating ROI</h3>
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<h3>How do you implement self-service and calculate ROI?</h3>
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<p>Customer hubs should feel like standalone systems to the customer, but behind the scenes, they need integration and clear metrics to be impactful. Here’s what to focus on:</p>
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<p>Customer hubs should feel like standalone systems to the customer, but behind the scenes, they need integration and clear metrics to be impactful. Here’s what to focus on:</p>
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<ul><li><b>Integrations with your existing CRM and ecommerce platforms:</b>Pull in and facilitate a flow of the right data to deliver frictionless and personalized services.</li>
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<ul><li><strong>Integrations with your existing CRM and ecommerce platforms:</strong>Pull in and facilitate a flow of the right data to deliver frictionless and personalized services.</li>
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<li><b>Measuring success:</b>Track key metrics such as self-service adoption rates, ticket volume reduction, net promoter scores (NPS), customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, and higher lifetime value associated with increased customer satisfaction</li>
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<li><strong>Measuring success:</strong>Track key metrics such as<a>self-service adoption rates</a>, ticket volume reduction,<a>net promoter scores</a>(NPS),<a>customer satisfaction</a>(CSAT) scores, revenue generated from your customer portal, and higher lifetime value (LTV) associated with increased customer satisfaction.</li>
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<li><b>Feedback and info for marketing campaigns and VIP programs:</b>Use hub data to create more targeted marketing campaigns and identify<a>VIP customers</a>for special offers, improving customer loyalty.</li>
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<li><strong>Feedback and info for marketing campaigns and VIP programs:</strong>Use hub data to create more targeted marketing campaigns and identify<a>VIP customers</a>for special offers, improving customer loyalty.</li>
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</ul><h2>3. Response time expectations are higher than ever</h2>
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</ul><h2><strong>3. Data quality and integration reduce friction and personalize customer service</strong></h2>
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<p>When response times lag, customers don’t wait. They move on. Picture your customer sending your support team a quick question about delivery times, only to get a robotic, “We’ll get back to you within 24-48 hours.” Meanwhile, your competitor replies instantly, solves the customer’s issue, and wins their business on the spot.</p>
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<p>Our research found that while most companies rate their customer data quality as “good,” only 29% consider it “excellent.” And only 34% of customer service leaders strongly agree their team has access to high-quality customer data enabling personalized interactions.</p>
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<p>Klaviyo’s 2025<a>future of consumer marketing report</a>found that when consumers have a negative experience with a brand, 81% expect a response within 24 hours. Meanwhile, 27% of Gen Z consumers-whose spending power is expected to<a>explode over the next 5 years</a>-expect a reply within a single hour.</p>
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<p>Data quality is becoming increasingly important for customer service teams, especially as they rely more on AI and self-service in their processes. If data is incomplete, or systems aren’t integrated, customer service teams and AI agents don’t have an accurate picture of a customer’s current needs.</p>
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<p>Speeding up response times doesn’t mean working faster-it means working smarter. Here’s how brands can meet rising expectations with automation:</p>
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<p>This goes hand in hand with the 1 in 4 teams that plan to consolidate their service team tech stacks this year. With more unified systems (and quality data), customer service teams can work more efficiently, better coordinate with marketing, personalize service, and reduce friction in the customer experience.</p>
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<ul><li><b>Answer simple product queries with AI customer agents:</b>Give customers the instant guidance they would expect from an experienced salesperson by making sure your AI customer agent is trained on your storefront, help resources, and<a>customer database</a>(more on this next).</li>
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<p>Let’s say your shipping platform isn’t integrated well with your CRM or helpdesk. If a customer asks when they can expect their order, your service team would need to:</p>
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<li><b>Ticket prioritization:</b>Use AI to automatically route urgent tickets faster and make sure high-priority issues get immediate human attention. Keep existing customers top of mind-you can even tag repeat customers as high-priority tickets.</li>
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<ol><li>Log in to a separate system, delaying their response.</li>
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<li><b>Helpdesk consolidation:</b>Bring all customer inquiries across email, web chat, text messaging, WhatsApp, and social into a unified workspace where all agents, both AI and human, can access full customer context-empowering them to not only respond faster, but also personalize every interaction.</li>
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<li>Use the data from the most recent manual upload, which may be outdated, leaving them to give the customer an incorrect date.</li>
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</ul><h2>4. AI-powered customer service drives revenue</h2>
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<li>Use an AI-generated summary that’s pulling from outdated data.</li>
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<p>On that note: AI is reshaping customer service, and businesses that don’t adapt will be left behind.<a>According to a recent Gartner survey</a>, 85% of customer service leaders plan to explore or pilot conversational AI in 2025.</p>
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</ol><p>If you’re using a B2C CRM with a built-in customer data platform and embedded helpdesk, though, you can:</p>
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<p>This is because AI not only speeds up response times for FAQs, but can also turn service conversations into additional sales. You can think of AI as a mechanism for closing the marketing-service loop: while AI is serving a customer in a support capacity, it can also recommend products and capture more customer data for future promotions.</p>
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<ul><li>Capture full customer history from the moment of sign-up, so marketing can refine targeting and customer service always has the full story.ccess to Ministry of Supply. That’s really powerful.”</li>
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<h3>How AI customer agents generate revenue</h3>
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<li>Track every customer interaction on every channel, so your teams never recommend the wrong products to customers or miss a complaint buried in an old email thread.</li>
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<p>When customer service leaders talk about service as a revenue driver, AI is a significant part of that conversation. AI customer agents are, practically speaking, a way for service leaders to link their key performance indicators (KPIs) to revenue.</p>
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<li>Gain visibility into every click, purchase, and action in real-time, so the right team can react instantly to what customers want or need.</li>
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<p>Here’s how AI support is contributing to marketing KPIs:</p>
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<li>Personalize customer service interactions using data from customer activities across both marketing and service.</li>
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<ul><li><b>Dynamic product recommendations:</b>Trained on customer and storefront data, AI agents can recommend products based on browsing behavior and current buying intent.</li>
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</ul><h2><strong>4. Integrated customer service is a revenue and retention driver, not just a cost center</strong></h2>
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<li><b>Proactive engagement:</b>When someone is about to abandon their cart, AI can proactively engage the customer in a chat to help answer questions and nudge them toward a sale.</li>
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<p>Improving customer satisfaction is the top priority for teams in 2026, according to our research. But close behind is increasing customer service’s impact on revenue generation and retention. And the second-most popular outlook for customer service professionals is that customer service will become a major driver of revenue and loyalty over the next few years.</p>
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<li><b>Instant answers:</b>AI can quickly provide answers in real time about sizing, shipping, order status, and more, with data from product catalogs and help docs. All of the data generated from these quick conversations ends up in a single customer profile that can drive future personalization efforts.</li>
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<p>Customer service has moved from a reactive cost center to a revenue and retention driver, particularly when service and marketing teams work closely together. According to Klaviyo’s 2025<a>State of B2C Marketing Report</a>, brands with fully or highly aligned marketing and customer service teams are 26% more likely to have average LTVs >$1,000.</p>
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</ul><h3>Balancing speed with quality</h3>
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<p>Here are just a few examples of how service teams can directly drive revenue, with help from connected marketing data and systems:</p>
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<p>AI can handle many customer interactions efficiently, but human agents still play an integral role. Getting this balance right is key to creating customer experiences that delight, not frustrate, customers.</p>
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<ul><li><strong>Guide customers to purchase when they’re most likely to buy.</strong>Both AI and human agents can answer customer questions throughout the shopping experience, whether they’re making a personalized recommendation for a gift or resolving a quick sizing inquiry. This can directly reduce cart abandonment and increase purchases.</li>
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<p>“Customer service automation is risky-a lot of companies have gone all in on that, and the customer experience has been negatively affected,” explains Paul Rogers, managing director at<a>Vervaunt</a>. “It’s about how you actually deploy it, and whether you’re better off enabling a human agent vs. just immediately replacing them.”</p>
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<li><strong>Identify and re-engage at-risk customers.</strong>Marketing teams can use data from customer service interactions and purchase history to find customers who may be likely to churn, and re-engage them with special offers and win-back campaigns.</li>
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<p>Use AI customer agents to handle common inquiries, like questions about delivery options, while routing more complicated or sensitive queries to human agents. Priority tickets like payment failures during check-out, for example, should automatically be escalated to a live agent. But before that, an AI assistant can gather customer data and issue details, so agents have what they need to resolve the issue when they step in.</p>
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<li><strong>Follow up after negative experiences to repair relationships.</strong>After a customer has a negative brand experience, like receiving an item late or being dissatisfied with the sizing, you can send out a discount on their next purchase or a complimentary item.</li>
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<p>Rachel Fagan, VP of marketing at home fragrance brand<a>Happy Wax</a>, saw a dramatic reduction in support tickets after implementing an AI-powered customer agent-especially valuable heading into BFCM when inquiries surge. </p>
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<li><strong>Drive loyalty and build stronger customer relationships.</strong>Give shoppers access to a personalized customer hub where they can manage their relationship with your brand, redeem loyalty points, access discounts, quickly re-purchase items, and save favorites.</li>
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<p>“In the last 90 days, over 50% of conversations handled by the AI agent were fully resolved without any service team involvement,” Fagan says. “Customers get instant answers, our team gains bandwidth for high-touch moments, and that’s setting us up for success this BFCM.”</p>
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</ul><p>Women’s intimates brand<a>Thirdlove</a>, for example, drives revenue through self-service with a customer hub that displays an individualized “For You” page for every customer. There, customers can view and favorite items, receive personalized product recommendations, and track and redeem loyalty points.</p>
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<h3>AI adoption strategies for different business sizes</h3>
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<p>Customers use the hub to manage their entire relationship with the brand-tracking orders, reaching out to support, and more. In 2025, Thirdlove’s customer hub generated over<a>$200,000 in revenue</a>.</p>
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<p>Diving into complex strategies like AI-supported service without a plan can lead to them falling short of their intended effect. Let’s not forget McDonald’s infamous failed experiment with<a>AI-assisted ordering</a>.</p>
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<h2><strong>5. Peak period preparedness separates top-tier customer service</strong></h2>
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<p>Smaller businesses should take a gradual approach and scale up when it makes sense. Instead of rolling out AI across all customer service channels at once, start by testing it in one area. Use your existing customer data to identify where AI could most benefit your business. For example, if you regularly receive high volumes of customer queries via email tickets, start with AI-powered FAQs or automated responses.</p>
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<p>Peak shopping periods like holidays, BFCM, and the change of seasons can make or break your brand reputation.</p>
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<p>Larger businesses, meanwhile, have more room to play around and integrate AI across multiple touchpoints-such as chat, SMS, and email-to deliver highly personalized customer experiences.</p>
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<p>If you can maintain a top-tier level of customer service, you have the opportunity to turn<a>brand new customers</a>into loyal brand followers. But if you flounder under the pressure of higher service volumes, you may lose new and existing customers alike to brands with better, more efficient systems and teams.</p>
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<h2>5. Personalization is key for modern customer experiences</h2>
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<p>According to our research, the top challenge for customer service teams is managing high volumes of inquiries during these peak periods. To tackle this, 25% of teams focus on handling volumes through staffing and automation, while another 25% prioritize maintaining quality.</p>
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<p>Are consumers impressed when you include their names in emails? No. But 74% of them expect more personalization in 2025, according to our future of consumer marketing report-which makes it crucial to figure out what types of personalization your specific customers find meaningful.</p>
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<p>Here are a few ways to prepare your customer service organization for peak seasons:</p>
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<p>The higher-spending customers we surveyed in our report (those who spend over $100 on average on a retail or ecommerce product) are even more likely to expect personalization than those who spend less. And millennials (32%) and Gen Z (33%) are far more likely to notice personalized offers compared to baby boomers (17%).</p>
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<ul><li><strong>Expand self-service resources well beforehand.</strong>Make sure customers can get the information they need to make purchases 24/7, whether that’s through a customer portal, AI customer agent, or FAQs. Beef up your product detail pages prior to peak seasons with updated shipping information, common customer questions, and gifting options.</li>
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<p>Our report found that consumers tend to find offers, discounts, and product or service suggestions based on their unique behavior the most meaningful. For example, if you have a segment of customers who have requested to know when an item is back in stock, send them a personalized discount for the color or style they’ve indicated they’re interested in.</p>
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<li><strong>Proactively communicate to reduce ticket volume.</strong>Include information in your marketing automations like shipping policies and order deadlines, links to FAQs, and instructions on how to use products. Being proactive can help automate resolutions to problems that tend to contribute to service ticket volume.</li>
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<p>But right now, there’s a huge gap between what customers expect and what brands are delivering. Of those who took Klaviyo’s<a>customer experience quiz</a>, only 12% of brands currently deliver real-time personalization across every touchpoint, and only 5% provide personalized, AI-powered experiences that truly impress. </p>
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<li><strong>Scale team capacity.</strong>Use AI and automation to speed up your service team and increase their capacity. With AI handling routine order and store policy questions and automatically routing higher-priority tickets to the right people, your human agents can work more efficiently and more effectively.</li>
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<p>Here are a few ways to improve those numbers at your business:</p>
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</ul><p>The more<a>prepared you are ahead of busy seasons</a>, the less overwhelmed your service team will be, giving you time to make any necessary adjustments in real time and give customers the kind of support experience they expect.</p>
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<ul><li><b>Collect</b><a><b>zero- and first-party data</b></a>from your website and app, marketing engagement, customer feedback, and customer service interactions. A unified tech stack is essential, here.</li>
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<h2><strong>In 2026, don’t just meet customer service expectations. Exceed them.</strong></h2>
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<li><b>Leverage customer segmentation</b>to refine your service and marketing efforts. A B2C CRM does this for you, taking data from all of your channels and updating them in real time to help you reach the right audience.</li>
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<li><b>Personalize marketing based on customer service data, and vice versa.</b>Support teams can respond faster and more personally to customer inquiries because they have visibility into that customer’s complete history with your brand. Marketers, meanwhile, can tailor future product recommendations based on an item a customer has returned, or pause promotional campaigns when a customer has a support ticket open.</li>
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<li><b>Personalize self-service hub experiences</b>and AI agent interactions with recommended products, wish lists, and previously viewed and purchased items for every customer.</li>
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</ul><h2>6. Omnichannel support means meeting customers where they are</h2>
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<p>Knowing where your customers are most engaged allows you to reach them and support them at the perfect time. Our future of consumer marketing report found that mobile is the preferred channel for purchasing from B2C brands across industries:</p>
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<ul><li><b>Retail and ecommerce:</b>53% of consumers shop via mobile websites.</li>
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<li><b>Personal service and wellness:</b>37% of consumers shop via mobile websites.</li>
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<li><b>Restaurants:</b>37% of consumers shop via mobile websites, and 38% shop in-store.</li>
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<li><b>Hotels:</b>39% of consumers shop via mobile websites.</li>
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</ul><p>But different generations discover brands on a variety of channels. For example, Gen Z and millennials are more likely to use organic social media to find new brands, whereas Gen X and baby boomers are more likely to use search engines.</p>
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<p>With generational preferences all over the map, your<a>customer experience</a>must remain consistent across all channels. One-third of consumers are frustrated by inconsistent pricing and promotions across channels, according to our future of consumer marketing report. </p>
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<p>Here’s how you can guarantee great<a>omnichannel</a>customer experiences:</p>
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<ul><li>Remember that consistent should never mean impersonal. Segmenting your audience with a B2C CRM lets you create tailored experiences for each customer, adjusting them for channel-specific preferences.</li>
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<li>Analyze customer feedback to identify trends early, allowing you to adjust your messaging and offers.</li>
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<li>Use AI to predict not only the best content for each customer, but the channel they’re most likely to engage on next-ensuring more relevant and effective campaigns across channels.</li>
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<li>Offer support that’s tailored to each channel, like dynamic FAQs and knowledge bases with quick answers on the web, a pre-sales AI agent embedded in your storefront for instant help, and live agents via text messaging or WhatsApp. </li>
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<li>Make it easy for agents to deliver an omnichannel support experience with a unified helpdesk. When your human and AI customer agents can access email, chat, SMS, WhatsApp, and social media conversations from one inbox, support conversations can flow more easily without clunky interruptions. </li>
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<li>Integrate self-service with loyalty programs by making it easy to check and redeem points through personal accounts on your website.</li>
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</ul><h2>Don’t just meet customer service expectations. Exceed them.</h2>
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<p>Exceptional customer service has become a key driver of loyalty and revenue. But the baseline of great customer service is constantly changing. Fail to keep up, and you’ll fail to compete.</p>
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<p>Exceptional customer service has become a key driver of loyalty and revenue. But the baseline of great customer service is constantly changing. Fail to keep up, and you’ll fail to compete.</p>
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<p>Customer service excellence is non-negotiable in 2025, and you need the right tools to execute it.</p>
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<p>Customer service excellence is non-negotiable in 2026, and you need the right tools to execute it.<a>Klaviyo Service</a>connects service and marketing with shared data and AI, and helps brands deliver smarter, connected experiences.</p>
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<p>Klaviyo is the<a>B2C CRM</a>. It unites service and marketing data infrastructure and<a>automation</a>with a<a>suite of service products</a>you can use to build an exceptional customer experience:</p>
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<p>The Klaviyo Service suite includes:</p>
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<ul><li><b>Customer Hub:</b>a personalized, on-site destination for self-service that paves new paths to purchase </li>
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<ul><li><strong><a>Klaviyo Customer Hub</a>:</strong>a personalized, one-stop shop where customers can manage orders, redeem offers, discover products, and get support</li>
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</ul><ul><li><b>Klaviyo AI (K:AI) Customer Agent:</b>a 24/7 personalized AI assistant built to resolve, recommend, and convert*</li>
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<li><strong><a>K:AI (Klaviyo AI) Customer Agent</a>:</strong>a 24/7 autonomous service agent that’s trained on your storefront and customer data to answer questions, recommend products, and resolve issues instantly, across all channels</li>
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</ul><ul><li><b>Helpdesk:</b>an AI-powered workspace for fast resolutions and smart selling opportunities**</li>
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<li><strong><a>Klaviyo Helpdesk</a>:</strong>an AI-powered helpdesk that brings AI and human agents into a unified workspace across channels, providing full customer context for faster response times and more personalized interactionsce program from those who haven’t.</li>
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</ul><p>Don’t just adapt. Excel.</p>
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</ul>
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<p>*K:AI Customer Agent is currently available in English. Additional languages will be available in 2026.</p>
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<p>**Klaviyo Helpdesk supports two-way conversations in any language, as long as both the customer and agent use the same language. Klaviyo does not translate messages between languages. The Helpdesk interface will appear in the language you’ve selected in your Klaviyo account settings.</p>
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<h3>Ready to transform your customer relationships?</h3>
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<p>Take our B2C CRM readiness assessment to discover your next steps.</p>
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<h3>How to build exceptional customer experiences</h3>
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<p>The ultimate benefit of a CRM is the customer experiences you can create.</p>
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<h3>How to improve your customer experience for higher LTV</h3>
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<p>A better customer experience should equate to more lifetime value.</p>
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<h2>Power smarter digital relationships with Klaviyo.</h2>