Customer support’s hot: How AI is changing who’s most valuable in tech
This article was first published in Sifted
In every business I’ve worked or consulted for, the customer support team has always been located in a literal — or metaphysical — basement. Undervalued and overlooked.
This represents a massive missed opportunity. Because in my experience, the very best way to diagnose the true health of a business is to spend some time with the customer support team. As the old adage goes: “Shit runs downhill” — and in startups especially, this is true. All the organisational debt and dysfunction; all the ‘move fast and break things’; all the scrappy startup sticking plasters… they all land at the door of the customer support team. And that can either make or break a company.
Spending proper time with the customer support team reveals a lot: how clients and end-users truly feel about the business; whether the product and marketing teams are aligned in terms of how they take their offerings to market; whether the commercial team is selling an operationally scalable solution or not; and whether the finance team’s processes are fit for purpose.
But how many investors, prospective senior hires or business leaders actively enquire about the day to day experience of the customer support function? I’d wager not nearly enough.
2025: A turning point
I’m hopeful, however, that 2025 will be the year when we collectively right this wrong, and the customer support function will have its long overdue “time in the sun”. Why? Because 2025 is shaping up to be the year when the AI rubber truly hits the road. The spotlight is on the CS function more than anywhere as founders and startup leaders are recognising the potential for AI to automate away a lot of manual CS and operations tasks. This means business growth can come without requiring expensive headcount growth; or, if a company is not in growth mode, it can lock in significant cost savings instead without compromising performance, taking a leaf out of the Klarna playbook.
For startups that want to seize this opportunity, some major organisational changes need to happen.
1/ A rebalancing of the culture
Startup culture has historically placed product and engineering teams on a pedestal, as the organisational ‘kings’ — paid the most, managed as a precious resource and generally revered. In this post-AI world though, I foresee a massive levelling up. The precious resource will increasingly be the operational know-how that’s required to wield the AI tools effectively, rather than those that build the tools. Someone on £40k with a growth mindset and a granular knowledge of how the business works will quickly be just as valuable as a developer earning twice that, and as a result we’ll start to see the market value of these AI operations roles rapidly increase. Over time this will have profound consequences for startup culture, compensation, career development and more.
2/ An expanded role
As AI tools empower customer support teams, their roles will naturally evolve. They won’t just be about ‘support’ anymore. Instead they’ll increasingly oversee the broader customer experience across every touchpoint in the business. At Olio for example, we’ve rebranded our CS team in 2025 to ‘Customer Experience and Operations’. They now take end-to-end responsibility for ensuring a seamless customer experience, and for managing operations. This means they’re not only driving product and process requirements, but they’re also able to deliver on those requirements themselves — rather than waiting at the bottom of the tech roadmap queue. This evolution isn’t just a rebranding exercise. It’s a recognition that the boundaries between support, operations and customer experience are increasingly blurred in the world of AI — and that’s a good thing for both business and customers.
3/ New KPIs for a new era
Traditional customer support metrics like ‘time to first response’ and ‘ticket closure rates’ need to evolve. They’re too narrow and reactive for this new era. Instead, businesses need to adopt broader customer satisfaction metrics and track progress on their operations automation curve. At Olio we’re aiming to get to 90%+ automation for our flag reports by year end (up from 65% today); and to get emails/tickets from 25% to 50%+; whilst ensuring that customer satisfaction is 80%+. With regards to the automation of operations, this will require identifying, quantifying, prioritising and tracking processes that are apt for automation; and developing a new set of KPIs to measure progress along this curve.
The Bigger Picture
Customer support has long been seen as a relatively low status cost centre — a necessary but unglamorous part of the business. But in 2025, I think we’ll see this perception shift dramatically. With the rise of AI, customer support teams will no longer just ‘solve problems.’ They’ll become strategic hubs for operational excellence, customer insight and business growth. And as the CS teams “AI-up”, everyone else should beware the adage: “AI won’t take your job; but someone using AI will.
