AI Pulse · ANZ AI Watch

Australian and New Zealand customer experience leaders appear to be treating agentic AI as an immediate operational priority. In a survey of 508 ANZ CX and business leaders, 39% said deploying it was “critical”, compared with 22% globally. Nearly half, 48%, said they already deploy agentic virtual agents.

Agentic AI is different from a standard chatbot that answers a question and stops. It can work through a defined task, such as checking an order status, updating a customer record, routing an exception, or preparing the next step for a staff member. That makes it relevant to businesses with busy service teams, repeatable admin work, and growing customer volumes.

There are a couple of caveats. The survey is five weeks old, it was commissioned by Genesys, and survey results are not the same as independently verified deployment data. Still, it is currently one of the clearest ANZ-specific signals that local businesses are moving from AI trials to practical customer-facing use.

For owners, the useful question is not whether to put an AI agent in every customer interaction. It is which two or three high-volume processes have clear rules, reliable data, and enough repetition to justify automation. Start there, keep a person accountable for exceptions, and measure whether customer resolution and staff workload actually improve. This is the kind of thing we build into an AI command centre, where you can see which workflows are running, where they need human review, and what they’re delivering.