Fast food is the ultimate example of a streamlined customer experience. The industry took off when families wanted convenient, satisfying, and inexpensive meals. It’s no surprise, then, that fast food companies are investing in AI agents—the latest and most powerful tool for not just serving customers efficiently, but also engaging them more meaningfully.
Wendy’s, for example, has been developing its FreshAI™ system to transform the drive-thru experience, leveraging AI agents to enhance customer service. The system processes natural speech and fields menu customizations. No onions, extra pickles, or double burger? Just say the word (in your own words), and the AI agent takes care of it. Beyond streamlining service, AI agents can also personalize interactions, anticipate customer needs, and ultimately, build stronger brand relationships.
Today’s forward-looking businesses, from restaurants and fashion retailers to SaaS companies and e-commerce giants, are jumping on the AI agent bandwagon. At my online form company, Jotform, we’re also on the verge of releasing AI agents, with an eye toward better serving users. Here are some key ways that AI agents enhance customer engagement.
The Keys To Customer Engagement
For businesses, customer engagement means building lasting relationships and ongoing interactions with a brand. In an ideal world, an engaged customer becomes a repeat client, follows the brand on social media, and shares their experiences with others, among other touchpoints. In short, engaged customers deliver more value over time.
AI agents are software systems that can handle customer-facing tasks completely autonomously. They can make decisions on their own, leveraging machine learning and natural language processing to analyze data, forecast outcomes, make decisions, and carry out actions. They can interact with customers and come up with solutions with zero human input.
Incorporating AI agents in your business’s workflows isn’t like replacing a cog in a machine. It’s not just a way to keep the status quo while reducing your workforce. AI agents can enhance the customer experience on at least three dimensions: seamlessness, performance, and emotional connection—all keys to boosting engagement.
How AI Agents Enhance The Customer Experience
Few things are more frustrating for customers than struggling to reach a brand’s support team or enduring long wait times for assistance. AI agents create a smoother brand experience by providing instant assistance. AI-powered customer support chatbots can quickly handle FAQs, orders, and complaints—and that’s just the start. They also enable human agents to operate more effectively.
For example, Baca Systems shared that before AI agents, customers who called the company with service questions (typically about a hardware issue) would wait an average of five to seven minutes while a human agent searched for relevant cases and analyzed technical documents. After incorporating Salesforce’s AI agents—which entails human representatives asking the AI agents to locate information—wait time shrunk to five or 10 seconds. Human agents can reply almost instantly and have the bandwidth to give undivided attention to more customers. What’s more, AI agents can field questions around the clock. If running a company for nearly two decades has taught me anything, it’s that nothing that builds customer loyalty like receiving assistance 24/7, even during the holidays. It’s a win-win because our company can provide this care while also ensuring that our teammates can take the time to disconnect and reset.
Be it a cheeseburger or life-saving medical care, AI agents can help deliver higher-quality service. For example, one health technology company integrates AI agents into its processes to analyze medical imaging data in real time. As a result, radiologists can identify medical conditions quicker and more accurately. Similarly, with IBM Watson Health, AI systems analyze medical images for early disease detection. Again, AI agents shouldn’t be seen as taking human jobs. Instead, they are equipping human professionals with more data and insight so that they can perform their tasks more effectively.
Personalization is key to creating a meaningful emotional connection with customers. AI agents can help brands to personalize the customer experience in so many ways—be it proactively recommending products or services that a customer might like or tailoring interactions based on past behaviors and preferences. Importantly, unlike generative AI tools like ChatGPT, AI agents track past conversations and interactions, allowing them to tailor customer engagements accordingly.
Consider Netflix: the streaming company proactively recommends titles based on your ever-evolving preferences, gauged via viewing history and ratings. Or it might email you a recap of what your kids have been watching lately, providing important insights to parents before they even realize they’re interested. These interactions make customers feel like the messages and recommendations are tailored to them, and them alone. Knowing that their chosen brand understands their needs and wants, the idea of switching brands and starting from scratch seems increasingly unappealing—like having spent years developing your favorite playlists on Spotify, only to switch to Apple Music and begin all over again.
Across industries, AI agents are helping brands connect with their customers and better serve them. By streamlining processes, enhancing personalization, and improving overall service quality, these agents are becoming powerful tools for businesses to forge deeper customer relationships.
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