Web chat gets most of the AI attention in customer service, but the real automation gap is email.
Email accounts for around 20% of inbound interactions into UK contact centres. Web chat? Just 7%.
Yet despite the volume:
- Only 8% of emails currently receive automated responses
- 55% are answered by agents using templates they manually edit
- The rest start with a blank email
In other words, one of the biggest customer service channels remains largely untouched by meaningful AI.
For sectors such as retail, telecoms and manufacturing, email is often one of the highest-volume channels organisations manage. And at an average cost of £4.92 per interaction, it’s not dramatically cheaper than a live voice call.
This is where agentic AI changes the equation.
Agentic AI can:
- Read, understand and categorise inbound emails without human triage
- Draft and send contextually accurate responses across billing, policy and complaints
- Trigger follow-up actions across systems, including refunds, updates and scheduling
- Choose the right resolution channel, whether that’s email, SMS or a scheduled phone call
Despite its shortcomings, email remains a major customer channel — particularly for complaints and more complex issues.
The Inner Circle Guide to Agentic AI explores how this under-automated channel can be transformed, alongside the governance and guardrails organisations need when AI is communicating directly with customers.
To download The Inner Circle Guide to Agentic AI Click Here
