McDermott: Automating Support Drives Increased Human Escalations
Adrian McDermott · Zendesk's Adrian McDermott: AI's Customer Service Potential, Adoption Cycle, Scale vs. Orchestration · Dec 5, 2025 · at 11:31
Zendesk CTO Adrian McDermott outlines the counterintuitive dynamic where increasing customer service automation drives more customers to bypass bots to reach human agents.
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“One of the things that we say is automation drives escalation. You know, as I automate something, more and more people, the Alex's of the world are pressing zero and asking to talk to the operator. And that isn't coming away.”
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