McKinsey Talks Operations Beyond the bot: building empathetic customer experiences with agentic AI
Dec 17, 2025
Eric Buesing, a Partner at McKinsey & Company, and Gadi Shamia, CEO of Replicant, explore the transformative power of agentic AI in customer care. They discuss how AI can evolve from basic bots to empathetic agents that handle complex interactions. Key insights include the importance of UX design for customer acceptance and the need for robust organizational changes to scale automation. The duo also highlights a successful DoorDash pilot, showcasing measurable goals and impressive automation rates. Discover how AI can reshape human roles in contact centers!
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AI Leaders Pull Ahead
- AI is starting to separate leaders from laggards by enabling scale in customer experience, efficiency, and growth.
- Organizations building AI muscle now will define future full-service care models.
From Flows To Task-Driven Agents
- Modern conversational AI agents follow tasks and goals rather than rigid script flows.
- That task-driven approach creates far greater flexibility than early, flow-based bots.
Agentic AI As Lego Blocks
- Agentic AI can act like small specialized workers that compose into complex workflows.
- When combined, they reason, remember interactions, and respond conversationally at human-like speed.