ServiceNow's Bill McDermott says AI agents now handle most cases

Bill McDermott, who runs the software company ServiceNow, said on the podcast No Priors that AI now handles most of its customer-service work. The episode was posted Friday, April 17.

For a normal person, this is about jobs. McDermott expects companies like his to add far fewer workers as they grow. He also thinks the bar for human skills is going up.

He said agents, meaning AI that keeps working on a task by itself, now do most of the routine work. In his words, "90% of our customer service cases now are managed by agents." That quote starts at 38:29. He said only 10% involve people. He expects new hires to be engineers and people who build trust with customers. He also said some big customers now go live on ServiceNow's platform in less than 30 days.

McDermott is back in the news this week. CNBC on MSN ran a story headlined "ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott: This is a unicorn growth company." It reports that he talked with Jim Cramer on Mad Money about quarterly results, the software sector and AI integration.

ServiceNow sells these AI tools to other companies, so he has a stake in how well they work. He said the company's net new headcount will be "dramatically reduced." He also said there will be 2.2 billion agents entering the workforce in the next couple of years. That number is his own forecast.

Watch the 5 minutes where he explains it.36:21