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Newsweek
25-06-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
AI Impact Awards 2025: What Is the Future of Customer Service?
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Being unable to reach a customer service representative the moment you encounter a problem feels almost archaic. And yet, 24/7 assistance only became the norm some 30 years ago, when globalization and the internet drastically transformed our expectation for around-the-clock customer service. Now, the industry is evolving again. This time around, artificial intelligence is redefining the way businesses connect with their customers. This year, 85 percent of customer service leaders will explore or pilot a customer-facing conversational generative AI solution, a December survey from Gartner, a research and advisory firm focused on business and technology, found. Respondents also identified customer service leaders as having more responsibility than their IT counterparts when it comes to driving adoption, identifying new AI opportunities and road-mapping the evolution of AI activities. The industry's path ahead, however, remains uncertain. For some, like Pipeliner CRM's Nikolaus Kimla, it's humans who need to drive machine learning forward. For others, like Intercom's Eoghan McCabe, its the capabilities themselves that will shape the future of customer service. This year, both Intercom and Pipeliner CRM were recognized for their customer service innovations as part of Newsweek's AI Impact Awards 2025. Customer service was just one of more than a dozen industries recognized with 38 winners chosen by a panel of AI and subject matter experts. "Winning the Newsweek AI Impact Award is both an honor and a powerful validation of the vision we've held at Pipeliner from the very beginning," Kimla, CEO of the customer relationship management software company, told Newsweek. "This reinforces the idea that technology, especially AI, should serve to elevate people, not replace them." AI Impact Awards: Customer Service AI Impact Awards: Customer Service Newsweek Illustration Pipeliner CRM received the Best Outcomes, Analyzing Customer Data award for its 2024 launch of Voyager AI Assistant Gen II. The second generation of the tool aims to help sales team by automating time-consuming tasks, like data analysis and reporting, but it was still built with Pipeliner CRM's core values of "human empowerment, transparency and usability" in mind. "Innovation at Pipeliner always serves people first," Kimla said. "Our AI is built not to replace the salesperson but to support them, offering intuitive insights without adding complexity." Kimla said because many AI tools often end up overwhelming users with excessive data, Pipeliner CRM sought to ensure that their assistant would serve sales teams without "adding friction." So far, the response to Voyager AI Assistant Gen II have been positive. Kimla said he was surprised by how quickly sales professionals embraced the tool once they realized its ability to help them work smarter and close deals faster. Metrics from Pipeliner CRM also show that the AI led to a 30 percent reduction in time spent on administration tasks, as well as an increase in lead conversion rates. The platform's CEO said teams that use Voyager Recommend to surface upsell and cross-sell opportunities have seen lead conversion rise by 20 to 40 percent. "AI's future in customer service is about becoming a proactive partner, understanding context and emotion to deliver personalized support while enabling human agents to handle complex issues," Kimla said. "At Pipeliner, we're dedicated to developing AI that strengthens human connection, not replaces it." Customer service leaders who want to implement AI successfully should "avoid chasing the hype and stay grounded in your core values." "Make sure your AI enhances the human element, not erases it," Kimla advised. "If you do that, you'll build not only a better product but a more loyal and empowered customer base." McCabe, on the other hand, sees a customer service future that is going to be driven more by what AIs is capable of than what humans want AIs to accomplish. "We'll reach a point where AI can do more service than the company, the business, the brand, wants to do," McCabe, the CEO of Intercom, told Newsweek. Intercom won the Best Outcomes, Customer Satisfaction award for the development of Fin 2, the latest iteration of Intercom's customer service AI agent Built on proprietary in-house AI technology, Fin was designed so that companies could coach, train and monitor their AI customer service just like they would their human team members. McCabe said the biggest innovation with the newest generation of Fin is the AI's ability to pull disparate pieces of information and synthesize an answer, much like a human service representative can. In practice, that means a customer who ordered a package to the wrong address could not only find out if delivery is available in various states, but have that package rerouted to a different address entirely. "It's these pivotal steps These big leaps forward" that distinguish each iteration from the next, McCabe said. According to Fin's resolution rates (the percentage of problems that the agent can solve), Intercom's AI has been extraordinarily successful. Fin 2 now resolves up to 91 percent of a businesses' total customer support volume and reaches an average of 56 percent resolution rate, up from 23 percent in the previous version. McCabe added that while 56 percent is the average resolution rate, that number can get as high as 80 percent for many of Intercom's customers. Some are even approaching 90 percent. The success of Fin 2 is also reflected in Intercom's portfolio of customers. Among the clients: Anthropic, one of the market's fastest-growing AI startups and the company behind Claude. "We're now solving tens of thousands of customer queries [for Anthropic]. We've saved their human support teams," McCabe said. "Fin is now involved in 96 percent of their support conversations." "Anthropic is one of the most sophisticated and successful AI labs in the world, and the fact that they're using Fin to do their service, as opposed to using their own AI speaks volumes," he said. McCabe attributes Intercom's success to its early investment in AI. While other companies did not begin hiring AI scientists and engineers in response to the 2022 launch of ChatGPT, Intercom was already ahead, having staffed an AI team for many years before. Today, Intercom has 47 highly-experienced senior AI engineers, scientists and researchers. "It's a product of this AI group," McCabe said. "If you look at any of our direct competitors, they don't have the level of sophistication and seniority and scale that we have." Despite his eagerness in seeing how AI will guide humans on how to implement new capabilities, McCabe forecasts that human agents will be around for at least another decade and acknowledged that human beings are never going to cease real-life interactions. Still, he believes there will come a time where agents will be so ubiquitous, humans will no longer realize they're even there. "Agents will be used strategically and deliberately, even when they're not needed, because there will be value," he said. "So, that's something that we get to reckon with in the future. But that's a bit of ways away." To see the full list of AI Impact winners, visit the official page for Newsweek's AI Impact Awards. Newsweek will continue the conversation on meaningful AI innovations at our AI Impact Summit from June 23 to 25 in Sonoma, California. Click here to follow along on the live blog.
Newsweek
18-06-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
Newsweek's AI Impact Awards 2025
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Artificial intelligence is no longer emerging—it's now a core driver of innovation across nearly every industry. It's reshaping how companies operate and redefining everyday life, from improved outcomes in health care to more personalized customer service. As its influence expands, so does the responsibility to use it ethically, effectively and with clear real-world impact. One in six U.S. workers already use AI in some capacity. An additional 25 percent say that while they aren't using AI much in their role right now, at least some of their work can be done using AI tools. As the use of AI increases, so will the number of companies providing these services. There are currently over 70,000 AI companies worldwide, and the industry is expected to experience exponential growth over the next six years. To celebrate companies leading the way, Newsweek is proud to present the inaugural AI Impact Awards 2025. These awards honor 38 organizations across 13 categories for their outstanding achievements in applying AI to solve complex challenges, improve operations and deliver meaningful outcomes. Whether in health care, education, finance or sustainability, these companies exemplify how AI, when deployed thoughtfully, can deliver both innovation and impact. This year's winners include companies advancing AI-powered health diagnostics, solutions for HR planning and management, as well as tools for education, sports broadcasting and weather tracking. The overall winner, Every Cure, was selected by a panel of cross-industry experts. The nonprofit stood out across all categories for its use of AI for drug repurposing. The 2025 AI Impact Award winners have also been invited to Newsweek's AI Impact Summit, a three-day event in Sonoma, California, from June 23 through 25, bringing together global leaders in technology, business and policy to explore how AI is shaping the future. Whether you're a business leader navigating AI adoption, a professional adapting to AI's growing role in daily work or if you're simply curious about what's next, this list highlights the organizations turning promise into performance and reshaping the world in the process. Award Winner Description Best Outcomes, Digital Media & Arts AI Arts & Media - AI is being used across industries to improve results across promotion, marketing, entertainment, journalism, from data results to automating writing by providing script and personalized recommendations. Winner: Interdependence Best Outcomes, Visual Media & Arts AI Arts & Media - AI goes beyond simply generating images, creating interactive art and exploring issues of bias and can serve as a jumping off point for bigger creations. Winner: Moonvalley Best Outcomes, Visual Media & Arts AI Arts & Media - AI can do more than help in drafting. It can help to give narration to an established idea, adjust writing styles and tones, and help in overcoming writers block with brainstorm generation, as well as simply correcting errors in spelling and grammar. Winner: Spines Best Outcomes, Customer Experience AI Brand & Retail - AI can assist in the overall customer experience by influencing outcomes in basket size, reducing return rates and overall retention and margins. Winner: Perfect Corp. Best Outcomes, Marketing and Creative AI Brand & Retail - AI can offer personalized marketing, A/B tests, website navigation, cross-selling/up-selling and enhanced product descriptions. Winner: Maesa Best Outcomes, Product Development and Innovation AI Brand & Retail - AI functionality assists in interpreting and summarizing end user feedback to extend the lifecycle of products and/or develop entirely new products. Winner: Trax Retail Best Outcomes, Analyzing Customer Data AI Customer Service - AI is transforming business through data analytics, identifying customer patterns through large datasets, predicting behaviors and even laying out customer-centric marketing campaigns, all based on data. Winner: Pipeliner CRM Best Outcomes, Customer Satisfaction AI Customer Service - AI can improve customer satisfaction by helping customers in real time, working to answer questions and solve problems as they arise. Winner: Intercom Best Outcomes, Commercial Learning AI Education - Some things AI can provide here are automated training, virtual tutors, learning and content recommendations. Winner: Coursera Best Outcomes, General Learning AI Education - Some things AI can provide here are automated training, virtual tutors, learning and content recommendations. Winner: Salesforce Best Outcomes, K-12 Education AI Education - AI can be used to tailor learning to individual needs and assess a student's strengths and weaknesses, using this data to create the best learning programs. Winner: ClassDojo Best Outcomes, Higher Education AI Education - Uses for AI in higher education can range from student teaching to support systems, admin and admissions to curriculum planning. Winner: MedCerts Best Outcomes, Financial Services AI Finance - AI is transforming investment, corporate banking, insurance and investments. This includes process automation, efficiencies, enhanced revenue opportunities, compliance and data privacy. Winner: Principal Financial Group Best Outcomes, Mitigating Fraud AI Finance - AI can aid in detecting and preventing fraud by analyzing transaction patterns and identifying anomalies and potential cyber-attacks. Winner: Instnt Best Outcomes, Accounting AI Finance - This AI category would include invoice processing, document review, forecasting, auditing, tax compliance, overall compliance checks, data analysis and fraud detection. Winner: ABBYY Best Outcomes, Care Coordination AI Health Care - AI tools can be used to bolster hospitals' command centers—evaluating wait times and helping with scheduling. They can also respond to patient inquiries and help schedule appointments. Winner: Xsolis Best Outcomes, Health Equity AI Health Care - AI can analyze large swaths of data and identify disparities in health care. Winner: Bunkerhill Health Best Outcomes, Patient Care AI Health Care - AI creations that correlate to patient health, as all roads lead to the patient. Winner: Cera Best Outcomes, Diagnostics AI Health Care - AI tools can be used to guide diagnosis, especially in image-heavy specialties like radiology. Winner: Color Health Best Outcomes, Physician Satisfaction AI Health Care - AI in health care can automate administrative tasks, taking time-consuming duties off doctors' plates. Winner: Iodine Software Best Outcomes, Content Creation AI Marketing - Automating copy writing, design and creative quality can create dynamic content with various user interactions. Winner: Extreme Networks Best Outcomes, Consumer Targeting and Personalization AI Marketing - Leveraging patterns in market/customer data, identifying quality leads and segmenting to boost conversions can all precisely segment audiences through AI. Winner: Beeby Clark + Meyler Best Outcomes, Programmatic Marketing AI Marketing - AI trends in programmatic can include personalized ad experiences and predictive analytics to deliver highly personalized marketing at scale. Winner: Clinch Best Outcomes, Automotive/Transportation UX Systems AI Mobility - AI is being used in the background and foreground to make UX systems better and offer more efficient and accurate computing. AI can also provide detailed explanations of expedited and improved processes. Winner: Mercedes-Benz AI Best Outcomes, Computer Science AI Science & Engineering - AI is being used to provide high levels of accuracy in data visualizations, processing and mining. This might also lean into robotics, image recognition and program writing. Winner: Warp Best Outcomes, Engineering AI Science & Engineering - AI impacts engineering in many ways, from analytics to risk assessment to streamlining and comparing regulations. Winner: CloudBees Best Outcomes, Materials Science and Chemistry AI Science & Engineering - Chemists have been using AI for some time to identify patterns to perform quick and precise analysis, and also in predicting new compounds with desired, required properties. Winner: Every Cure Best Outcomes, Sports Broadcasting/Streaming AI Sports - The use of AI can capture performance highlights, distribute those highlights across multiple platforms and improve the overall viewing experience for the sports fan. Winner: SailGP Best Outcome in Climate Adaptation & Resilience AI Sustainability - AI tools are consistently improving the monitoring and response to extreme weather events that are exacerbated by climate change, across fire, flooding and heatwaves. Winner: Straive Best Outcome in Energy Infrastructure AI Sustainability - AI is assisting with the best siting and permitting of solar and wind power, and overall better development of clean technology. Winner: IBM Best Outcomes, Digital Workspaces AI Workplace - AI assists across tracking user time in apps, messages sent, project completion times and collaboration wins. Winner: Zoom AI Companion Best Outcomes, HR AI Workplace - Payroll, compliance, workforce planning & management and other HR functions have consistently been enhanced with the use of AI. Winner: Betterworks Best Outcomes, Learning and Development AI Workplace - Using AI can show improvement in participation, internal mobilities, onboarding of new positions and tasks, and enhance overall employee development. Winner: Pfizer Extraordinary Impact in AI Innovation Best of - Most Innovative AI Technology or Service - Recognizing an AI methodology, technology or architecture with potential to profoundly impact multiple real-world use cases. Winner: Phare Bio Extraordinary Impact in Commercial Tool or Service Best of - Most Innovative AI Technology or Service - Recognizing a commercially available AI tool or service that has enabled significant gains in productivity, customer experience, or new revenue generation across one or more industries. Winner: Axon Enterprise Extraordinary Impact in General Purpose AI Tool or Service Best of - Most Innovative AI Technology or Service - Recognizing a commercially available AI tool or service that has demonstrated significant commercial or cultural impact. Winner: Extraordinary Impact in AI Human Interactivity or Collaboration Extraordinary Impact in AI Human Interactivity or Collaboration - Recognizing a commercially available AI tool or service that that has demonstrated significant value in enhancing interactive human-to-human or human-to-machine communication and collaboration. Winner: Ex-Human Extraordinary Impact in AI Transparency or Responsibility Best of - Most Innovative AI Technology or Service - Recognizing a commercially available AI tool or service that that has demonstrated significant value in enhancing explainability or responsibility of AI systems Winner: EY Responsible AI framework Best in Class Best in Class - Recognized by the panel of cross-industry judges as the overall winner of the AI Impact Awards, demonstrating significant impact in its field and successful execution of a "big idea." Winner: Every Cure Licensing To learn how to license and use this award, please email Kalin Alberts at How We Did It The Newsweek AI Impact Awards recognize artificial intelligence implementations that solve real business problems and show measurable results. Winners demonstrate concrete improvements—whether in efficiency, cost reduction, revenue growth or customer experience—rather than just promising future potential. A panel of industry experts including Marcus Weldon, Newsweek contributing editor for AI and president emeritus of Bell Labs, evaluated entries across multiple sectors. Judges were selected by Newsweek's editorial team for their hands-on experience in health care, finance, manufacturing and other industries where AI had moved beyond experimentation to practical deployment.
