Aug 6: In an unusual move for the B2B sector, Exotel, India’s AI-powered customer experience platform that powers over 25 billion customer interactions annually for more than 7,000 enterprises, launched a new brand campaign, #LikeAFriend, to coincide with the otherwise consumer goods and services-dominated Friendship Day. At the heart of the campaign is the familiar frustration of having to repeat the same issue right from scratch multiple times across multiple interactions with a supposedly single customer service channel. 
The campaign is underpinned by several forecasts that point to the overwhelming transition businesses are making to agentic AI to solve customer issues. For instance, a 2025 Gartner study projects that by 2029, agentic AI will autonomously resolve 80% of common customer service issues without human intervention, cutting operating costs by 30%, and that close to 40% of all customer service interactions will be automated. According to a PwC survey, customers are willing to pay up to 16% more for a superior experience. The study also found that 42% are willing to pay more for experiences that are friendly and welcoming, while one in three walk away after a single bad interaction.
Exotel’s campaign explores how AI-powered CX can harness the values that define human relationships – context, trust, empathy, and consistency – to address these persistent issues and dramatically enhance customer experience. Through the depiction of disjointed customer conversations, it illustrates what happens when context is lost across interactions, turning a simple customer journey into a frustrating experience.
The 80-second campaign film brings this to life through a customer whose card transaction is unexpectedly declined, leaving him unsure of what’s wrong. As he tries to resolve the issue, he is compelled to repeatedly share his credentials and retell his story across multiple customer service interactions all day, returning home to the effortless recognition of his loyal pet dog companion. Through this contrast, it asks a simple question: if the people who know us best never make us start over, why should the brands with whom we have a relationship?
“As a longstanding B2B marketer, one thing I know for sure is that embedded technology is always an interesting challenge to communicate at a broadcast level. But we at Exotel also know that AI is redefining customer experience, which is why leading enterprises such as HDFC Securities, ICICI Bank, Zerodha, Uber, MakemyTrip, Meesho and Piramal Finance are integrating it into their customer engagement and service infrastructure. This campaign deliberately zeroes into one of the commonest customer complaints – of a lack of recognition, recall, and continuity – that comes from fragmented, disconnected conversations. Through this campaign, we want to shift the conversation from AI as a capability to AI as an enabler of stronger, relationship-led customer experiences,” said Udit Agarwal, SVP & Head of Global Partnerships & Marketing, Exotel.
Looking ahead, the rise of agentic AI marks a fundamental shift in how humans and machines collaborate, with the emphasis moving from replacement to augmentation. Gartner indicates that brands which map emotional intensity across customer interactions could see up to a 15% increase in retention.
In this evolving landscape, the advantage will lie with organizations that combine the scale and efficiency of automation with the nuance of human-centric engagement. This is the gap that #LikeAFriend seeks to address—positioning AI not merely as a tool for efficiency, but as an enabler of more intuitive, empathetic, and relationship-driven customer experiences.
