Two years ago most companies asked us for a chatbot. This year, nobody did. They asked for agents that take actions: update the CRM, rebook the shipment, reconcile the account.
What changed
Models got reliably good at using tools
Costs fell enough to run agents on every transaction
Teams learned to design oversight instead of avoiding risk
What still doesn’t work
Agents struggle with work that has no clear definition of done, with processes that change weekly, and with data nobody trusts. No model fixes a messy process — it just automates the mess faster.
Fix the process, then automate it. In that order.
What’s next
We expect the next year to be about coordination: several specialised agents handing work to each other, with humans managing the system rather than the tasks.
Written by
Maya Okafor
Previously led operations at a Series C logistics company. Has automated her own inbox three times.
