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Microsoft just credited AI support automation with $500 million in savings while Uber and CBA cut hundreds of service roles. But every job AI eliminated handled problems that arrived as text. The expensive physical layer of support — truck rolls at $150 to $1,000 each — hasn’t gotten a dollar cheaper, because its bottleneck isn’t conversation. It’s visibility.

Microsoft, Uber, and CBA just confirmed AI-driven customer service cuts, and Wall Street cheered. But when everyone deploys the same AI support stack, easy-ticket parity is guaranteed. The real competitive edge shifts to how you handle the escalations the bot can’t solve.

OpenAI’s Presence launch and ServiceNow’s $1B in AI bookings prove AI agents are eating enterprise support. But every one of those deals covers problems that arrive as text or data. The interaction that resists automation is the one where someone has to see a physical thing that’s broken.

Enterprise AI budgets keep climbing, but a new SAP survey shows AI is delivering insights and better conversations — not the cost and time savings CIOs promised. In field service, that gap has a name: first-time fix rate. The missing input isn’t more orchestration. It’s visual context.

SAP is freezing hiring to fund agentic AI. PwC just built an agentic front office with OpenAI. But there’s a category of support ticket no autonomous agent will ever close on its own — because the problem lives in the physical world, and the AI can’t see it.

OpenAI Presence and the TeamViewer–ServiceNow deal both bet on voice and chat agents. But the hardest support problems are physical — and no voice agent can see a leaking valve. The visual layer is the missing primitive in the AI support platform race.