The confusion is understandable, because both get sold under the same banner of AI-powered customer service, and both arrive in your inbox wrapped in near identical case studies. Customer service is one of the most common places that money lands. The industry calls this agentic AI, and the plainer way to put it is that the old technology answers while the new one resolves. Gartner predicts that by 2029 agentic AI will autonomously resolve 80 per cent of common customer service issues, cutting operational costs by around 30 per cent for organisations that deploy it well. So when the next pitch lands promising AI-powered customer service, skip the question of whether it uses artificial intelligence.