Customers disappointed by AI service claims

A new Canada survey found the sharpest split in artificial intelligence customer service isn’t between humans and bots. It’s between what customers say is happening and what executives think is happening. (finance.yahoo.com) ServiceNow and ThoughtLab surveyed 1,350 customers, 300 service representatives, and 195 executives in Canada between September and October 2025. The customers kept naming the same three annoyances: no empathy, having to repeat the problem, and getting bounced between departments. (finance.yahoo.com) The biggest mismatch was empathy. Fifty-nine per cent of customers said lack of empathy or understanding was their top frustration, while only about one-quarter of executives thought customers felt that way. (finance.yahoo.com) Phone support showed the same gap. Eighty-five per cent of customers said they want a human on the phone for complex problems, but only one in 10 executives said phone support will be a priority over the next three years. (finance.yahoo.com) Customers are not rejecting automation across the board. ServiceNow’s global 2026 study found three-quarters of customers prefer self-service for simple tasks like password resets or order tracking, but 87% still want to call when the issue gets complicated. (servicenow.com) That helps explain why speed alone is not fixing the problem. ServiceNow says only 45% of service representatives’ time is spent directly supporting customers, which means many companies are layering artificial intelligence onto already fragmented workflows. (servicenow.com) Other surveys show this is not just a Canada problem. Gartner said in July 2024 that 64% of customers would prefer companies not use artificial intelligence in customer service at all, and 53% said they might switch to a competitor if they learned a company planned to use it there. (gartner.com) The fear Gartner heard most often was simple: artificial intelligence would make it harder to reach a real person. That lines up almost exactly with the Canada finding that customers accept automation for easy questions but still want a human escape hatch for messy ones. (gartner.com) Meanwhile, software sellers are still promising faster and more personalized support. Zendesk’s 2026 customer experience report says 74% of consumers now expect service to be available 24 hours a day and 88% expect faster responses than a year earlier. (zendesk.com) Those rising expectations are why buyers are getting more skeptical about vague artificial intelligence pitches. If a tool cannot cut repeat explanations, preserve context across channels, or hand off cleanly to a human, customers feel the gap immediately. (zendesk.com; servicenow.com) So the sales pitch is changing from “we added artificial intelligence” to “we reduced handle time, repeat contacts, and transfers.” In customer service, the winning claim is no longer that the bot answered fast, but that the customer did not have to start over. (servicenow.com; gartner.com))