88% of consumers prefer human interaction over AI: Verizon report
A new report from Verizon highlights a notable divergence between businesses’ growing embrace of artificial intelligence to enhance customer experience and consumers’ enduring preference for human interaction. While AI is undeniably improving efficiency and service delivery for companies, the study reveals a significant gap in consumer satisfaction with purely AI-driven engagements.
The Verizon CX Annual Insights report, based on a survey of 500 executives and 5,000 consumers across seven countries, underscores that the future of customer experience lies not in replacing human connections, but in thoughtfully integrating AI to augment them. Businesses have long utilized AI in the form of chatbots, but the advent of generative AI has expanded possibilities, enabling hyper-personalization, faster support, real-time prompts for human agents, and even predictive customer needs.
From the corporate perspective, AI appears to be delivering tangible benefits. Over 70 percent of executives surveyed reported that customer experience has improved over the past two years thanks to AI integration. However, the consumer perspective paints a more nuanced picture. While 60 percent of customers expressed satisfaction with their AI-driven interactions, a striking 88 percent indicated a clear preference for human-led interactions. Nearly half of all consumers, 47 percent, cited their inability to reach a human as their biggest frustration.
The report also sheds light on the challenges surrounding personalization, one of AI’s most vaunted applications. Although 44 percent of executives believe AI is enhancing personalization, only 26 percent of consumers perceive an improvement in this area, with 30 percent even reporting that personalization has worsened. Despite these consumer reservations, AI is proving most effective in specific use cases, with 75 percent of companies finding it beneficial for customer support, 71 percent for personalization, and 69 percent for data collection and analysis. Nevertheless, companies face hurdles such as poor data quality, privacy restrictions, a lack of staff AI skills, and difficulty in accurately measuring AI’s true impact.
Crucially, the study suggests that human roles in customer experience are far from obsolete. A mere seven percent of the surveyed companies anticipate that customer experience will become entirely AI-driven in the future. Instead, the report indicates that approximately 44 percent of businesses plan to balance their investments between AI and human improvements. A majority of companies are actively training their staff to handle AI-related complaints, interpret AI prompts, and navigate data privacy concerns. The study further recommends that companies train employees to collaborate effectively with AI, leverage AI for proactive problem prediction, and develop more robust methods for measuring AI’s efficacy. Transparency regarding personalization, particularly concerning the use of customer data, is also highlighted as essential.
Ultimately, the Verizon report reinforces the idea that AI serves as a powerful tool to enhance efficiency and insights, but it cannot fully replicate the nuanced understanding and emotional connection that human interaction provides. The most successful customer experience strategies will likely involve a thoughtful blend of advanced technology and the indispensable human touch.