The rapid pace of artificial intelligence development, combined with the rise of AI-powered chatbots, has led to a common assumption that AI customer experience must be successful for businesses that deploy it.
Just ask ChatGPT. “AI has been quite successful so far at improving customer experience, in multiple industries and through various channels,” it says when prompted to evaluate itself.
A respected customer experience arbiter disagrees with the prevailing wisdom – and says AI-powered customer experience is actually failing, so far.
AI Customer Experience Is Focus Of New Report
The unexpected finding, in the 2026 Qualtrics Customer Experience Trends Report, is based on a survey of 20,000 consumers from 14 countries and across 18 industries. While overall consumer comfort with AI has substantially improved, it reported, nearly 1 in 5 consumers said using AI for customer support did not provide any benefit at all – a failure rate four times higher than other AI applications.
“Too many companies are deploying AI to cut costs, not solve problems, and customers can tell the difference,” report author Isabelle Zdatny, head of thought leadership at Qualtrics XM Institute, said in a press release accompanying the report.
The AI data is among four key customer trends identified in the report, which found overall that global consumer experience improved across every industry measured – though the gains are fragile amid global economic uncertainty.
Let’s dive briefly into all four.
Trend 1: AI Customer Experience Is Failing So Far
The report presents its AI revelations as good news and bad news.
The good: Overall, 73 percent of consumers now use AI for daily tasks, with half believing it will positively impact society. That’s up nearly nine percentage points since just 2024 – a big step in AI acceptance.
Less good: The trend has yet to extend to customer experience. When consumers rated AI applications for convenience, time savings, and usefulness, customer support ranked last, ahead of only “building an AI assistant.”
The reason, Zdatny said in the report, is that brands often use AI “to deflect cost.” She recommended a different approach: having AI agents handle simple, transactional customer experience requests, then using the technology “to arm human agents with complete history, predicted needs, and suggested solutions for complex issues.”
In other words, let AI help the humans work better.
My take: Clearly, the possibilities of AI are truly endless, including for customer experience, but it is used best when it complements human service rather than replacing it. And AI should be taught to bring in a human at the first sign it can’t solve a problem.
Instead, companies are so far using AI to solve their problems (high customer service costs, for example) instead of their customers’ problems. That needs to change.
Trend 2: Survey Fatigue Leaves Businesses Guessing About Customer Churn
Many consumers are tired of what seems like the constant bombardment of customer feedback surveys, a truism that showed up in the report with the data point that consumers are less and less likely to take them. This means, the report said, that 30 percent of consumers now stay silent after a bad experience, a major increase of nine points over the past five years.
My Take: The report is identifying a significant issue in customer experience: the feedback loop. With data pouring into corporate America, companies need to find better ways to collect feedback, and then do better at taking action on it.
Without taking action, businesses risk growing their “leaky bucket” – the customers who leave quietly and never say what went wrong. Most businesses are so focused on sales and bringing in new customers that they forget about how existing customers are the ones funding their paychecks.
Listening to customers across all channels is critical, as is collecting qualitative feedback so you can hear the literal voice of the customer – like in this Live Customer Focus Group I hosted at a recent event.
Trend 3: Value Won’t Be Enough To Secure Customer Loyalty In 2026
This trend is a reflection of the tough economic climate. Following years of rising prices and the current uncertainty over global tariffs, the report’s data suggests “price is not the only consideration for consumers.”
Value for money is the top driver of consumer choice in 2026; consumers are willing to spend if you give them a better value, but it’s not about being the cheapest. And a key way to build value and lasting customer relationships, the report correctly notes, is to invest in both great products and great customer experience.
My take: This reflects my often-cited line that competing on price in today’s business climate is a losing game, while competing on product is growing very difficult because almost every industry has become commoditized.
Think of two gas stations on opposite corners – both offer the same products (inside and outside), and sell it at usually the exact same price.
So what is left to set brands apart? Customer experience. Some brands still manage to rise above the noise while others fade into irrelevance because they follow this basic maxim: Customers don’t talk about transactions. They talk about experiences.
Trend 4: Consumers Demand Transparency Over Personalization Tactics
This trend is about the increasing focus on data privacy amid rapid technological change. The consumer trends study gets at that concept by questioning what it calls a flawed assumption on which companies have built their digital strategies: that consumers will gladly trade their data (and privacy) for more personalized, intuitive experiences.
Actually, while personalization and tailored experiences remain important, the report found that that only 39 percent of consumers believe the benefits justify the privacy costs. This is driven in part by the lack of trust in AI implementation: The report identified data misuse as the top concern at 53 percent.
My take: I view this slightly differently. Personalization is, and will remain, a key differentiator in customer experience. I am also a big believer in self-personalization, which allows customers to personalize experience for themselves.
But that is not to diminish the importance of data privacy. It is understandable, with bad actors stealing and misusing data, why customers want to know how their data is being used before just handing it over.
Companies need to do better than the typical lawyer-written privacy policy that no one reads. Their goal should be to help customers understand how their data will be used whenever it is requested.
AI Customer Experience Is Improving — But Other Warning Signs Show Work Remains
On the whole, the results of this report are undeniably positive: no matter the industry surveyed, customer experience is on the upswing.
Yet the top individual trends, including the findings about AI and customer service, reveal potential warning signs.
What do we make of that seeming disconnect? Well, it actually makes some sense.
Like many things, AI customer experience is a perpetual work in progress. Brands must move forward, dig in, adapt to changes in technology and customer taste, do their best to keep up – and make customer experience a permanent top priority across all areas of business.