The debate around AI in CX is often framed as a binary one. Consumers either welcome automation or reject it in favor of a human.
Three new studies suggest the reality is more complicated – and more demanding than that.
Customers are willing to give AI a chance, including on complex support issues. But they are judging it against a tougher standard: Did it understand the problem? Did it resolve it quickly? And could they reach a person without having to start all over again?
This week, we dive into three new consumer surveys that explore the AI’s role in customer experience interactions.
Are Consumers Actually Open to AI for Complex Support?
Zingtree’s latest research offers a more optimistic starting point than much of the public discussion around AI might suggest. The study of 1,040 US consumers found that six in 10 trust AI for simple requests but not complex issues.
Speaking to CX Today, Juan Jaysingh, CEO of Zingtree, highlights that the number is worth looking at from both directions.
“That also means four out of 10 do trust AI today for complex issues. This tells me we’re at a critical inflection point.”
The condition is that businesses cannot make automation a dead end. Consumers may not care whether a person or an AI resolves their issue, but they do care about the outcome, the time it takes, and whether they can regain control when the system is struggling.
Jaysingh said the ability to reach a human, without losing everything the customer has already explained, is central to earning that confidence.
“Consumers are open to using AI, but our research showed that openness comes with caveats. For example, being able to easily reach a human when needed, and having transfers that include full context, are key to earning trust.”
That fits the wider report findings. Sixty-four percent of consumers do not mind interacting with AI when it resolves their issue, while 90% say a good AI-to-human transfer would make them more willing to use AI again.
The warning for CX teams is that goodwill can disappear quickly. Nearly seven in 10 consumers would abandon AI after two or fewer failures. Half said they have had to repeat information to a human agent after being transferred from AI, turning what should have been an escalation into a restart.
Jaysingh believes those experiences will determine how quickly consumer attitudes shift. If businesses can make complex AI support feel less like a containment exercise and more like a useful first step, he expects today’s trust gap to narrow quickly.
“If we run this survey again in a year, it’s very possible we see a shift to 50/50 or even a majority trusting AI for their complex issues.”
Is “AI Resistance” a Myth?
NTT DATA’s research across the UK and Ireland lands on a similar conclusion: consumers are not fundamentally anti-AI.
The report surveyed 560 business professionals and 1,600 consumers, finding that people remain attached to traditional service channels, especially when an issue is urgent or complex. Yet they are also open to innovation when it delivers a genuine benefit rather than simply reducing a company’s operating costs.
Sashen Naidu, Executive, Head of Global CX Practice, Cloud & Security at NTT DATA, told CX Today that the resistance narrative misses the point.
“Customer resistance to AI is entirely a myth.”
That does not mean customers will accept AI by default. Naidu argues that the real source of concern is less about the technology itself and more about whether it can preserve the human qualities that matter in difficult service moments.
“The consumer anxiety isn’t about AI itself, it’s more about the soft factors like trust, human empathy.”
For CX leaders, this is an important distinction. It shifts the question from whether customers will tolerate AI to whether businesses can use it without stripping away reassurance, judgment, and access to direct human contact.
The report also points to a practical model for doing that. AI can handle simple, predictable work and support employees behind the scenes, while people take on the interactions where empathy and complexity matter most.
The challenge is to design that hybrid experience deliberately, rather than forcing customers into a channel that does not suit the issue at hand.
Has AI Reset Consumer Expectations Faster Than CX Teams Can Deliver?
Alchemer’s 2026 AI & Customer Expectations Study provides the toughest reality check of the three.
Among 2,009 US consumers, 89% said AI had negatively affected an experience with a company in some way. The leading complaint was not privacy or inaccurate information. It was difficulty reaching a real person, cited by 44% of respondents.
This challenges how many AI programs are still measured. If containment is the primary goal, a transfer to a human can appear to be a failure. From the customer’s perspective, though, reaching the right person may be the only successful outcome.
The research also shows that AI has raised expectations. Fifty-nine percent of consumers say knowing a company uses AI makes them expect faster responses and issue resolution. Faster resolution was the most requested improvement, selected by 38%, ahead of faster responses at 34%.
An instant acknowledgment is not the same as a solved problem.
The study also found that 37% of consumers had received an AI response that failed to understand what they were asking, while 30% had to repeat information they had already provided.
In other words, the same issues highlighted in the Zingtree research are showing up at scale: broken context, poor intent recognition, and a human route that feels unnecessarily hard to access.
The uncomfortable implication is that AI can create a higher service obligation. Once customers know a company is using it, they expect the business to act faster, understand them better, and reduce the effort required to get help. If it does none of those things, automation stops looking innovative and starts looking like a barrier.
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If You Missed Last Week
World CX Day: Five CX Lessons Beyond the AI Hype in 2026
Last week, CX Today explored five lessons that sit beyond the AI hype, including why governance, context, resolution, and human roles are becoming central to customer experience strategy.
How To Manage an Ecosystem of AI Agents in Your CX Stack
We also spoke with Fin VP Product Brian Donohue about managing an expanding ecosystem of AI agents, avoiding new data silos, and why customer-facing AI needs to be treated like a product rather than an experiment.
