I’ve written a lot about AI and the digital customer experience (CX). Many of the leaders I interview and the articles I reference talk about how AI is revolutionizing, changing, helping, and sometimes hindering the customer experience. So we’ve heard from the experts. How about we hear from the customers?

That’s exactly what we did in our annual Customer Service and CX Study, sponsored by RingCentral. We asked more than 1,000 U.S. consumers about their experiences with AI and digital customer support, and here are the basic findings for 2024:

The good

· 62 percent of U.S. consumers expect AI (and related technologies) to be the most important form of customer service in the future. But what about today? As you’ll see in some of the findings below, not everyone believes AI is ready for prime-time customer service and CX.

· 38 percent believe AI and related technologies will lead to more personalized customer experiences. Personalization is a hot topic for marketing and CX leaders. AI gives companies and brands far more opportunities to use customer data to create a personalized experience. Customers like to do business with companies that recognize them and use the information they have to create a better experience.

· 49 percent believe AI technologies have the potential to improve the overall customer experience. This is good news, but the next set of results shows that companies still have an uphill battle ahead of them to get customers to embrace and accept an AI-powered customer experience.

The bad

Only 32% of customers have successfully resolved a customer service issue using AI or ChatGPT technologies. This number is low. One theory is that customers often don’t realize that AI is behind what they are doing. Some think that AI is chatbots and automated voice response systems that interact with them like a human would or should.

· 56 percent of customers admit to being afraid of technologies like AI and ChatGPT. Some of these customers may have seen movies where computers take over the world or robots get out of control, all of which have nothing to do with reality. However, some customers simply don’t trust the technology because they’ve had bad experiences in the past.

· 63% of customers are frustrated with self-service options using AI, ChatGPT and similar technologies. Frustration is different from fear, but it has the same impact: customers prefer to avoid technology and talk to a real person for support and service.

When I examined the significance of these findings overall, I found that the main reason AI has failed to gain traction as a viable and reliable customer support option is inconsistency. The annual study found that 70% of customers choose speaking to a live customer service agent on the phone as their primary customer service channel.

Why? It’s easier and customers know what to expect when speaking and interacting with live agents. What they don’t want is an artificial intelligence-based self-service solution that takes them through a series of prompts that eventually lead to a dead end where they end up calling the company.

There are good reasons for the fear and frustration. More and more customers are coming into contact with AI and beginning to understand it. Their different experiences from one company to the next are causing trust issues. The latest technology, which is very cost-effective even for small businesses, is not being purchased and implemented by most companies.

Earlier this year, only 27% of customers believed that self-service or automated customer support using AI technology can provide as good a customer experience as a live agent. That number will eventually rise, although not as quickly as it needs to. Once companies realize that poor service means lost business, they will make the investments to get it right. That’s not an option if they want their customers to say, “I’ll be back!”