Consumers are increasingly embracing AI-powered customer support with younger generations more likely to report AI is making customer service more helpful
Those are top findings from a study released by Forethought, a gen AI platform for customer support and customer service.
"Using AI for CX is a lot harder than most assume it will be, and companies are finally starting to get it right," Deon Nicholas, president and executive chairman of Forethought, said in a press release on the findings. "However, there's still a lot of work to be done. Most companies that say they have 'AI agents' today use simple bots. There's a significant opportunity to differentiate and improve customer satisfaction by transitioning to truly agentic AI that can take action, make nuanced decisions, and troubleshoot."
The study found half of consumers would only be willing to wait up to nine minutes to receive a response from customer support. Not responding fast enough presents a significant risk to brands, with 23% of consumers saying they would cancel or return their order, 21% saying they would decide not to do business with this company again and 18% saying they would leave a critical review online.
Most consumers, 82%, said it's at least somewhat easy to tell if they are chatting with a human customer service agent or AI, with 90% of Gen Z saying so. And 89% agree companies should disclose if an agent is AI.
"Right now, many people distrust bots, and they don't believe they can resolve their issues," Nicholas added. "As more companies evolve to more advanced agentic AI, we'll see more customers willing to give AI a chance to swing before they look to escalate to a human agent. This will free human agents' time to focus on the most complex and important issues while improving customer satisfaction overall."
Launched in 2018, Forethought offers a human-centered generative AI suite for customer support, trained on proprietary data.
Forethought is hosting a webinar, "Preparing Your CX Org For Busy Season: Expert Tips for Success," on Nov. 19 on RetailCustomerExperience.com that will provide tips to prepare a retail organization for the holiday busy season and how AI can revolutionize CX operations.