Consumer mistrust in AI remains a significant hurdle for brands integrating the technology into customer service, according to a Five9 and Team Lewis survey.
Despite growing awareness, with 84% of consumers recognizing that companies use AI for customer support, nearly half (48%) reported they do not trust the information provided by AI bots.
This hesitancy is reflected in consumer preferences: 75% of people still prefer speaking with a human representative, signaling that companies need to adopt a hybrid approach to customer experience (CX) that balances AI efficiency with human interaction.
The report also found generational perspectives reveal differing attitudes toward AI-driven customer service.
Younger generations, who tend to have a deeper understanding of AI’s strengths and limitations, are generally more accepting of AI’s role in customer service.
While two-thirds of Gen Z prefers human interaction, that number is significantly lower than Gen X (76%) and Baby Boomers (86%).
Furthermore, trust in AI-provided information is notably higher among Gen Z and Millennials, with 63% and 60% respectively expressing confidence in AI, compared to more skeptical older consumers.
About a third (33%) of Gen Z and Millennials find AI bots both helpful and efficient, highlighting a generational divide in perceptions of AI’s utility in CX.
Niki Hall, CMO at Five9, said companies can decrease skepticism by ensuring that AI is a tool, not a replacement, within their brand’s overall operations.
“Additionally, delivering empathy – a key part of what contact center agents do – by listening, apologizing, assuring, and helping to calm upset customers will ensure that trust is maintained,” she said.
She added empathy is something only a human can deliver, and even when AI is used to assist agents within the contact center, there will always be a need for human touch.
“AI is a powerful tool, and when leveraged well, makes CX and agents better,” Hall said.
Familiarity, Transparency Key
Ivan Ostojić, chief business officer for Infobip, said closing the trust gap in AI requires familiarity, transparency and positive experiences for the end consumers.
“GenAI undoubtedly helps speed up customer service and improve brand satisfaction,” he said. “In our use cases, the results have shown that the more positive customer experiences with generative AI, the more customers become familiar with and trust it.”
He highlighted the importance of having an AI model architecture enabling continuous monitoring of the system against systematic biases, errors, drifts or any other types of risk of conversational AI.
“If the AI pipeline is propositioned correctly, there is much that can be done to automatically identify and autocorrect these risks,” Ostojić said.
AI Slowly Gains Acceptance
Despite the mistrust among many consumers, some positive trends indicate that AI is gradually improving customer experience.
More than half (53%) of consumers believe that online self-service options have improved in the past three years, a sentiment even stronger among Gen Z and Millennials (61% each).
Dr. Marlene Wolfgruber, document AI strategy lead at automation specialist ABBYY, said to enhance customer experience, companies can integrate AI in ways that empower both chatbots and human agents, making support more seamless and efficient.
During interactions, AI can gather and analyze customer information instantly, suggesting tailored solutions that allow agents to respond more quickly and accurately.
She added it’s essential to equip chatbots to handle more complex, transactional tasks.
Rather than limiting chatbots to simple queries, companies can enable them to address deeper issues—like account updates or service changes—by providing access to backend systems.
“This reduces the burden on human agents and allows chatbots to resolve a wider range of customer needs independently,” she said.
