Presented with the challenge of ensuring that customer service meets expectations in 2026, businesses need to find the answer to the AI question. What is the AI question? Well, it’s no longer about whether to implement AI in customer service. Now, customer service teams need to ask, “How do we implement it?”
As always, for fear of being left behind, speed is given priority, but, as the Consumers Choice Award shows us, hasty decision-making will have consequences. So, finding the best way to use AI rather than simply rushing in without a plan plays a huge role in its impact on the customer experience.
The Irresistible Math of CX Automation
A good place to start is to ask why businesses are falling over themselves to replace customer service staff with automated alternatives.
Of course, overhead reduction is the main driver. With the cost of human CS agents being approximately $3 to $6.50 per call, compared to $0.03 to $0.25 for an IVR (interactive voice response) system, and a McKinsey report forecasting a handover of 30% of work hours to service automation by 2030, the figures represent enough of a difference to warrant immediate action.
Whilst the numbers are indeed appealing, it’s the impacts that aren’t so easily quantified that give reason to pause. The promised cost-cutting will not factor in the potential long-term costs to customer loyalty and satisfaction if a company loses sight of the importance of a human touch in support.
The Global Reality Check: Customers Are Hitting a Wall
Where is this human touch lacking, and what are the consequences?
Reaching Customer Support Is Becoming More Difficult
Whilst AI, IVR, and automated customer service trends become prevalent, the gains in efficiency are being tempered by increased customer frustration with human customer service, specifically the difficulty of actually speaking with a human CS agent.
A PissedConsumer survey of over 340,000 consumers illustrates this trend. Between 2023 and 2025, the percentage of consumers saying they were unable to reach human customer support grew from 48.6% to 53.8%.
The customer service experience seems to be morphing into a gauntlet of menus, help pages, and chatbots, with actual human assistance being offered up as an option once all others have been exhausted, or in many cases, not at all.
This is a source of significant customer frustration and has become a common topic of online reviews: when AI in customer support takes the conversation to a dead end, customers tend to vent their frustration publicly.
The Hidden Costs of Aggressive Automation
In the rush to automate, consumer feedback and loyalty considerations can get sidelined. It’s here where the limitations of AI customer service actually prevent satisfactory outcomes, because businesses are replacing human agents without properly understanding why the human factor is so important to customers.
This neglect creates new problems, resulting in unresolved customer issues that damage brand loyalty, lower CSAT scores, and lead to public complaints. This is an ongoing issue that most companies, even the top performers (i.e. CSAT among Consumers’ Choice Award winners fell from 69% in 2024 to 65% in 2025), are still learning to overcome.
Why Some Companies May Need to Reverse Course
Hastily handing over human tasks to AI will likely need to be walked back, to some degree at least. According to Gartner, by 2027, 50% of companies that replaced customer service agents with AI will rehire staff to perform similar roles.
As organizations encounter the limits of AI and rising customer expectations, they will need to reinvest in human talent to sustain service quality and growth.
– Kathy Ross, Senior Director Analyst in the Gartner Customer Service & Support
How Brands Balance AI and Live Customer Support
Successful customer service automation takes a long-term view. Those who view it as a means to slash costs in the short term, with little consideration of potential drawbacks, will be playing catch-up to those who take a more measured approach.
Consumers still want to deal with live customer support from a human agent when they feel it’s necessary. Striking a balance between automated improvements to speed and high-volume workflows and human sensitivity should be the target.
To complement the survey findings, we reached out to several companies recognized in the 2025 Consumers’ Choice Award and asked how they are balancing AI adoption with customer service quality.
Using AI for Speed While Keeping Humans for Quality
In practical terms, this balance would see AI used to speed up responses and knowledge access, whilst maintaining easy-to-reach human support for inquiries that demand it.
To better understand how leading customer-focused brands are approaching AI and customer service in 2026, we reached out to several recipients of the 2025 Consumers’ Choice Award. Nicole Hedmark, Vice President of Operations at Support Pets, explained that the company keeps a human eye connected to every correspondence:
Every message that goes out to a customer still gets a final human review—that’s non-negotiable for us.
The quality here is the nuanced judgment, relatability, and accountability delivered through good human customer service.
Investing in Agent Training Instead of Replacing Staff
Equipping CS staff and AI support to work in unison, to bring out the best of both worlds, will allow the desired efficiency gains without creating a roadblock for customers.
Asked about customer service priorities in 2026, Anna Fodor, Marketing Team Supervisor at Priority Tire, told us:
Investing in training is essential for our teams to stay at the top of their game in 2026 and deliver the best customer experience. This is especially true with the advent of new technologies that streamline certain processes.
Treating Live Support as a Premium Customer Experience
The key message here is that whilst a high volume of inquiries can be satisfactorily handled by AI, high-stakes situations demand human support.
As such, high-stakes situations are what get documented in online reviews. In comments shared with us following the release of the 2025 Consumers’ Choice Award results, representatives from OmniShield and Life Alert emphasized continued investment in human support agents:
We are considering an increase in customer service and IT personnel to accompany our app-based services.
– Chris Roberts, President of OmniShield
Over the next year, we are prioritizing investment in enhanced customer support infrastructure and training. This includes expanding support resources to improve our response times, and improving internal systems to provide faster, more consistent answers.
– Heidi Nestor, Marketing and Brand Reputation Manager at Life Alert
AI brings the greatest benefits when it supports the work of human customer service agents to resolve consumer issues. The point of human interaction is what defines the best customer service teams and remains the determining factor in an exceptional customer service experience.