You have spoken loud and clear: humans trump AI. Will companies listen?

Ever since modern generative AI models exploded in popularity, many companies around the globe have begun laying off their employees en masse in favor of AI-powered solutions. However, a major disconnect arises between said companies and their customers: the users don’t want to have to deal with AI.In a recent story about Verizon’s AI customer support, you — the readers — voted overwhelmingly in favor of human representatives over AI agents in the included poll. As of writing this, the vote stands at a whopping 98.61 percent of you voting to deal with human customer support instead of AI.

So…let’s talk about this for a bit, shall we? Why are AI agents so unpopular with customers, and why do companies still insist on using them?

And, as we’re bringing this up again, let’s continue to vote to see if your opinion changes after reading this piece. Spoiler alert: I don’t think it will.

Why do customers dislike AI support so much?

There are countless discussions online about how AI customer service chatbots are a pain to deal with. Some people have shared a pretty “fun” strategy on how they get the AI to connect them to a human representative: they begin screaming expletives and make no sense. Though, continuously repeating “live agent” over and over also seems to work most of the time.

But where does this aversion to AI stem from? Well, for starters, the AI agents barely manage to do their job most of the time. A recent study by Salesforce revealed that AI customer service agents failed at their tasks in 70 percent of recorded cases. If a company wants a model good enough to handle customer complaints accurately, that will cost 3-4 Dollars per interaction, which is simply unfeasible.

From anecdotes across the internet, AI customer service simply cannot carry out the task it gets handed. Customers either give up, or keep trying to connect to a live agent, which means that the time spent talking to the AI bot was completely wasted.

Why, then, do companies still insist on replacing their workforce with AI?

It’s money, baby!

Are companies going to stop replacing their human customer service representatives with AI models after explicitly being told that users prefer the former? No, not really. Verizon might, to an extent, according to the aforementioned study, but most companies will not.

Why? It’s quite simple: it’s cheaper to use AI. But doesn’t AI cost a ton more for accurately resolving complaints? Yes, yes it does. These companies don’t invest in your complaints being solved fully, though.

The unfortunate truth is, it’s cheaper to let customers angrily end a support session with an AI, than to pay a person. AI customer service agents remain active 24/7, and keep resolving tickets much quicker than their human counterparts. These agents also never call in sick to work, and are only going to become more affordable as the technology improves.

There were some hilarious instances during the early adoption of AI customer service, where the bots would go rogue and start hating on the company that they were representing. However, much of that has now been resolved, and AI will, eventually, get just as good as the people that it is replacing.

AI has helped companies improve their bottom line

It’s not all failures or rogue bots, however. For example, Verizon reported that adopting AI agents helped the company improve its sales. And, when it comes to simpler tasks like general queries or opening a new account somewhere, AI customer service has sped up the process massively.

While there is a lot of heavy resistance against AI adoption in the workplace, it will eventually be present in almost every aspect of the enterprise world. Going back to Verizon yet again, the carrier’s own employees hate the AI tools that they’re forced to use, but they have no choice.

So, no: I do not believe that companies will listen to customer feedback for this particular issue. AI support is here to stay, and will only continue to make its way into more and more companies’ business model.

Similar to a number of technologies in the past — the camera, record player, computer, and the internet come to mind — AI will be adopted en masse, and it is the public opinion on it that will shift over time.

What will happen to the people who lose their jobs, you ask? We don’t know yet, we just don’t know.

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